I also just kinda feel like there's too much going on in terms of all the playable characters and upgrade systems. Not so much that it's confusing, but when there's so much to level I feel like I'm losing any strong sense of progression. Oh I spent a few hours leveling this character and this class, dunno if it's gonna come in handy or anything. Don't really care too much since I'm overleveled anyways. Now I got my skell, bought some shit, bought another skell...it's been a while since I upgraded my characters regular abilities...eh.
So far I'm feeling the same - in XC I was constantly checking out if there's new armor to buy, new arts to upgrade, new skill trees to equip, Affinity Chart links, etc.
In XCX there's just so much stuff to keep track of, it blends into one big mush - and I feel like the individual systems somehow became weaker? Affinity Chart seems to have become harder to navigate, and they've stopped displaying connection titles on the arrows, so I stopped caring about it. Leveling up your character in XC always felt like a nice moment, but here I just notice my level going up in the menu every now and then.
Handling equipment feels a lot worse than in XC, mainly because you have tons of crap in your inventory all the time (selling it is not really viable because it doesn't give you a lot of money and is a pain to navigate in a way that allows you to keep only the good stuff) - the worst offender award in that category goes to the weapons. For the love of god I can't figure out why they're showing every single projectile weapon when you're in a specific category (say, Dual Guns). Lately I've just equipped nice looking stuff as my "Fashion Armor" and I keep using "Equip Best Inventory" all the time :|
There's a myriad of options in all regards (leveling, skills, arts, etc.), but the way you interact / equip those is a huge pain.
I've got to agree that this game's art direction is lovely. This should be a new standard - everywhere you go there's a ton of interesting places to visit and climb the hell out of. Can't wait to get my hands on that flight module.