swanton00's Full Review: Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose for...
Naturally with the success of Xenogears for the PS1, there would be a sequel. Or rather in this case, sort of an un-official sequel that really doesnt have anything at all in common story wise. The supposed six part Xenosaga was later released for the PS2 and became a hit, not quite as much as Xenogears, but popular non-the less. Though it may have been bashed by some for having hours and hours of cinema, it was loved and the saga continued with part two of the Xenosaga, Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bo(insert the two dots above)se.
We Continue Our Long, Epic Saga
Episode 2 starts off just after the end of the first with Shion and co. landing on Second Miltia. Your party splits paths for the time being for different things they need to take care of and the Elsa undergoes some nesessary repairs. It isnt long before a new enemy group appears trying to stop the Second Miltian government from receiveing the Y-Data that resides inside of MOMO. These events will bring the whole group together again and even a new face, Jin Uzuki. Along with Shion's brother, you will encounter new faces in the search for the legendary Zohar. This plot gets SERIOUSLY deep.
Let's Play Some Xenosaga!
Xenosaga is your standard turn based, roam around in dungeons/towns RPG with a cool innovative battle system. Unlike most RPGs, you wont wander all over the world going from town to town. Instead there is two different cities to visit, one on a planet and another is a space station. The cities aren't really big and you will always see the same people over and over again, however as you venture further into the game, some people will request stuff of you. The game isn't very long but there is a lot of side quests. The segment file quest returns from the original, as does the kooky Professor who builds robots. Then there's the new Global Samaritan quests.
The game has probably 8 or 9 dungeons, areas with puzzles and loaded with enemies, that range from about an hour to maybe two hours. That's including the puzzles, cinematics, and the battles. Dungeons tended to get a little tiring on the count of the regular enemies. It wasn¡¦t random encounters, instead you could see the enemy and you would have to come into close contact with them to engage in battle. It was much hard, most of the time near impossible to avoid the enemy. It's not that there were to many enemies, its just that most regular enemies took a long time to kill. They would usually have a lot of HP and there would be a good three through five of them. How many RPGs have regular battles that take 6 or 7 minutes? Im not one that minds fighting, I like to level up but Im not a fan of long battles unless it's with a boss. I guess I gotta give it some props because random battles tended to be difficult. One small relief is the traps you can set for enemies. Occaisionally you will find small circle things on the ground next to an ememy. Shooting these will cause there to be an explosions that will create a small dome for a short while. If an enemy touches this, they will become trapped and unable to move. You can either go past them now without having to fight or fight them and you¡¦ll have some sort of an advantage. The color of the trap depends on what you will get during the battle. Sometimes it will be a boost bonus or maybe it will become well, I forgot what else it could be.
As in all of the Xeno games, you can fight on foot or in your mechs, known as A.M.W.S. in episode 2. In this chapter, the mech fighting has more to it. A.M.W.S. can now level up, equip accessories, use boost, and one of them can even use ether. In the first episode the A.G.W.S. (what they were referred to as in Ep 1) couldn't do much and they felt pretty useless. The mechs are now piloted with two characters. Each will have a set main pilot and a second which can be changed. The gears and your characters fight basically the same way so theirs no need to tell more of the A.M.W.S. The battles are done with the classic turn based system, he who has higher agility can make their move first. There is a turn chart/box at the bottom of the screen that shows the order of attack for that turn with a portrait of the character. Next to that is an advantage box. With each move the box changes to a different symbol. Each symbol will have it's own effect for the turn. It may increase the attackers chances of a critical hit, give more skill points if an emey is defeated that turn. Maybe it will even cancel the next turn of the character that gets hit in that attack. Learning what each symbol does and the order they come in will help you greatly.
The battle will end when either your party, or the enemy group has every character knocked down to zero Hit points. Along with the HP each character has Ether points. Ether is the magic or mana of the Xeno series. Characters learn new magics with the skill menu which will be described later. The higher a characters Ether attack, the more damage a magic attack will do or the more their healing arts will recover. Xenosaga contains a unique combo attacking system. Each enemy has certain spots of their body that are weaker. These are called break zones. Attacking these areas will deal a bit more damage and can eventually lead to breaking the zone which I think just does even more damage. The zones are labeled as A, B and C break zones. The square, X and triangle buttons represent a letter. Hitting the right combination of buttons in the right order will result in a chain of breaking attacks which can eventually lead to the victim being launched into the air or knocked down. Following up with a boost after that is the best idea as you can hit them when their down or just continue the combo for a lot more damage. You can continue as long as you have boost bars available. Your boost bar enables you to put a character into the next slot to have a turn next. The bar goes up as you attack. When it fills, you can boost again. A good way to deal more damage and have higher break combos is using the stock command. The stock replaces the Ap from episode one. Each character has three bars under the EP bar. Using stock sets your character on defence until they attack again and it will fill one of the stock bars. With each stock bar filled, you can have one attack added to a combo. Three bars equals three more hits. You can start the combo off with two hits comprising of square and triangle attacks. The following hits are just done with circle. Every character has a different type of attack. The combos involve different type of attacks in them. Certain enemys are weaker against certain types. Jr.'s guns cause pierce damage, Jin's swords cause slash damage, chaos' does ether damage for his attacks. Learning what attacks or attributes are good against what enemies can be effective.
Usually in an RPG, you would receive some sort of money, experience points and some times even items at the end of each battle. That¡¦s not the case in Xenosaga II however. You get experience points and items, but you won¡¦t get cash. That is right my friends, there is no money involved in the play of Ep. 2. For what reason this was done is not at all known to me, but I think this was a very stupid move. The game could have been much better if you were able to buy your healing items and such and not just have to find them in dungeons. Since there is no currency, that also means that there is no armor or weapons to buy. Each character uses the same weapons throughout the entire game. Not getting better equipment as you play just doesn't feel right in an RPG.
There is still a means to upgrade your characters, skills. A much different skill system than the first¡¦s has come along. You can teach all your characters a variety of skills using skill and class points. Skill points are gotten by winning any battle. Class points can only be gotten by defeating special opponents, mainly bosses. Every character can learn the same skills and magic, but there are so many different things to learn that you will probably want certain characters to learn certain skills. There are four levels of skills, each one has a bunch of classes that are arranged alphabetically, A-H. At the start, you only have level one class A skills available, but with class points you can buy new classes and have many new skills able to be unlocked. Each of these classes has four different skills that can be bought with skill points. There are three different types of skills. The first is ether skills. These are ether attacks that can be usued throught battle like healing and attack magics. Second comes the permanent skills which once bought, constantly take effect. They usually do things like offer 25% resistance to some sort of status effect. Then there is the equip skills. Each character has three slots for which you can equip skils to, most of the equipping skills are just stat raisers. There is over 100 skills to learn and they take along time to get enough points to buy them. By the time I beat the game aI didn¡¦t even have half the skills unlocked, that just goes to show how long it takes to get some of these skills.
As much as Im a fan of the Xeno games and Im loving the saga¡¦s story so far, Episode II could have been so much better, gameplay wise. One of the most beloved things of thr first was the great cinematics with an excellent voice cast. While Xenosaga 2 still has some good videos, they just don¡¦t seem nearly as cool as the prequel and they voice acting is horrible compared to Xenosaga. Only a couple of characters kept their original voices. Mostly every sounds very dull and lifeless and they put to much of a pause in between their words. Then there is the new animations. If episode 2 takes place exactly where the first left off, then why is chaos a lot taller and the Elsa completely remodled as well as green? Not very realistic. No currency definetly hurts. It sucks to only get items from fighting and treasure chests. I try to do everything I can in an RPG even all the side quests and at the end of the game I don¡¦t think I even had five of the large health packs. You basically stuck with the crappy items throughout the whole game. By the next episode, these people better learn what money is and the wonders that can come from it. On the plus side, there is a lot of side quests. The global samiritan campaign has like 30 missions to go on. The segment file quest has you finding 18 doors and their respective keys. Then from the prizes you get from those quests you can help build a giant robot and use it to defeat the Professors evil rival/twin's giant robot.
It Has A Futuristic Look
Xenosaga II still looks pretty impressive. Much like the original, the cinematics are detailed and beautiful. Maybe not quite as much so as the firsts, episode one even had people smoking and the smoke came out of their nose! I for one, was amazed. Your party does change it's get up for this chapter. The few that aren't an anroid or war machine have new clothes. Shion throws away her Vector uniform and dresses casual, than you got Jr. who throws on a pink sweater. Their outfits are well done and detailed. Shions hair will flow in thw wind and Captain Matthew¡¦s hat even says "I'm a boozer" The characters faces could have looked a little bit better though. Shion's face is very dull and bland while Ziggy looks very pale much like a zombie. The battles don't look top notch. During attacks the camera will no longer go right up infront of your character, instead it just stays behind. The magics aren't even impressive either. Heck, Golden Sun for the Gameboy Advance had much coller magic attacks than this. The only thing that they tried to make look cool was the double attacks which had short video thing of the two characters attacking the enemy, which wasn't even that good looking.
Attacking Without Enthusiasm
Like I covered before, the voice acting of Episode II is very poor. The majority of the characters have no enthusiasm in their voice. They sound dull and speak to slowly. Certain characters like Albedo, Jr. and the Elsa's crew still sound like they got life in them. For most of the attacks the party will blurt out the name of the attack and some ha¡¦s and other such crazy battle sound effects. But even when they talk throughout the powerful attacks like the double attacks, they sound like they don't care or have no energy to them. Come on now, they are supposed to be unlocking ancient mystery¡¦s and saving the universe. One thing about the first is that I wasn't to fond of was the soundtrack. The music isn't bad, but their wasn't any epic, memorably tracks. Xenosaga 2 does improve upon that a bit. The music has some epic track and there is even a few different battle themes instead of hearing the same one over and over. If I found a soundtrack to this chapter I would have to pick it up just for the title screen music.
Come Now Rubedo, You Know You Want To Kill Me...
All in all, Xenosaga Episode II is a good game with some slight improvements over the first but a lot of downfalls as well. I really would only recommend it to someone who played through the first Xenosaga.
Release: February 15th, 2005
Developer: Monolith Soft
Console: Playstation 2
Genre: Role-Playing
1 Player
Engage your enemies with larger, more powerful mechs with their own independent, tactical battle system Devastate your opponents with innovative coope...More at Amazon Marketplace
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