In a moment of insanity Namco/Ban Dai thought UK/Europe should get Xenosaga Episode II, but not Episodes I or III. To that end, this game came shipped with a 4 hour DVD featuring FMV from Episode I. Subsequently, Episode III was not released here in blighty leaving me unable to play the sequel (and a premature end) to what is one of my favourite games ever. Xenosaga is JRPG meets anime in space. Sometimes you'll be fooled into thinking you're watching a film: you will be watching cutscenes for a half hour at a time. Like with most JRPGs the combat is the main draw, Xenosaga's takes while to learn but once mastered you can take enemies apart very quickly. No random encounters - joy! The game is not annoying! Some of the puzzles and "side-quests" *Global Samaritan Campaign* can be a pain at times, but the upshot is there's no random battles constantly annoying the crap out of you whilst you're doing them.
This game has many problems, it starts with the issue that Xenosaga Episode I was just able to tell 20% of the originally planned content for Episode I of this 6 Episode long story. Next had this project new developers in comparison to episode I and Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga the creators of the story sadly weren't involved with the game. This resulted in the new developers not really understanding this complex and ambitious story, with that the game ended up not living to the masterpiece Xenosaga Episode I was, and it didn't really push the main story forward and more focused its story on side characters like Junior and Albedo. Not to speak of, that it doesn't look as nice as Episode I and the battle system not being that good, it is still a very good game. Just not living up to the standard the other Xeno games have. Especially, this game could profit massively from a remake.
A beautiful composition, but restless gamers will have a hard time sitting throught the constant cinemas... Perhaps next time developers will seriously consider integrating the story through an increased amount of real-time gameplay. [March 2005, p.90]
Despite the balance problems, less gripping story, somnolent voice acting, and dichotomous soundtrack, Xenosaga II is still a playable RPG if you don’t expect it to set your world on fire.
This definitely isn’t a title that will impress most of the “jaded gamers” crowd, and while I had fun playing it, I certainly wouldn’t describe my experience as extraordinary.
With the second installment, the Xenosaga series sees some changes... some good, some questionable. The good is that they toned down the overly "cute" anime look, upgraded the graphics, revamped the battle system, streamlined character leveling and most importantly, increased focus on characters and story. It's worth noting that the story is actually really interesting this time around and you'll actually see the cast develop into captivating individuals. Other changes are simply odd... like the choice of new voice actors for a few of the returning characters who really aren't any better than previous ones and the removal of a money/equipment/bartering system. But some things remains the same- the game still feels slow and tedious, puzzles are simplistic yet laborious, the battle system still contains too many variables and the difficulty remains inconsistent. The improvements are welcome but the game still feels lackluster. It's a more enjoyable experience than the first game though, mainly thanks to the accelerated story and character development (but it is a bit short; the main quest only lasts about 20-25 hours long).
While Xenosaga Episode II is an improvement over the previous game it still a relativity underwhelming experience. On the positive side the battle system is now much more engaging with a break gauge that forces you to plan out your attacks which when done right allows for massive combos. The music is also a big improvement from Episode I with a much wider variety of themes (Kajiura work is incredible). However, their are several backwards steps here, the realistic artstyle is awful and the new voice actors are nowhere near as good as the last games ones. Over all a better game than Episode 1 but not by much.
While I did certainly enjoy this game, it was certainly a departure from what I appreciated about the first and third games. First of all, I missed the voice actors that portrayed each of the characters. That is a large part of my score for this game. However, the graphics were still great (for the time). The battle system was an interesting upgrade that I often appreciated, however it was occasionally estoeric. The story is still a huge part of the game and that I believe was still done quite well.
Xenosaga 2 is a light improvement over the original. The combat system is more focused and leads to some genuinely enjoyable boss encounters. The presence of music outside of cutscenes is a serious improvement and something the series never should have gotten wrong. And the story here feels waaaay less blatantly padded out and the game does a much better job at attempting to flesh out the original games flat characters. With all that said it's still not very good, is quite often boring, and with each babystep improvement it's counterbalanced with exacerbated problems . The game still suffers from a terrible encounter design for non boss fights, in fact with the new combat system these general encounters are even worse and feel even more padded out and repetitive. As the scope of the story broadens it becomes even more convoluted and incomprehensible (this series has an obsession with poorly thought out acronyms). And the largest egregious back peddle from the original is the terrible voice work. The original game had stilted/dated vocal delivery but this game is on a whole other level with some of the replaced voice cast and new characters. That all being said I am thankful for the shorter length, still a very mediocre JRPG, but at least one with a more reasonable length.
SummaryFour-thousand years into a war-torn future. Earth has been abandoned and mankind forges its existence in deep space, locked in eternal confrontation with the malevolent, alien Gnosis. With sophisticated weapons and robotics technology, humankind wages an epic battle for survival. In a desperate bid to fend off extinction, the search cont...