I have the same question and could someone help me understand XCDE?
I am not shitting on the game I promise, I genuinely want to get into the series since I love Xenogears, find the Xeno-universe very interesting and that the upcoming XC3 looks gorgeous. I have tried twice on XCDE and gave up after 25hours in my latest attempt due to;
1. The combat consist of walking to back or side of enemy, use the skill then wait for cool down. Not enjoying this a lot.
2. The exploration is not very well done? The map is huge and yet it's not very rewarding to explore. There are no interesting side quests you can find (like Witcher 3 for example), dead ends are often just dead ends. And do they seriously wants me to memorize all the HtH location and come back later?
3. The side quests are mostly about collect x items or kill x enemies. Can I just skip them all?
4. I got the break topple daze party going, but it still isn't very engaging. I have no means of controlling the party, chain attack is often the only way to get the combo going and yet it felt a bit random still.
At this point, should I just slap on casual mode and run through the game for the story? Or am I playing it wrong missing some integral part of the combat system?
Did the sequel improve on the combat?
Let me try to help you out.
1. I can understand that. While the waiting for skill cool down is just is what it is, if hitting positionals becomes annoying, then change your party leader to another character. I understand that playing someone besides the “main character” can feel weird, but every character in XBC has its own unique play style and mechanics. Try changing to a tank or a caster.
2. While XBCDE is the best version of the game, it is still a polished up Wii game that probably didn't have the largest budget to begin with. You're right, exploration isn't very well done.
3. Short answer: Yes. Long answer: kinda, yeah. There are nearly 500 sidequest in this game and all of them are super simple. It's not worth doing all of them nor is it required. A common tactic is to simply go into town, pick up all the sidequest and then just follow the main story quest and just kill/pick quest items or enemies come on your path. Don't bother reading the text or give it too much thought: There's nothing interesting there. I've read that there are plenty of people who didn't finish any sidequests and still finished the main game. Just make sure you don't get too far underleveled.
4: The AI is basically programmed to follow up on break and topples automatically. It doesn't always work from my experience. You're not missing and integral part of the combat system: It just comes across as more complex than it really is. To me, it kinda feels like FF12's combat system but without the gambit system.
I can't really answer if the sequel improves as I'm finishing up XBCDE myself. Should you slap on casual mode? It depends. If you're simply not enjoying the game and you want to get to the sequel (Which probably feels more modern, considering it came out years later on better hardware) then by all means do so. But I'd first recommend just switching to another party leader and see if the combat clicks for you.