Xenoblade 1 will probably always be tied with Dragon Quest V as my favorite game of all time but even i have to admit Sharla and Melia, two fantastic characters whom i love a ton, got sidelined HORRIBLY. Both of them also base their entire arcs around men.

Sharla's i can actually accept a bit, Gadolt meant a lot to her being her fiance and all and she's fighting out of revenge to ensure it doesn't happen to anybody else ever again but until you get to Mechonis she just doesn't do anything and then her Arc "ends" immediately

it's a fine resolution, it's okay i guess, but the distance between the time getting her and the time it takes for anything to actually happen is so long and it resolves itself within the same chapter its brought up. Melia's arc just...exists? it never really gets resolved

her arc isn't about leading the High Entia towards a prosperous future it's about her liking Shulk which is sad because she is a great character. Thankfully Future Connected fixed this but it took a decade for one of the biggest blemishes to be ironed out.

Metal Face. that shit just Ends abruptly which i guess fits because "the future comes at you fast" and a reap what you sow sorta deal but idk i still really like it but that arc just kinda fell off a 90 degree incline and that was that.

the plot is also way to reliant on Shulk which isn't too bad of a thing since Shulk is fantastic but he's very much the only reason the plot moves forward at all to begin with and there's not much anybody could reasonably do without him.

I really like Rex being just the complete opposite of Shulk in every way too, most of my dislike comes from his voice performance and design so i don't really dislike him as a character.

Clearly the focus of Xenoblade 1 is about The Bionis and Mechonis. It's heavy on the world.

The sidequests lead into finding out what NPCs think of each other, or finding out traditions in certain areas and all go in service in making Bionis and Mechonis just these fantastically fleshed out worlds. The characters take a back seat.

The World is a character. The World takes center stage and i really love it. Nowadays i really appreciate Xenoblade 2 being just the opposite of everything it tries to do and gives more moments to the individual characters even if it means shit like Chapter 7's Backstory Cave

anyways tl;dr Xenoblade Chronicles is a 10/10 i fucking adore that game but it certainly ain't perfect in terms of the character department. It's still great mind you but the plot and the world are main focuses more than anything else.