Well I played Episode II way back when it first came out. Like I usually do, I used cheat codes because I want to know the story and the last thing I want is to have my story progression halted by something as pointless as a hard boss.

Anyway, I paid no attention to gameplay and just gawked at the story. Having played and completed Episode I several times, I...expected something different than EPII. I expected Episode I + new story info. Same graphics, same voices and whatnot but with new plot details.

As we all know, that did not happen. The look, the sound, the overall feel of Episode II is very much different from its predacessor. At first I could o tlook passed these changesand I ended up a jibbering mass of hate because this was so ot what I wanted or expected.

However I picked up EPII some months back and started to play through it with a less judgmental eye and of course without cheats. I got bored and stopped at the Submerged City but I picked it up again when my comp was in for repairs and lucky, I beat the game just as I get my comp back!

So, here I am and here are my main observations....

-The changed voices are almost all terrible. There’s no excusing the lackluster performance sof such key characters as Shion and even Wilhelm.
(“I’m thrilled.” ...really? From the sound of your voice you’re on several downers and couldn’t work up an ounce of emotion.) I had to literlaly turn off the TV at certain prolonged scenes like Shion screaming at the Patriarch. I mean come on! That guy got the voice of RAZIEL! And they stick him with
Shion: I refuse to accept this!
Patriarch: You refuse? Well I’ll just have to make you accept it!

What moron thought of that reply? Could it be any more uninspired?

Oh so I seem to have lost my train of thought...so overall voices and dialog sucked. However there were some exceptions. Shion didn’t sound so bad in shorter scenes. I like her battle quotes for instance. But this game owes a lot to the fact they got Jr.’s, Ziggy’s, Margulis’ and Albedo’s original Vas back. If any one of them hadn’t been there....there’d be seriosu consequences.

Moving on, the soundtrack...What to say....um...it was synth-y. Every arena had a synthy beat that was easy on the ears though not particularly noticeable. I did kinda like Labryinthos’ theme though. The sound sI remember liking the best were the one that played during Jin and Margulis’ first fight (the actual sword dueling part), the one tha tplayed during the final Albedo fight and definitely the one that played right after Ziggy attacked Voyager.

Graphics-wise, I still prefer the anime style of EPI over this. However for the way the game looked, I came to appreciate Shion’s new design and attire. Her EPII outfit looks a lot better than her Vector one in this incarnation anyway. I know it’s not really relevant but I am glad they gave Jin a makeover for EP3. His EP2 self looked like a cardboard cutout of any other samurai-themed Japanese fiction.

Finally, the battle system...I liked it. Once I got used to it, I really enjoyed myself. On this playthrough I did a lot better than before and beat a lot of bosses in at least 2 tries while previously it was Hell. I still will not forgive their absurd “you can not buy items” policy though. I can think of several times I would have really liked to have been able to buy a Revive or Med Kit.

That’s abou tit...Overall, I liked EPII more this time than I did last time befcause I guess I settled. I know it isn’t like EP1 and didn’t expect it to be and thus I could stomach more of it.
I plan to play through it again sometime.

Oh and can I just say I HATED the second Margulis fight? His Pure Shadow was a pain enough but once I figured out the whole linking Boost attacks to Down or Air him, I got him down to low HP and that’s when the horror began. The Arcadan Seal or whatever. I could NEVER finish that bastard off before he used it and we all lost. I spent 2-and-a-half hours starting over and over to try and get him. I thought there might be some way around it but if there is one, I didn’t know about it. Finally, thank the Lord, he got rid of his Pure Shadow earlier than usual...maybe it’s because he used that healing Ether he had never used before. So we kept hitting and hitting and finally we managed to end the battle -just- before the final move for the Seal.

LOL, that's just sad. =p I never use cheat codes on an RPG. I do use GameFAQs, though, to make sure I don't miss certain secrets I want to get.

Personally, I did enjoy Xenosaga 2, even though it's far from one of my favorite games on the console. To me, one of the game's highlights was the various G.S. Campaigns. I thought they were fun, had a lot of good character interaction, and were a much needed diversion from the main quest. Still, I admit that most of the main gameplay was flawed to death. I honestly dont know how I put up with the battle system all the way through, but somehow I did.

The game's story definitely had its moments, particularly on the first disc. Still, I felt like a lot more should've been done with it. For example, the Gnosis should've played a role in the episode. I don't know why they were nowhere to be found in the storyline, since they were practically the main threat in the overall Xenosaga storyline. Most of the characters were as interesting as they ever were, and I loved the Jin/Margulis rivalry.

I don't know if or when I'll replay the Xenosaga games again. Got so many other games I want to get/play, and at least a few other RPGs I own that I'd definitely replay first.

The game had its moments, though really not all that many. I only was interested in the rivalry between Jin and Margulis, and the ending scenes when you finally confront the Patriarch. The scenes between Jr. and Albedo, and the ones with Ziggy were good. But just about everything else in between just seemed very bleh. The majority of the story were flashbacks it seemed. The story of Episode II really isn't all that long. The pacing was pretty bad too since your first 'dungeon' more or less is inside MOMO's Subconscious. But essentially you go through there twice and its just memories of Jr. and Sakura, where you learn sort of what made Albedo bad. It takes you back to real time after that but then...there are scenes of the bad guys where instead of U-TIC its now Ormus, then there's Orgulla and then the end basically.

To me it seemed like Episode II was a filler for what Episode II was...supposed to be. Everything about it was quite lackluster. You'd be better off finding the FMV's, watching them on your computer, skip the game and just go straight to Episode III. I'm all for character development, which was decent and pretty good I felt, but it seemed Episode II and III used flashbacks and memories a little too much. A lot of it focusing on Jr. and Shion when they were small...though that's a little ironic with Jr. I would have felt much better if they skipped or shortened the stuff on Jr.'s flashbacks and foused on Ziggy. I feel his would have been very interesting and very emotionally packed. Much better than him just shortening his life story into three or five minutes of talking in Episode III. But that's just me.

I'm an abnormality in the way that I played Episode II first and I loved it, I was totally addicted. It is a game you can only play once because once you know how to play the system then the battle system becomes very boring. That being said I still haven't finished Episode I... I can honestly say I don't know what you all see in it, the story carries it mostly.

Yes Episode II had some major minus points
- Voice acting: nothing too special but at the same time I don't recall any scenes that were really spoilt by the voice acting.
- Music: Ugh! Elevator music the whole way through the game. Not a huge point because I just listened to my own music outside of cutscenes but still...
- Graphics: I'm glad they did something with the graphics from the first game but they went far too overboard. Xenosaga III got it perfect. Some really interesting environments (Sakura's memory was beautiful in both seasons) but mostly just boring spaceship interior.
- There was also the problem that the game threw a bunch of characters at you which needed to be given skills and such without you knowing what the character was like. I guess you could tell from their Episode 1 stats and roles but for me it was impossible.
- Ethers became virtually pointless as well as a lot of skills.
- Character's were made useless simply because they had an element attached to their attack constantly. Shion, chaos and Ziggy were annoyingly useless against certain bosses. The element sword skills were invaluable.

Now onto the Plus side

+ Extras: Seriously, there are few games that have this many extras. You could probably double your time trying to finish off the extras. Aside from the Matthew's debt campaign, the majority of the extras were interesting and not tedious (Such as FFX's capture every monster 5 times <.< a cheap way to prolong the life of a game IMO). The extra dungeons weren't half-assed designed (The floating castle one looked amazing, but that's as far as I got. I guess the desert one wasn't that special).
+ Boss Fights: The battle system really made boss fights intense. Although repetitive boosting and stocking dulled down all the normal fights, it became a challenge to stay on top of things with bosses. It was all about balance of offence and defence which I enjoyed. This to me is a HUGE plus.
+ Points simplified: Xenosaga Episode 1 was customisable... TOO customisable. There were so many things to use points on but they hardly gave you any. And then they gave to you 3 different types of points just to confuse matters more.
+ Battle animations sped up: The thing I hate the most about episode 1 are the long and pointless battle animations. It actually makes me want to stop playing it. Battles took so damn long to finish because everything moved so slowly. Episode II made battles run much smoother. I think they took it too far by getting rid of any special attacks aside from doubles but overall it's still a plus.

There are LOADS more positives and negatives to list, but I think I've got across the point that this game isn't terrible and unplayable. It's flawed to hell but so is Episode 1. Honestly they didn't get either episode right until Xenosaga DS... which is a much MUCH better game then either.

Seriously... play Xenosaga DS... NOW!

I think the pace of a game's story can suffer from going through the gameplay too quickly. It's strange to hear "You can trust me." and "Muahahaha I fooled you. I'm evil!" in the span of 5 minutes when you're supposed to take an hour to get there, and let everything sink in.

But in XS 2's case I got to a point in Disc 2 where I felt like I was literally wasting my time with the battle system, and got stressed about other things I should be doing, etc. And that's not really the feeling you're looking for when you're playing a game. Not only did regular battles take forever to finish, but you never once learn any new attacks, with very rare exceptions like Kos-Mos X-Buster, which was useless btw. I used a "start with full stock" code, but even that wasn't enough so I used a 1 shot KO code as well. I liked fighting most of the bosses though. But at that point in the game I just couldn't stand treating generic enemy #419 as a boss that required multiple stocking and boosting to defeat. I just wanted to finish the story and move on to Episode 3.


What was so confusing about it?

Power.
Recovery. (How fast it becomes your turn again after using it.
Speed. (Low speed = 6 AP, High speed = 4 AP.)



And you only needed one increase in Speed, and two increases in Recovery to max them out. Leaving every other point to be spent on power. You didn't get enough point to get every skill to power level 50+, but since you learn new skills all throughout the game you got a pretty good idea of how much you should spend on each skill.


Well I thought the regular attacks in XS1 seemed similar to regular attacks in XS 2. But the tech attacks were made faster in XS 2. But they also didn't seem like tech attacks anymore because of how simple they looked, and how weak they were. But the fact that the game required you to boost, break and combo constantly kind of makes the speed up animations of the techs a moot point anyway, since battles took a lot longer to finish, and you had to watch the boost and break animations over and over. So whatever speed was gained in battle animations was lost in repeated boost, stock, break and comboing sequences.

I agree with this. The battle system makes defeating regular enemies way too tedious, but when it comes to bosses it suddenly becomes more fun imo. Why? Just because the battle takes a while and can be challenging, and that's how a boss battle should be. Maybe XSII would have been more fun if regular enemies did not have break zones, but only the bosses. To be honest, I would rate the boss battles like this:

XSII boss battles > XSIII boss battles > XSI boss battles

Yes, XSII on top! =o But when it comes to regular battles:

XSIII regular battles > XSI regular battles > XSII regular battles

But I agree with Flame that the battle animations in XSI take too long. Even just a normal attack with Shion makes her aim her weapon in slow motion. Ugh. The only plus is that I get to stare at chaos in his swimsuit longer when he slowly performs an attack. However, I also agree with Atty that in the end XSII battles are even more repetitive just because they take so long to finish and all you're really doing is perform the same attack pattern over and over again. So I still rank XSI higher in that department.

EPII is like EPIII my first playthrough.
In my first playthrough I never made sure to do Special Attack for the finish to get the bonus stuff and so i was a lot weaker than I was on my second run when i remembered to do that.
This time through on EP2 I'm remembering to end on the Skill slot and things are definitely even easier.

The Albedo fight still took like 5 of my Revive's. He just kept doing that "RRAAAAAGGHHH!!" attack that hits all the characters when he's got low health and the camera angle on the fight changes.

I still also don't get what the little popup messages mean. Something about Sakura's consciousness and another message about being stained with "red blood" (words in yellow).

Haha that's simple? But I wasn't just talking about those points, I also meant all the points you needed to transfer skills, upgrade skills, upgrade stats (which used the same points as to upgrade skills) and then three different sets for every skill. For me it was too much, I know some people are into that customisble stuff but for this game it just seemed like a way to extend the gameplay by forcing you to farm points.

The battle animations in XSI are so slow it makes me want to stop playing the game (which is a slow paced game generally anyway) but I'll agree the Animations in XSII were uninspired and never seemed that powerful. That, my friends, is why Xenosaga DS is the ultimate Xenosaga Game... it uses the same battle animations as a lot of the skills in Episode 1 (so it's all very fancy) but they take seconds to perform without losing any of the effect of them. There is no reason to see chaos jump towards a huge snowball slowly 7 times at different camera angles. Maybe it was more impressive when Episode 1's graphic were considered decent.


I must admit, I half-cheated in Episode II, because I did spend a lot of time farming the skill point items by going into an optional battle, stealing the Skill point items and running away only to turn around and get back into the fight and repeat. There are some skills later on that make the story part of the game ridiculously easy (The Evasion skill made me next to invincible towards the last few bosses).

Power
Recovery time
AP needed

Well yeah, I'd hardly call three categories complicated. Especially since one of them gets maxed out from just one upgrade. And the other from just two upgrades.


By upgrade skills, you mean the skill tree where you learn new ones? Pretty straight forward. If you find that confusing, what would you call FFX grid system which had hundreds of more branching off in different paths, and besides points you also needed specific nodes to activate?
Not sure what you mean by "also three different sets for every skill"? Isn't that the same thing as the Power, Recovery time and AP needed upgrades?


Well I doubt that's the case, because once you get past a certain level, you are no longer able to upgrade your characters stats. Around level 50 is when I could no longer upgrade certain stats with Kos-mos. So it evens out when you just play on normally.

Ether points to learn a new Ether skill, or transfer it to a new character.
Other skill points to upgrade your attacks, or to boost a stat.
I really don't see what's confusing about that. Especially since you always have access to the tutorial. But if it is to you, then I guess it is to you.


Well even though most of the useful attacks had longer animations, some effective ones were short like R Cannon. But one important difference is that many of the useful skills in XS1 were multi target attacks. Which means that they can become time efficient. The time it would take you attacking each enemy one at a time compared to watching Chaos jump into the air and rain down his light attack on all enemies was more often than not faster. In XS2, all your attacks are single target attacks. So you have no choice here. (Besides the dual tech attacks, which were not strong enough to be worth the wasted stock and boost, not to mention their length was longer than the XS1 tech attacks. And you had to break the enemy first to do any real damage.) So while the length of some of the skills increased the lengths of the battles, their multi hitting properties and efficiency made battle go faster as well.

Xenosaga 3 handled this the best, with pretty much all tech attacks being quick, and they still had their multi targeting properties.

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "confusing" and replaced it with the words "Tedious" and "Cluttered". I wasn't completely baffled by the concept of the points and how to use them. I do, however, fail to see why they couldn't simplify it all. As you said yourself...

Which begs the question; what is the point of them? I think what doesn't help is that this is already a game where grinding seems nessecary and then they place this over elaborate skill points system onto it. Not only that but the battles offered little points but all the skills, stats, magic ect. ect. demanded a large amount. Honestly, it made an already tedious and empty game feel even more tiresome.


I don't care about time efficiency, I'm not doing a speed run I just want to play through a battle without getting so bored. The long, slow battle animations are unnecessary and it made going through the dungeons and random battles almost unbearable (even with multi-targeting). I know it's not any better in XSII but that really isn't an excuse in the first place.

I could go on, but I think the words In bold probably describe my thoughts on the gameplay enough... that being said nearly all of these problems were rectified in the DS remake. Even with the stop down to 2D graphics it is still a superior game in my mind. I don't hate XS1, but it's still my least favourite of the series.

Well if that is your opinion on the game then no wonder you're nitpicking on those details.


Well that multi targeting attacks, mainly effective ones, have longer animations is usually the case. It goes without saying that Omnislash should take longer than Braver. But isn't it more boring for you to watch several single target attacks than one multi target attack if it's faster than the single target attacks? I always use Kos-Mos X-Buster in Xenosaga 3, because it's effective and hits multi enemies, rather than single attacks, even if their animation is faster. In the end, attacking each enemy single handedly takes longer than watching X-Busters animation.

Nitpicking on details? I'm saying how bad the gameplay is; battle system, environments and menu management and you say that's nitpicking on details? Take away the story and replace with more generic characters and you wouldn't have an episode II.


I fail to see the relevance in ANY of this. I don't care what has longer animations or what is quicker or what is multi-target... I'm saying that it makes the battle system very very slow. Yes, Omnislash has a long animation but you don't have to use it every round or even in every battle. Battles in XS1 lasted far too long and not because it involved a lot of strategy or enemies had high HP or anything interesting like that... they last ages because of the slow battle animation. In an RPG where you have a skill points system and level grinding feels nessecary, a slow battle system is the last straw. The battle system can work, Xenosaga DS proved this when it simplified the points system, and sped everything up and basically just revamped the whole thing.