I'd concur with that. I've often found myself judging X more harshly due to comparisons with its predecessor. Of course, I went into Xenoblade Chronicles with no expectations and I was blown away, while I went into X with high expectations and found them missing the mark slightly. There are a lot of little things about this game that just... irk me. The story is an obvious one, but the lack of shared EXP for inactive party members (which is a baffling decision given how many party members there are), the inability to abandon affinity quests when you can't accept any others or advance the story when on one (which is problematic when some of them have HUGE difficulty spikes), and the fact that the game kind of reveals its entire hand outright in terms of the world.
On that last point, what I mean is that while the world is without a doubt huge, and the fact that it's seamless is a definite plus, it pretty much shows you on the map outright that there are five areas. There's no real surprises or unexpected areas; you see those five areas and know that's basically it. I mean, compared to the predecessor, I liked being genuinely surprised by things like being able to go to the Fallen Arm.
That's not to say that I dislike the game, but it's hard to not compare it to its predecessor when they share the same name with the addition of a single character (X) on the spiritual sequel.
