Spent all day exploring, doing side quests and the city building aspect. My XB play sessions seem to be boiling down to something like "even days advance the story, odd days sidequesting and not moving a foot forward story-wise" lol.
The city building is ok. Basically there are various parts of the city and to build each one you need x amount of loot A and y amount of loot B. I think they're all normal/rare drops from standard monsters. When I first started building I had enough items to up all the sections to level 2, which brought more buildings and people to the town.
The game actually has a lot of good story sidequests in addition to the typical monster hunts. Sometimes an area has all kinds of cool ruins and lore and things that are never touched upon in the story, but if you do the sidequests you'll find out lots about them and the people, creatures, races that live in the areas. The sidequests also help develop the NPCs and their relations. In the first part of the game the quests were mainly "kill x this" and so I didn't care who these people were. But now I'm getting to know dozens and dozens of npcs and who they are beyond just a name that is at certain spots all day. I've saved lives, stopped marriages, worked with illegal arms dealers, found secret passageways, all within the first couple of settlements. It's also nice when you become friendly with the people after helping them and they'll do nice things for you like go and get your presents or tell you where their secret stash is hidden.
The sidequests are also nice because between the xp they give (story sidequests can give a bunch) and the xp from achievements for completing the sidequests and social aspects of the game, you gain a lot of levels! In 5 hours of story playing yesterday I probably went from level 26-30. In 5 hours of questing today I went from 31-34. So you still feel like you're making progress and doing story stuff helps up your team relations as well which lets you see more kizuna talks and get more out of the story.
Some of the unique mob battles are reaaaally good. Very intense and satisfying fights.
Worst thing that I've noticed today is that sometimes if you're fighting a unique mob or a quest group of enemies on a cliffish platform the stupid enemies will KNOCK YOU OFF. You get the mob down to a few hits left after a few minutes of good fighting and then it knocks you off and you have to run back to him and start over with him at full HP. Then you beat him and he FALLS OFF and you get the xp but all his unique rare drops fell off the cliff with him
I think in a lot of ways, Xenoblade is already one of the best games I've ever played. I've really had hours where it was an incredible experience like no other game out there. Where you really get in the zone and are totally immersed in this world they've created and exploring it and living it is pure joy. I guess this is what being addicted to MMOs are like!
Also the game world reminds me a lot of the original .hack game games. It's the same type of big wildlife, mystery, ruins, beautiful music, similar towns and npc interaction/shopping/trading. It's like .hack but on a much grander scale and with a far better battle system and more mature storyline. A lot of it is the music too. There's a lot of similarities in the style. There's one area where you'll have .hack flashbacks for sure if you were a fan of the series.
Anyhow I think I'm around where Budokai just got to. I think in the best efforts to not spoil the game storywise for each other, it might be easier to just refer to where you are when asking questions or talking about story stuff by which area # you're at if you click on area map. I'm on #6 right now and I thiink I've cleared most of the available sidestuff in the game so far. ~26 hours atm. I'm going so slow, lol but I love sidequesting and exploring. I wouldn't be surprised if I don't hit the halfway point of the game until the 50 hour mark+
