Xenoblade 1 is over a decade old and launched on the Wii. While it is an important game, and was mind-blowing at launch, the sequels surpassed it imo.

Skip 2 and go straight to 3. The gameplay is a combination of both titles and the battle system is FUN. By the end, you're changing classes, 7 team members at once in battle - switching between them at will, 12 arts available to each member at once, chain attacks and transformations into massive mech-like beings called Ouroboros where you can really fuck shit up. If you install the rebalance mod it's even better, battles are fast and if you don't keep up you can get fucked over quite bad. Or you can just go YOLO and just punch things with the fighter class loaded up with attack gems.

The story is very strong (endless war between two nations where the lifespan is only ten years (born at 10, die at 20), and your life is replenished by taking others) with some incredible voice acting from the UK cast, the world feels alive - full of warring factions and roaming armies, and the quests all actually mean something now (help any colony and you gain their leader as a computer played party member, as well as their class and weapon that you can assign to other team members and level up through use). The game runs a dream on a good Yuzu setup in 4k 60fps too.

The great thing about Xenoblade is that you can arguably play the main games in any order and still enjoy the full story. XB2 is super horny, has a fucking terrible menu system and has a lot of it's own issues, despite it still being a very very good game. But there's a reason Xenoblade 3 was nominated for Game of the Year at the game awards, you know.