It's easy to see why XB would get more praise since it's such a beautiful game and offers a lot of traditional RPG gameplay with modern ease of use but did TLS really get negative word of mouth? As in being called a bad game?electroplankton said:I have the feeling that Xenoblade is viewed as a good game, and created a lot of attention around it, because of its quality and its presentation, while The Last Story has not be praised by the public at all, therefore it got negative word-of-mouth and a sequel will not sell well. On the contrary, a hypotetical Xenoblade 2 will be big.
Looking at Amazon reviews XB got more entries (323) and ranks higher as well, almost having full five stars whereas TLS has "only" 190 reviewers and borders on full four stars. For the preorder bonus packages XB has only 36 reviewers but scores a perfect five stars. TLS on the other hand has 97 reviewers and full four stars. The XB preorder was more expensive though.
On the Nintendo channel XB is the only game to have a platinum ranking right now whereas TLS is only a bronze game (as opposed to gold and silver ranking games like Tales of Graces and Arc Rise Fantasia).*
TLS price collapsed whereas XB retains its high price (reminds me of VFIV versus Tekken IV back then). So basically you're right, more people bought TLS but more people liked XB. But to me it seems that TLS still got a positive reaction it just didn't have the mass appeal of XB.
It's to be expected too, since TLS leans both towards the action and the simulation RPG side which just don't have the same following as traditional RPGs.
*Edit: To put those rankings into perspective: About 26600 people played TLS for approximately 39 hours and on 12.59 days. About 38000 poeple played XB for approximately 77 hours and on 24.4 days. Going by those times most people cleared the respective game. Not all of them necessarily ranked the game though and some rankers might not have published their play time data.