You're not wrong, and I don't disagree with you at all. But if you take what you wrote and sub "FFXV" with "Xenoblade Chronicles" your post would still make sense (well, except for the story part). Yet how come I hate the former and consider the latter one of the best JRPG's of all time?
So something else is off here that I just can't put my finger on yet. I've been refraining from making a mega post about the topic until I figure it out.
If you're talking about the first Xenoblade, it has a really good jrpg story with tons of plot + great characters both protag & antag along a very linear area by area progression just with big maps and tons of quests (many useless sure). It's basically FFXII.
Now Xenoblade X....has almost no story with an open world and forgettable nothing characters plus the lots of useless quests and generally feels like a gameplay/engine test for part 2 which Takahashi has kinda admitted it was..
I don't think it does,
Then again, back when KH2 released people made fun of me for liking the story and ignoring all the "plot holes" in the game.
So maybe I just have bad taste. But even with my bad taste, I still despised XIII's narrative. Both in terms of how they presented the story and with the core of the story itself.
KH2 has a bad story but it's presented and told just fine. It's just a lame story and lame ending for the series at the time. BBS was way better.