>>719977841
It's pretty fun, the gameplay is a bit rough on the edges and definitely needed 3 more months of cooking in the oven for some QoL, but it werks nonetheless. Battle system is my favorite in the franchise, it takes a while to open up, think like a Tales Of where it takes a while to have full access to the fun shit, but when you get there it gets really fun doing all those smash and combos and shit all while the kino battle narrator scrzams GREAT and AWESOME (in JP dub, EN battle narrator is utter shit and the very definition of boring). By the end of chapter 3 you get pretty much all the battle possibiliteis, do the story to reach that point and then do the sidequesting/exploration from that point instead of doing it too soon. Especially as you're still missing a team member for pretty much all of chapter 2.
And Xenoblade 2 definitely feels like you play an anime, it's good old shonen anime you'd get in the 80's or 90's, on top of doing nods to the classics. Very soulful.
It's a very story-driven game, so don't expect hangouts time or whatever, but the story is made in a way you get to have conversations with the girls and the other team members, in classic jrpg fashion. You also have some little cutscenes/dialogue events you can unlock, most of them are funny moments, some explore the backstory of the characters.