Most RPGs take a bit for them to get started. Gotta get past the hand holding and unlock all them mechanics.
Also Xenoblade is a great game.
Eternal Sonata handles the beginning well by making the game both only require simple mechanics and only allowing simple mechanics to be used. As you go through the game, more options start becoming available to you (Chain attacks to power up supers, then counter attacks, then chaining supers and supers with special effects, etc.), while at the same time you're ability to rely on simpler techniques and strategies is made more difficult by harder enemies and less time to preform maneuvers in a turn. At the beginning of the game, it's an extremely simplified turn-based RPG with a super straight forward "attack, block, heal" formula, but by the end you have to actively pay constant attention to get counter attack opportunities, build up and save supers, chain timings together while your control configuration is being moved around, and manage an inventory of vitally important items that, if not utilized, can and will make even normal encounters deadly.
And then you have new game plus with the ability to CHOOSE which battle system you want to use at any given time and every enemy is 1.5x stronger in every aspect.