I have heard that the story is in fact "good" just not amazing. A lot of people who have actually spent the 100 hours or so in beating XC on Wii think the story is one of the best in our modern generation of JRPG's, so it was going to be a hard act to follow with XCX on Wii U, so when you think about it, Monolith played it a bit safe by making the story in the new game told in a different way, having the world be explored in a more vast way.....the world in this game plays a big key in "gamer immersion" so the story, while "good" will probably not be as immersive as the world itself.