I never could understand people's complaint on that part, but I guess that's because it's derived from a gameplay standpoint. (Note however for those that don't know, its not that the game play on that disc is bad or changed in anyway, it's just few and far between). My take on RPGs is that they are the real novels of the video game world. I'm all about plot and storyline. And though I shy away from choosing between FF7 and XenoG, I will express my perspective on this choice. The developers had a choice as Square crunched their time. The second disc was maybe halfway complete or something. They could have cut the plot a bit and made it more interactive, like the first half of the game. Or they could get their WHOLE story across, but not have the player as involved. They chose to tell their whole story. And for that I am grateful. We now know almost everything they wanted to tell us in that game. Yes there was a compromise, but one I'm willing to make, because for me, in the truest sense, it is all about the story. And we got that story.

I know a lot of dialogue in games can be tedious. I've heard lots of complaints about Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door to this tune. Way too much talking. But in XenoG the narrative and dialogue of the second disc was forgivable in that it was interesting and worth reading dialogue and narrative (to me anyway). Because I think it was a captivating and very interesting and deep and original (albiet confusing) storyline. Which I'll take over jumping around and fighting ANY day.