Xenosaga II

[Hazzard]

I just watched fifteen minutes of the bonus DVD and was bored to death. Turned it off quickly, I hope the game won't be like that - I'm happy with most of your replies, but is it essential to of played or at least have some knowledge of the first Xenosaga installment?

[Wolf Kanno]

Yes it is imperitive that you have some knowledge of the first (it gets better it just has a slow start I'm afraid.) The second game mostly expands on characters and introduces new factors in the plot. Be grateful you don't have to deal with some of the more tedious gameplay issues.

I love this series (though I still love Xenogears more) but I agree with Lunar Weaver about this being the weak link in the series. It's not bad but lord does it make some bad mistakes...

The character designs vary from scene to scene and their is a general lack of effort on consistency... to be honest that's really the whole games problem really. A lot of great ideas and no follow through. The music varies depending on whether you are watching a cutscene (This music is fantastic though the sound department doesn't like sharing it too well ) or if you are in a dungeon or city (this music goes anywhere from boring and forgettable to OMG! MY EARS ARE BLEEDING!!! ).

I personally hate most of the new VAs for the game. MOMO, Shion and Kos-Mos have horrible VA while chaos is the only one to make it out with a decent VA (His VA changes from the guy who playent Kentaro in Love Hina to the person who plays TK in Digimon) but luckily most of the originals that matter come back. (I love you Crispin Freeman )

The Story being good or bad depends on a few factors... mostly whether you like the U.R.T.V. units or if you want to know more about the "grand mystery" of the series. If you want the latter than you are probably going to find the plot boring. Most die hard Saga fanboys I know hate this games story cause it feels like a side story.

The first disc and the end of the second disc focus purely on Gaignun, Albedo, and Jr. and fan favorites like Kos-Mos and chaos get only bit parts that seem more like an after thought than being relevant to the story (SPOILER)(well chaos does have the prologue and the ending but should that make up for nearly 40 hours of being absent from the plot?).

Personally I love the U.R.T.V. guys and if I had any real complaints it's the fact that most of the "revelations and plot twists" were pretty much explained in Eps. 1. (SPOILER)Only the twist with Sakura and Nigredo were really new. Oh and at least they finally explain Unit 668...

Shion is still a bitch, Allen is still fawning over her cause he's obviously desperate... Jin and Canaan are welcome members to the cast but (SPOILER)once again their roles seem like an after thought once the prologue ends... MOMO is annoying with her new VA (I want Sasami back ) Ziggy still proves to be awesome. The Elsa crew are still comical, Margulis and Pelligri are still villanous and you get to meet the Space Pope (SPOILER)(He's not a lizard)

The major thing that makes the story suffer is the absence of the Xenopedia that gives you the insight on characters and story related elements. Regretfully the game drops a lot of terminology and introduces a ton of characters but has little to no in-game explanation...

The game play is where things are really overhauled. The game has done away with RPG staples like equipment and shops. Now you must procur items from treasue chest in dungeons, battles, or the side quests. This also means that items like Med Kits and Revive must be used as last resorts as there are no way to get them easily.

Luckily other gameplay mechanics make this a non-issue. Mostly due to your party no longer having specialized abilites (well except for Shion's Erde Kaiser Summon...) and instead your party gains ability from a communial ability pool. Of course your parties different stats do affect things.

Your party no longer uses Tech Attacks, instead they utilize a "tag team system". First one of your party members need to hit an enemy with the correct combo to "break their guard" once this happens you can utilize Boost to have other party members create long combo chains to attack the enemy while they are in a weakend state. Their are also two special types of Breaks that only a few members have. They are called Air and Ground. Air knocks and opponent in the air and allows even more damage to specific targets while ground smashes opponents to the ground... enough said. Just be warned that Ziggy and chaos have no way of participating in Air combos while Kos-Mos and Jin seem to suffer from doing damage in Ground combos.

Now here's where the battle system becomes a problem... there is no balance. The battle system is fun and exciting for boss battles but when you have to pull off deeply complex combos to take out guard #43 in the long dungeons, the battle system gets a little old...

Mecha comabt is also different (it exists!) but rather straight forward...

It is a really good game regardless of it's short comings but I was one of those guys who wondered why the combat of Eps. 1 needed to be changed, the game was fine the way it was. Luckily Eps.3 fixes alot of things...

Definetly play it and hopefully we can discuss more about the plot and characters

As a Xenosaga fanatic, my extremely biased opinion says it's awesome. Episode II was the weak link, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it a lot. I actually liked its battle system better than the first, but I seem to be on a lone branch with that one. I wish there was more plot in it though. Soraya Saga, who was pretty much the main writer before they more-or-less fired her, even listed all the things they cut out before Namco made her take it off her website (it was a hella lot).

My big hint for Episode II: Use MOMO or Shion, one or the other (MOMO is the better choice gameplay-wise). People think they suck, but they are the only ones capable of truly hurting some enemies.

I remember that letter... luckily most of what was supposed to be done winded up in Eps. 3 except for a few things... I still can't believe they fired her though.

Also I am happy to see someone else noticed that MOMO is freaking over powered! Lord she's really good in the first game once you put some work into her but damn if she isn't like the most powerful and useful character in Eps. II and III...

[Hazzard]

I will choose this MOMO...

[Markus. D]

MOMO is unexpectedly Broken in the game X__x

[Karellen]

Xenosaga II is a compilations of elements that are either pretty good or irredeemably bad. The gameplay will probably be down to taste. I liked the stratagy in the battles but the load times are ass and it annoyed me that physical attacks are pretty much the only effective form of offense. The game is also far shorter then the other two unless you do all the sidequests, none of which are particularly entertaining. The cutscene music is pretty good, but the dungeon music will make your ears bleed. I don't really have a problem with the lack of unique ether abilities and equipment others have. Character's maintain their individuality in their attack styles and elemental alignment. The game itself is about as linear as episode I and the cutscenes are about as long (although there are less of them, due to the decreased length), so if you didn't have an issue with them in I I can't see that bothering you.

The real problem with the game is the plot. If you weren't really a fan of the URTVs, the forget about this game because that's all you're going to get. Almost all the other plot elements that were intended for the game have been cut and pasted into Episode III or left unexplained, leading to a few notably plot holes. The elements that do make it into III aren't particularly well explained and you're probably going to be left searching through databases in III or online for information.

But yeah, if you don't really mind the negatives listed above you'll probably be able to sit through it for the 20-odd hours it takes to finish the main quest. It's not a great game by any means and I generally agree with most reviews that tend to give it an average in the low 70s but it's not as god-awful as a lot of the Xeno fanbase makes it out to be.

Still waiting for Xenosaga III to come out here. =\

Never going to happen. III sold pretty poorly in the US and II sold horribly in PAL territories. It simply wouldn't be worth Namco's while to release the game in Europe/Australasia.

[Hazzard]

Well, I played an hour of it, the beginning was a enormously long cutscene. The battling system kinda confuses me, but I have a moderate understanding of it - don't know how to hit A-zone hits though, only can manage two B-zone attacks. If the game only lasts for 20 hours then I'm already feeling disappointed, I like ones that can span from 40-60 hours.
Overall, so far, I think it's decent, just need to play it a bit more, progress until I get all the characters, and then my judgment will probably be more fairly put across.

[computer-geekz]

I thought the biggest problem with Xenosaga II was that it seemed very rushed. The excellent music and combat system from Part I were thrown out the window, in exchange for a mishmash of neo-Megaman music and a cumbersome sort-of-strategic battle system. Also, the voice acting changed around far too much for my tastes; KOS-MOS went from female android to valley girl (I exaggerate just a little), and chaos went from a calm, kind "young" man to a moody-sounding, monotone teenager. That being said, I think chaos's new voice was more appropriate to the overall character, but the sudden change was just too much of a distraction through the early parts of II's storytelling.

The story was fantastic, continuing on from the first and creating more questions than answers. The big problem I saw story-wise, though, was that Part II's story came to a close too quickly. My understanding was that they were trying to get the game out as quickly as possible, so they pushed off some story elements to Part III that should have been in II.

Had they taken their time with this game and gotten it right, I'd bet there would indeed have been Xenosaga Parts IV and V, as originally promised. II put off too many of the fans, I think, which is what probably most helped kill the series prematurely.

Anyway, to answer your original question, if you liked the story of Part I, you will like Part II. I can't guarantee you'll like the gameplay, but if you ever plan to play Part III (which I HIGHLY recommend), you should definitely play through II.

[Wolf Kanno]

I thought the biggest problem with Xenosaga II was that it seemed very rushed. The excellent music and combat system from Part I were thrown out the window, in exchange for a mishmash of neo-Megaman music and a cumbersome sort-of-strategic battle system. Also, the voice acting changed around far too much for my tastes; KOS-MOS went from female android to valley girl (I exaggerate just a little), and chaos went from a calm, kind "young" man to a moody-sounding, monotone teenager. That being said, I think chaos's new voice was more appropriate to the overall character, but the sudden change was just too much of a distraction through the early parts of II's storytelling.

The story was fantastic, continuing on from the first and creating more questions than answers. The big problem I saw story-wise, though, was that Part II's story came to a close too quickly. My understanding was that they were trying to get the game out as quickly as possible, so they pushed off some story elements to Part III that should have been in II.

Had they taken their time with this game and gotten it right, I'd bet there would indeed have been Xenosaga Parts IV and V, as originally promised. II put off too many of the fans, I think, which is what probably most helped kill the series prematurely.

Anyway, to answer your original question, if you liked the story of Part I, you will like Part II. I can't guarantee you'll like the gameplay, but if you ever plan to play Part III (which I HIGHLY recommend), you should definitely play through II.

To be honest, the whole series has been rushed. Xenosaga is a perfect example of a series destroyed by the publisher and developers having different ideas of where to take the project. If you ever watched the original trailer for Eps.1 (the infamous 8min. 8sec. trailer) you'll see that Eps. 1 and 2 were supposed to be one game.

The trailer featured scenes from Eps. 2 in it utilizing the the graphics of Eps.1. Both the scenes where chaos and Jin talk outside on the Uzuki estate and the battle between Jin and Margulis in Labyrinthos (and for us Xenogears fans, the symbol of Kadamony is seen in the background of the room )

Unfortunately, Namco got impatient and had the game released prematurely so most of what became Eps. 2 was cut. It would be like releasing only the first disc of FFVII...

With Eps 2 we got a new problem. Namco took over and decided to listen to all the feedback for the game... Causal gamers were put off by Eps.1 numerous cutscenes, they hated certain voices, and many didn't like the heavy anime influence to the character designs. Basically the game was streamlined to appease everyone and in the end made everyone angry and ultimately killed the project. Throw in the fact that Namco had most of the staff of Eps 1 fired mid way through the project and brought in a new and inexperienced team. The game was a disaster waiting to happen.

By Eps. 3, they company decided to listen to feedback from the die hard fans of the franchise and not so much of the casual consumer. I also feel the team was so embarrassed about Eps.2 that they decided to go all out to make Eps 3 as good as possible.

The original idea of Xenosaga was that it was going to span throughout time and be a serial. Shion's story was supposed to be Eps.1 not Eps. 1-3. Most Xenogears fans feel that Saga was supposed to follow a timeline similiar to the one put forth in Perfect Works. Perhaps Namco didn't understand or Monolith Soft decided to curb their ambition a little. I guess we'll never know...

[Karellen]

NAMCO apparently had little to do with what happened to the project. After Soraya Saga was removed she left her final thoughts on the site listing, among other things, a notice that the 'parent company' was not involved in the change-over and that the decision was made by Monolith Soft itself. source

That site also lists all the things that were cut from Episode II for those interested, but also lists spoilers for that which wasn't so read with care.

[Markus. D]

I actually enjoyed the piece of music from Sakura's Summer Domain place thing :]

That was probably the only dungeon/in-gameplay music I liked out of it though.

[Hazzard]

Man, you people are kinda putting me off, making me know that the game was rushed, confusing, and the weakest link out of them all...I'm worried and curious what this game will do for me, the twenty hour long thing still bothers me and if I read right - this will be compared to one VII disc? That's...horrid.

[Markus. D]

xD... It's not for everyone.

I <3ed it though.

[Hazzard]

Not to mention that I just got my prized FFX game back from the stores, haven't fully completed VIII or my Yiazmat hunt on XII, and I also have got IX coming in a few days, consequently meaning that my play on Xenosaga will be probably limited to like 25 minutes every other day or something like that.

[Karellen]

One FFVII disk is kind of an exaggeration. Despite having a lot of plot cut from it, the section of the story that the game does cover resolves itself by its conclusion.

[Rostum]

I actually enjoyed watching Xenosaga I's movie, but that may have been just because I had the flu and could only lay around.

And don't let statements of the game being rushed discourage you. It still is a very decent game, and I had a lot of fun with it. I seriously wish I had of spent my money on a mod chip to import the third, but I guess now I'll just have to wait...