Personally I found the start of Xenoblade 1 far worse than Xenoblade 2's. In fact even 20 hours in I'm still not motivated or invested enough in the characters or story to go back and finish it. Xenoblade 2 on the other hand pumps up since you meet Pyra.
Also I never understood the complains about the character designs being bad, the only things that bother me are Rex's face, which is a little generic (although his costume is great, no wonder they put it into Zelda) and Pyra's shorts, but overall the designs are great. Mòrag and Zeke are awesome, for example.
For me XCX was my first Xenoblade game, and to this day is still my favorite. X had me hooked from the start, and kept me wanting more the entire time. Plus, the character have a ton of depth to them, if you get all the affinity missions and heart to hearts.
Also, the world of X is so interesting and mysterious, and I love to just fly around it sometimes. Plus, the planet, especially Oblivia, is filled to the brim with lore and intrigue, I love it all so much!
while for most of 2, I had to drag myself through most of the story. There were times when there was some cool action scenes, but I never really got invested into the world of 2 until the final few chapters. Pretty much all the characters in 2 feel one dimensional, and while I like the characters, they mostly just feel generic and bland to me.
Like I said, it gets really cool in the final chapters, but other than that, I just didn't really care about what happens to the world, or it's people.
I haven't played 1, but I've watched a part of a let's play of it, and while I know a let's play can't give you the same effect as playing it yourself, I feel like it's already started off stronger than 2. I'm actually invested in 1's world, and I like the characters so far.
That being said, as a whole, Xenoblade is my favorite JRPG franchise, and while I don't like 2 quite as much as the others, it's still a dang good game! I'm just more of a fan of the style that XCX has, with the wide open world, and less story focus, and more exploration based gameplay. It's why I love BotW so much as well (And I don't think it's a coincidence that BotW was developed in part by the XCX team. Those guys know how to craft beautiful worlds)