As a classic Sonic fan who has played all the games numerous times before this, I'm very satisfied with this experience. The new missions are honestly pretty fun and the games play well (minus the slight blur effect that is at least present on the Switch version). I skipped on the original release last year because I thought it was a scam but getting this with the physical edition now, I don't have much bad to say. Wish the 3&K music wasn't worse but oh well, I'm still happy to have all these games in one place, and this is definitely how I will be replaying these great games in the future.

This is certainly a video game.
Xenoblade 2 is easily the most polarizing video game I have ever played. I would say I love it and would put it high among my all time favorites, but it is such a flawed experience with so many frustrations. It tries so hard to be the best game of all time, and at moments I feel like it really should've been, but it falls short in so many ways that leave me disappointed.
First off I'll just say that the music is absolutely perfect and this is possibly the single greatest soundtrack in gaming history. It does not matter how much you hate this game, you can not deny that this soundtrack is phenomenal. The composers from the first game (minus Shimomura) return to create some absolute classics, and Yasunori Mitsuda was given a much larger role to create some of the games tracks. The soundtrack feels like it's from an alternate universe in which Xenoblade 2 actually ended up being perfect and widely regarded as the greatest game of all time, because it's the only part of the game I have literally 0 issues with.
Presentation wise Xenoblade 2 can be gorgeous and dreadful. The world is phenomenal and the environment art is definitely some of Monolith's best work, rivaling even that of Xenoblade X. So many little details are put in these worlds to create visual story telling and the towns are all full of life and energy thanks to the unique NPCs. The game does have some technical issues, but personally I've always been able to look past them. The biggest issue for me is the inconsistency of the art style. Look, I don't have a problem with the character designs, not even with some of the more controversial ones like Pyra and Rex, but the biggest issue I have is that so many of the characters just don't fit together. I understand they had to outsource some of the characters to different artists to have a lot of blades for the game, but some of the blades just do not transition well to 3D at all and some of them just do not feel like they should be in this game, and not really in a good, unique way. Some of the NPCs also look pretty bad in comparison to the main characters, there's one in the ship of the beginning of the game that particularly comes to mind. Overall the game does look really good, but just like basically everything else in this game, there are flaws.
Gameplay wise the game is really fun... kinda
I have put 200 hours into this game, and it is the second most played game on my switch behind Smash, it even surpassed the first game which is literally my favorite of all time. And yet, I hesitate to say that this combat system is amazing. The biggest issue is that the combat system is not as fun while playing the main story. Many mechanics that make the game a lot more fun are locked out or hidden from the player in favor of unhelpful pouch items and useless skills. I feel like if arts recharge, arts cancelling, and like a few more blades were available from the beginning, with actually good tutorials, this game's combat would not be nearly as divisive. However, once you reach a certain point of the game, the combat system becomes incredibly fun. I have a blast fighting the super bosses and unique monsters after beating the game once I figured out the combat system by watching guides. I don't really like doing that normally, but I truly think it helped me enjoy the game so much more. The gacha system is interesting because it's a really overblown problem. I hate gacha mechanics in games and I hate them here too, but I don't think it's as big of a deal as people make it out to be. You only need them for rare blades and just going through the main campaign most aren't as good as the story blades you'll get. The bigger issues for me gameplay wise are the numerous amount of frustrations from a quality of life perspective. The navigation compass in the game is completely broken, the merc missions have to be repeated manually which is really annoying with a certain blade quests, blade affinity charts take forever to fill out, trust takes forever to build up, some quests barely help you find out where to go. All of these things are minor on their own, but they all add up to create an overall less pleasant experience. I do want to clarify again that I still really enjoyed the gameplay of this game and have put over 200 hours in it now (excluding Torna and all other DLC content) but it's still deeply flawed and I really hope that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 will be much more refined.
Oh boy... now for the story...
It's absolutely incredible!...
And not at the same time
Many people have pointed this out but the beginning of the game does truly fall short of greatness. The game's story truly gets good once you have your full party of characters, but before then it just feels very slow with a lot of exposition and few impactful moments. The nopon have been completely butchered in this game, I absolutely loved them in 1 and especially loved Riki, but in this game they're much worse. Tora in particular is just insufferable and while I get that they were trying to do something with him, he's just really weird and goes in a completely different direction from what the nopon were like in Xenoblade 1. However, once you reach a certain point of the game (about 3/4 of the way through) this game starts to reveal all of the things it's been building up the past 50 hours and creates some incredible story telling moments. I rarely cry in games, but two scenes involving a certain character near the end of the game made me shed a tear, which almost nothing else in the series has made me do. And the big plot twist at the end of the game is absolutely phenomenal and the way it parallels other parts of the larger story is handled really well, actually improving those other parts. These are the moments I look back on fondly, the ones that make me love it so much and call it one of the greatest. These moments rival and even surpass the incredible heights of the first game, and I think that's something that can't be understated.
I love this game, I truly do, but at the end of the day it's still a flawed experience. It has the highest highs of the series and the absolute lowest lows, and so I can completely understand both sides of the spectrum. I would say I lean more towards the side of loving this game than the one that absolutely hates it, but I don't blame anyone for not really liking this game all that much, it's one where you can't really appreciate the product as a whole, but rather only the highs of it, which requires going through a lot of the lows to get to. Overall I would recommend this game, to fans of Xenoblade 1 and even those just looking for a solid JRPG, but just go in knowing that it's going to take a while to reach the true greatness of this game.
Can not wait for Xenoblade 3 though, hopefully they can fully realize their vision and actually create a perfect video game that can completely surpass the first game.

Played it 10 times and loved every moment. I've done sequence breaks, hard mode, 100%, even 0% and enjoyed every single one. At this point I have kinda burnt out of it and didn't really enjoy Dread mode (honestly just do 0% it's like exactly the same thing), but when that boss rush mode comes out and if they do any other content for this game, I will be there day 1.
(BTW I only played Super Metroid before Dread and thought it was okay, though after playing Dread I played Super game again and loved it, still think Dread is better though.)

... it's fine
I think I would put this game on the same level as Final Fantasy 7 as in I don't really like it that much but can still appreciate it (except DQXI has the advantage of being a polished game that DOESNT have random encounters so it automatically will have 1 more point)
It has charm with great graphics and a really fun combat system, but the biggest issue is that the story is really unremarkable. There were moments I liked and can remember pretty fondly but the majority of the game failed to make much of an impression on me. It's a very character-first game but that becomes a problem when the only characters I had much interest in were Veronica and Erik. The rest were just kinda there and again... fine. Plus the main objective and story is incredible generic, it doesn't really go much further than go defeat the big bad thing which again... is fine. Also the music was surprisingly mediocre, it was generic, repetitive, and the composer wasn't really a good person.
Overall this game just wasn't really for me. I still have a huge amount of respect for the series for basically creating the JRPG genre (which I would honestly consider to be my favorite), and I did enjoy the game enough to complete it and look forward to future projects (DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D BABYYYYYYY), but I would still consider it flawed. It's something I don't regret playing, but felt disappointed by at the same time.
(Also TBH I think I enjoyed Dragon Quest Builders 2 more than this game but I think if I elaborate further I will be put on some kind of list.)

I have no idea what a Touhou is and the story of this game is really dumb and I was not interested in it at all, but that being said I was pleasantly surprised by this game. I mean I kinda gave up at the final boss because I didn't really care enough to bother with the second phase but honestly I really enjoyed what I did play of it. The level design is well done and the game is challenging. The mostly great boss fights definitely contribute to that. The game can be a little castlevania NES as in dying to something that kinda couldn't have been avoided and having to go back to a checkpoint and redo a large chunk of stuff you've already done, but that's only near the end of the game. Overall though, I would recommend.

I think the original Xenoblade Chronicles is the greatest video game ever made...
This is most certainly not.
I enjoyed this game fine enough because Xenoblade but I just feel like it was lacking in a lot of elements. On the positive side, the gameplay, environments, music are all on par with the base game, and the side content is honestly better offering much more interesting stories and lot less repetition. Melia and Tyrea are also expanded on really well in this epilogue and because the ending is good and closes off the High Entia part of main story well, I didn't leave the experience feeling unsatisfied. On the negative side, the game is REALLY short and as a result characters like Gael' gar, Nene, and Kino didn't get as much development as I would've liked. Especially Gael'gar who is an absolute embarrassment and one of the worst characters in the entire series. The Fog King is also really dumb as he just shows up, kinda becomes a threat, and then just leaves going to the world of Aionios or something. I'm sure in S̶e̶p̶t̶e̶m̶b̶e̶r July everything will all make sense and we'll look back at this game and be like "How did we never notice THAT?" but as of right now in the Pre-Xenoblade 3 times, he's really boring. There's enough elements for me to give this game a 3/5 and say I enjoyed it, but the overall experience was really lacking and it's definitely not worth buying Definitive Edition just for this roughly 15 hour expansion. The music absolutely SLAPS though. Seriously go listen to the fogbeast and regular battle theme for some of the best tracks in the entire series.

Torna is by far one of my favorite gaming experiences ever.
I thought Xenoblade 2 was an amazing game, and all the things that made that game amazing are still here, but I had a lot of issues with it and I am not kidding when I say EVERY single one of them was fixed or adjusted in some way. Like field skills are less annoying since you have a constant party of 9 characters, the combat tutorials are much better and explain all the new mechanics well, the story is consistently great the whole way through, the sidequests are actually fun and interesting, and the nopon aren't the worst thing in the entire world (i'm lookin at you tora). The ending is also incredibly emotional and solidified Jin as my favorite Xenoblade 2 character and one of my favorite characters of any game. If I had to complain about ANYTHING I would say it's a little short (not as bad as Future Connected) and I would've liked to explore 1 or 2 more returning titans and have the Mor Ardain characters (Hugo, Brighid, and Aegaeon) get more development.
But aside from that, I can not praise this game enough and it honestly just reminded me why Xenoblade Chronicles is my favorite game series ever.
(Side note: There ARE mandatory side quests in this game and 2 times where you will be stopped from progressing in the story until you reach a certain community level, neither of these bothered me because I enjoyed the side quests a lot and was doing them as I played the game, but it is still worth mentioning.)