Since before I owned a Nintendo Switch, I have been longing to play this game since I played the first Xeno series which is Xenogears.
Then 3 years later, during the cyber weekend sale, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was on sale along with the expansion, Torna the Golden Country (tho I did not buy the expansion).
So fast forward, the game is so addictive that 200+ play hours is quite legit for completionists.
When I started playing the game, it was streamed frequently and the game time is so long I did not notice I played for more than 3 hours.
If you want to grind more blades, just do the scavenge mini-game then overkill the crab-like creature for a chance to get the core crystal.
Core crystals are used to get additional blades for your units which uses gacha style of acquisition, but no worries, you don’t have in-game purchases for this, just pure grinding.