I had the same issue with Xenoblade 1. I liked the game and the characters a lot, but there were a few points especially late in the game where I had to grind with enemies that were barely worth grinding. Really slowed the game down. The first time I remember that happening was the claw guy out in the snow field. Could not beat him, took a while to power up so I could. Unfortunately that ended up being the norm as I progressed, always felt under-leveled, and having to stop and grind for a couple hours happened a few more times.
I have Xenoblade X and Xenoblade 2 and both were on my shortlist of things to play in 2021, but I'm having issues getting into both. I've got 2 hours clocked on XCX and 14 hours clocked on XC2, so XC2 has clicked with me more. I wanted to play a modern Xenogears, really, more than I wanted to play another Xenoblade. XCX looked more like Xenogears for obvious reasons (the Gears) but I heard you don't get those until like 25 hours in. XC2 on the other hand actually feels more like Xenogears despite the lack of mechs. It's got Yasunori Mitsuda music which goes a LONG way and kind of similar areas/characters to XG.
I'll take any encouragement to get into either of these, especially XC2 since that's the one I'm furthest with and I'd love to get motivated to do the rest. Instead I'm over here replaying Souls games so it isn't like I'm lacking free time. It's more like every time I turn on one of the Xenos, I just sorta turn it off after a couple minutes despite liking everything I see.
XCX's main issue is that nothing in the world has grabbed me yet, XC2's main issue is that it's overcomplicated and has a zillion things to remember for the battle system and throws constant tutorials at me that I don't remember by the time I play it again weeks later. Me of the past would have gotten super into it and learned all of these "overcomplicated" aspects, no problem. Me of now just wants to be left alone.