Had too many things that stopped me from liking it:
-Yes, of course the terrible designs for a lot of the Blades from the guest artists.
-The whole gacha system revolving around Blades and making it way more annoying than it needed to be to not only get any particular Blade due to that, but also moving Blades between Drivers being way more limited than it needed to be (like, seriously, why's that even need to be restricted in the first place? Balancing? Already handled IMO by the best ones being so rare in the first place, right? And that doesn't stop you from just happening to be lucky and rolling them on the right character to begin with. It's just an additional punishment for being unlucky. So silly.)
-The field skills. TBH, I didn't even like their equivalent in Xenoblade Chronicles X because I just hate that kind if backtrack-when-you-actually-have-this stuff in games that aren't actually Metroidvanias, especially given the size of X's world and trying to remember where everything was. But fortunately in X's case they were largely optional collectables. In 2's case on the other hand, there's a greater mix of optional and mandatory ones, and the whole thing is silly to me.
-Related to that, there's also the whole relationship or rather the Affinity systen with Blades and stuff, and like the weird and just at times obnoxious requirements to level some of that stuff up, like giving them the right item from your pouch and stuff (when like.... Okay, the way stuff like gifting worked in Xenoblade 1 for affinity points and just knowing what your party members liked was annoying at times, but at least in Xenoblade 1 that's just related to optional Heart-to-heart cutscenes. Tying that into this whole way of powering your Blades up and unlocking stuff for them and whatever in top if it. Ehhhhh......)
-Tora might not be Tatsu, but he's also no Riki. Plus, Blushy-Crushy
-Also speaking of Tora, he's related to where I lost interest in the game entirely. Like, your part gets a clear objective. But instead of actually dealing with that, then everything in Chapter 4 happens, that is, all the nonsense involving Tora and his family. But then around that sane time, there's also that subplot where like your Wind Blade gets stolen and you have to go and get him back and deal with all that until your party finally remembers what their objective was to begin with. Just the whole pacing in that section was abysmal for me, since I was way more interested in the main plot than any of the wacky hijinks that kept happening, but nope, no main plot for you, just more hijinks.
-The combat system for me personally just seemed to be one of the least interesting among the three Xenoblade games. Like, it's so clear that the combat system is fundamentally based around having a party of 3 Drivers with 3 Blades who each have 3 Arts, but it takes forever before they not only give it to you but actually let you have that set up permanently, and even once you do and can really start making maximum use of 2's version of Chain Attacks and stuff, it's just... Not that interesting and just doesn't click with me at all for whatever reason. Like how to put it... Once you finally get all the pieces, it feels like it just puts critical emphasis on a few particular parts of the battle system above and beyond everything else and thise particular systens just aren't really that interesting to engage with for me. Maybe that make sense, maybe it doesn't, but it just doesn't do anything for New either way, especially compared to the other games.
Some of those are small things, other much larger, but collectively they just mean the game did not click with me at all. And it's particularly weird because like particularly with Xenoblade Chronicles X I have a number of complaints as well, namely stuff like the disappointing implementation of Skells (being introduced latee than they should be in general and only starting you with a Level 20 junker, flight coming even later, the whole Skell Insurance thing being nonsense and just killing Skells in general for me, especially for a game that gives you no particular punishment when you die in foot anyway so why does a Skell being killed need such a heavy punishment in such a game to begin with, etc, the silly requirements for being able to even start certain chapters, namely needing to not only be a certain level but needing certain affinity with certain party members you might otherwise ignore which I get the intent of and why it's important but it's still annoying) but nonetheless despite all that stuff I still really enjoyed Xenoblade Chronicles X, but for 2 it was just different and the issues I had with it did prevent it from keeping my interest.
Glad those who did enjoy it were able to, but this one definitely wasn't for me.