Xenosaga Episode II

The trailers, the hype, the screenshots, all built up Xenosaga Episode II as a beautiful game promising new and better. After 30+ hours of hands on gametime, and view time for the lengthy cinematics, I can honestly tell you that it IS a visually beautiful game. When you open the jewel encrusted gold and platinum cover of this digital novel you reveal that someone vomited chunks of Episode I on all the pages.

The bulk of time spent "playing" XS2 will have you either watching a cinematic or slogging through battles. Both are equally bad in their own way. The cinematics lack good direction and voice acting. The characters take long pauses between each sentence and are largely monotone. Even the expletives like "You Bastard!" are followed by a rousing scene where the character stands there and shakes their fist for an inordinately long time. During which, their assailant has sufficient time to prepare a response. When the protagonists stand there doing nothing while the villain prepares for battle, finishes the task at hand, or makes a speech on high, it's made SO much worse when you have to wait between long pauses of silence. Just rush in there and attack him dammit! It all comes down to pacing and this slow progression makes things lackluster and tedious.

The battle system is equally disappointing. I thought Episode I's battles moved along fairly quick but Episode II slows them way down and puts you on the defensive most of the time. Originally I started writing up a step by step description of a typical battle to illustrate how frustrating most of them are. After I had two good sized paragraphs I decided to summarize. Each battle begins with you taking many turns preparing to make a devastating attack, since your basic attacks are largely ineffective. After preparations are complete unleash a wave of attacks that will hopefully eliminate all enemies on screen before they get more turns. Usually this doesn't work out and you wind up making preparations for a wave of attacks more than once per battle. All the while defending against enemies (Boss battles are especially mundane). The battles are simply not balanced or much fun because there are too many details to consider. I think the movie Spaceballs said it best "Driver, prepare to move out. What are you preparing? You're always preparing. Just go!"

The preparation doesn't stop during the battles either. Spending the skill points you earn during battles on abilities, spells, and attributes is another way to prepare your now generic characters. Since all characters learn from the same skill set there isn't much that sets them apart from each other except their one innate ability.

Here's the clincher. Most of the abilities are hidden. In order to learn the abilities to make battles easier, you need to push yourself to go on lengthy and vague fetch quests. If you love "gofer" side quests (I hate them) then you'll be in heaven because you could quite literally spend 40 hours completing them all. Even when the game is over, you are rewarded with an extra large side quest that can be accomplished by completing many smaller side quests. No thanks. I opted for the level up method instead, but I really didn't do much of that either.

In Xenosaga II, I found that no matter what portion of the game I was experiencing: Cinematic, Dialog, Battle, or Side quest, I wanted to be doing something else in the game. A sure sign that there is a considerable flaw in the overall experience. Probably the only reason I pushed myself to finish was so that I could see the rest of the story. It's largely debatable if it was even worth it, but I have it all recorded so at least I don't have to play the game again. I can't say this game is a rental because you should either finish it or not start it at all. If you're debating, wait for it to hit the bargain bin $16 and play it later. I'm sure you'll have a year or two before Episode III comes out.

-wileee