First impressions after playing the first ten hours: I've played
Xenoblade for about the same amount of time I've played
FFXIII, and I've had
FFXIII almost six months now. I don't remember any moments from
FFXIII; I will always remember today when, while wandering around a field shortly after reaching the second town in
Xenoblade, I attacked some rhino-zebra-ponies to get some XP and suddenly a level 70 Territorial Rothbart (I think that was its name) came over and killed everyone instantly, and then a couple hours later when, in that same field, when I should have been going to the third town, I was wandering around again and came across some ruins, with some giant spider egg sacs in them, found an item, and then got chased by a giant queen spider that would also have killed everyone instantly if we hadn't just barely gotten away.
There's a character in this second town who tells her little brother that it's dangerous out in this field, especially if you go off the path. Staying on the path, you'll just run into monsters around your level, who you can eventually defeat as long as there aren't too many of them, but just off the path (depending on the time of day), there are some packs of wolves that I know would be much more deadly than the normal monsters (especially since every time I see them, I turn around and find there's another bunch of them over there where I didn't see them), and there's also some level 77 monsters wandering around. Definitely conveys her "it's dangerous out there" message very well, more coherently and internally consistently than most.
There's no silly vestigial flashy battle transition like in
FFXIII. If a monster sees you or hears you (or, for some of them, if they detect you using magic), they'll attack you (but not everything is a "monster" -- most things you run into in the field so far are just animals who may have good defensive capabilities or high HP, but won't attack you first; they're just giant armadillos that'll just keep minding their own business), and you can either stay there and fight back, or run away and try to lose them or hope they just give up. But it's all on the field. There's also no healing items (at least so far); between battles, your HP gradually recovers (it seems like it recovers a little faster standing still than while running, but I'm not sure). During battles, you'll have to use healing spells, and also not just run around blindly.
In big important boss fights, there'll be a green ring of fire around the battlefield keeping you from running away. This was where I've run into the only real (though minor) camera issues -- I think sometimes when the boss was cornering me against the wall, the camera was behind me and it didn't want to go through the wall so things got a little cramped. Still, just took an extra half-second or so to figure things out and move the camera to a better position.
I do wish I had a Classic Controller Pro, as it has better access to the ZL and ZR buttons (extra camera controls and simple battle commands for AI partners, respectively). Haven't tried the nunchuk setup yet. Sometimes I'll be moving with the left stick while also reaching my hand over to make selections with the D-pad and the A button, and while this seems like it should be awkward and cumbersome, it works just fine for me.
I like the feel of the towns so far. Lots of people in the towns, and all the ones with names you keep track of on one of your menus. A little like a streamlined version of the Bombers Notebook from
Majora's Mask, though the game never wastes any time explaining why your character has this notebook and how that fits into the story. It also never wastes any time coming up with in-universe justifications for quick-travel, saving anywhere, respawning at the last landmark when you die, how you finish most sidequests instantly upon collecting the items (rather than having to go back and find the person that gave you the quest and talk to them again), how you know which sidequests will expire at some point in the future (though this one could possibly be chalked up to the Monado), or your ability to change the time of day. And I'm glad it doesn't, because those kinds of things usually just end up
raising further questions and imposing annoying restrictions on the powers in the interest of making them slightly more believable.
Basically, if you've ever liked JRPGs, and especially if some of the pretentious extraneous BS in later Final Fantasies turns you off, you'll probably like this (or at least the first ten hours of it; I can't vouch for it beyond that yet). Both this and
Last Story seem like a great chance to see what can happen when you have the talent and the effort that goes into a Final Fantasy without all the expectations and the baggage and the vestigial organs and the hype and the fandom that that name and that corporation comes with today. It's a shame that NOA still doesn't realize what they've got here.