the tl;dr of this is that it's a skill issue on my part. If you enjoy strategy games, and think you'd like one with a more contemporary 1930s/40s era wartime aesthetic (albeit with a moe mask on top) that has guns and tanks, I think you'll like this one a lot. It just wasn't for me (at the time of dropping). I should note I made it to about chapter 8 I believe? Which isn't even halfway

For positives, I really enjoyed the characters and the story! Alicia is probably my fave. She's so bubbly. I also loved Ms. Ellet. I really liked Isara as well. Welkin is pretty good too, I dig his hyperfixations on wildlife. All of the squadron characters are also pretty neat for their surface level personalities, and they all have pretty striking designs. There's even two I believe gay and lesbian characters (albeit the former is a walking stereotype, but I still love him), and even a possibly bi dude considering he had both the "fancies men" and "fancies women" traits. Neat rep if small. The villains also seemed pretty cool.

I don't have much to comment on story-wise since I didn't get far, but it seemed well-done for a wartime piece. It was absolutely not afraid to show you civilians getting brutally killed, and it was even willing to discuss the topic of discrimination against its fictional ethnicity the Darcsens, which I thought was neat. Some characters openly dislike Darcsens and you're obviously meant to think this is bad, but afaik they don't get "fixed" or anything. You can't just power of friendship away bigotry.

The gameplay is what ultimately made me shelve it. It is usually very fun. I think having to (rudimentally) aim your shots for an srpg is very cool, and in general most gameplay aspects are satisfying and rewarding. I'm just kinda not sure what the game wants from me difficulty-wise. It acts like you have to rush in, both to get a good rank and to stop the endless hoards of reinforcements that can appear at camps, but when I do so (even at a pretty reasonable pace) a lot of my units get just domed. It really just feels like there's not a lot I can do to change the outcome of battle, unless I have absolutely perfect map knowledge. And replaying is tedious because there's always a tactics exposition dump at the start of battle and a scene of Welkin entering his tank, both of which are unskippable. Also, killing the enemy elites or whatever they're called to remove the enemy's command icons feels pointless, because a lot of the time they just end their turns with like 5 remaining anyways. There are a few other things but it's hard to put them into words.

Still, it was pretty fun, and I did really like the characters, so maybe I'll come back to it. Maybe just not the game for me.

Haven't experienced much space opera fiction in my life, and much less space opera video games, but this is a very fun one! The battle system is super interesting and I honestly wish I could see it done again. Story is interesting and the characters, to me, were lovable and memorable. Setting up a lot of lore as well, and there's mythological and religious references galore. I'm not sure if it's a "must-play" for Xenoblade fans, but regardless I think more people should give it a shot.
also Shion and KOS-MOS are gay for each other don't @ me