i've only played xillia for a few hours, i've quit at around the 3 hour marks unimpressed, the characters were boring, the dungeon were blands (tons and tons of walking into forests!) the battle system is the usual tales (this one gimmick is that you pair character with each other and each different pair is stronger against certain kind of enemies) the level progression is similiar to the sphere grid system (except in this one all of the grid are shaped like spider webs) and there is another system where you can improve shop selection by giving them bits & stuff that the enemy drop
ayesha, i fucking loved it, the colorfull graphic, the amazing music... however i'm not sure i would recomend it to someone looking for exploration and battles, there isn't much exploration since you pick your location from a menu map, and once you pick where you want to go, the zone are usualy pretty small and just contain a bunch of enemies and items to pick, thanks to all the item crafting you have tons of option in combat but it takes forever before you meet anything worthwhile to fight, i think you encounter the first boss of the game after playing through 80% of the game, i'm not even kidding
so what do i like of ayesha beside that it looks and sounds good? i think the game does a really good jobs at settings the mood, the tone is post apocalytic so as you travel around the world map you find poster detailing location you visit in a "ye-olde" style, everything has this run-down style,there is a city with an air port that stands on top of a giant canyon, after a lot of talking it turns out the canyon was actualy a lake once and the apocalypse is what it turned it into a canyon,i tought that was a really cool detail
there is a shitload of characters and they talk,talk,talk, it's not uncommon to once in a while trigger 3 cutscene all at once! there were a few times were i was like "WHEN YOU ARE GOING TO GIVE ME BACK CONTROL???" and well i guess you could argue that some of them are the usual trite anime trope (one of the character is a warrior girl that only knows how to fight so a lot of cutscene involving her are about how she doesn't know how to handle normal situation like a common human being, think full metal panic) but honestly i enjoyed them
oh wait... what's that? jrpg are for perverts? GUYS THERE IS A SCENE IN AYESHA WHERE AYESHA BFF TOUCH HER BOOBS, TURN BACK WE FUCKED UP, TURN BACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK