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chuckroDuring the Realian uprising on Old Miltia, Jin Uzuki, chaos and Canaan are sent in to rescue the U.R.T.V.s that are the Federation military’s best weapon, before something goes terribly wrong with the Zohar that powers the U-Tic Corporation’s military. If you haven’t played Xenosaga I, don’t expect that to make a lot of sense.
The first thing that comes up with most sequels is the issue of, “Could you play this without having played the first game, and would you want to?” (You could, system-wise, but the plot wouldn’t make much sense and you’d have no reason to care about any of the characters.) Similarly, how much of the first game do you need to have fresh in your mind to make sense of this one? (Apparently, in Europe the first game wasn’t released, and the second came with a bonus disc of the first game’s cutscenes. So the creators kinda thought it was critical.) In this case, it’s not even like a typical video game sequel, where they work as standalone games—it’s more like they released the next chapter of the story with a new game engine. I kind get the impression Xenosaga I was originally intended to last until the end of Disc 1 of this game, because it revisits a lot of the locations from that game and reuses all of the characters (but barely uses the new ones) up to that point. Which contributes to how much of the game’s sidequests feel like they put them in as padding, to make people feel like buying this game was worth their money.
You can transfer in Xenosaga I data, but all it gets you is a few unlockable optional outfits, and a small increase in your starting skill points. Ending the first game with a level 99 party with maxed-out skills and all the best items doesn’t actually provide a real benefit here. Which is kinda strange to me, given that you really need to have played the first game, plot-wise. I had expected an Ultima-style ability to import high-level characters.
Speaking of the story: The fact that it opens with two stoic, monotone characters playing off of each other is kinda random. But in retrospect, might have made for a better game overall. Jin, Canaan and chaos are all secondary characters at best in this game. This game is primarily the story of Jr. and Albedo, and the rest of the cast is either there to have small subplots, or be mysterious. Similar to the writing in Xenogears, they tend to have characters take their turn in the spotlight, then just tag along mindlessly for half a disc. The first game was about Shion, Allen and KOS-MOS; the three of them do very little of note here.
Shion, on that topic, is still a really problematic character, and the presence of her older brother—which gives her the opportunity to come off as a spoiled brat—only makes it worse. (The fact the voice actress is playing her like she’s 15 doesn’t help.) I don’t think she demonstrates any competence at any point during the game.
After the opening flashback segment, we return to the “present”, immediately following the events of Xenosaga I. The first thing you notice is that all of the characters have been redrawn for the system graphics, and it’s not an improvement—they look even more plastic and doll-like than before. Similarly, a number of the voice actors have changed, and the results are mixed at best.
One definite improvement: When you load up a saved game, the loading screen is a short synopsis of the story thus far. That is excellent, especially is a game this plot-heavy and complex. They’re also generally better about providing save points with reasonable regularity, including before or after long cutscenes.
Like the predecessor, the story/dungeon/sidequest sequence is badly paced and feels padded. The third “dungeon” is actually the exact same long area twice, the second time with a “winter” reskin and palette-swapped enemies. The disc switch comes right after that, which makes me wonder if they added the second segment just to pad out Disc 1 and make it seem more worthwhile.
They’ve dropped the equipment system entirely—the only thing characters can equip are skills, and everyone has access to the same list of learnable skills (including ether powers, so everyone can use the same magic if you want). There’s no money and no stores—though you can “sell” items for one sidequest, and you unlock a lot of bonus stuff if you actually complete it.
The battle system has been redone, and is similar but more obtuse. The kid gloves come off as soon as you have your original party back, so you’d better get a quick handle on how boosting, stock and combos work now. Elemental weaknesses and buffs/debuffs are important, but the game isn’t actually going to advise you of that or give you useful information as to when it’s coming into play. You either need to puzzle out all the quirks for yourself, or resign yourself to really long battles of attrition as you pound through massive piles of hit points.
The Segment Address sidequest returns, but the dumb-ass email chain has been replaced with the “Global Samaritan System”, which involves hunting down people that need stuff done and delivering their mail / playing their minigame / bringing them 10 bear asses. Now, they’re still often well-hidden and apparently there are traps in some of them that force you to fail (making the skill that would be the prize Lost Forever), but at least they’re mostly self-contained. And I give the designers credit for a vaguely-feasible excuse why Shion wants to deliver somebody’s mail and keeps getting prizes for doing so. Also, most of them aren’t missable at any point—you can load up a save in the post-game and still go back and do them all, for as little plot sense as that makes.
They can’t seem to decide how large A.W.G.S. vehicles (also called E.S., known to the rest of us as “gears”) are relative to humans. In the first game, you could have characters jump into their AWGS during most battles, and they were only about 50% taller than the humans. In this game, they’re treated more like Xenogears, where they’re at a different and much larger scale than the humans and you use them to travel different areas and fight different enemies. (The AWGS game system here is okay—you can decide the pilot and co-pilot of each vehicle, which changes the available special abilities. Only one of the three vehicles can use the pilot’s Ether skills, and you only have two fighters and one backup in the battle regardless. So there’s some strategy to it, but it can also quickly devolve into just attacking and healing with the same two AWGS.)
Finally, the writer’s tendency to produce larger and larger threats but then unceremoniously drop them (in this case, the Omega System really should have, you know, DONE SOMETHING) is frustrating, but not nearly as much as their desire to keep all the villains mysteeeerious and therefore completely unsympathetic. A bunch of the villains in this game could have been really interesting characters if we had a clue to their motivations beyond “I’m way smarter than you and refuse to explain myself.” Albedo is still creepy as fuck, like a really well-done Joker, but even he doesn’t get used to potential because he’s not the primary threat (despite being half of the primary plotline) for a good chunk of the game.
Overall: Do I seem unimpressed? I was. They squandered a lot of potential the first game had for the series by making the visual experience and primary game experience (the battle system) worse. They fixed a bunch of my complaints about the first game, only to introduce new ones. I guess I should be happy there’s only one more of these to play, instead of the four they originally planned?
The first thing that comes up with most sequels is the issue of, “Could you play this without having played the first game, and would you want to?” (You could, system-wise, but the plot wouldn’t make much sense and you’d have no reason to care about any of the characters.) Similarly, how much of the first game do you need to have fresh in your mind to make sense of this one? (Apparently, in Europe the first game wasn’t released, and the second came with a bonus disc of the first game’s cutscenes. So the creators kinda thought it was critical.) In this case, it’s not even like a typical video game sequel, where they work as standalone games—it’s more like they released the next chapter of the story with a new game engine. I kind get the impression Xenosaga I was originally intended to last until the end of Disc 1 of this game, because it revisits a lot of the locations from that game and reuses all of the characters (but barely uses the new ones) up to that point. Which contributes to how much of the game’s sidequests feel like they put them in as padding, to make people feel like buying this game was worth their money.
You can transfer in Xenosaga I data, but all it gets you is a few unlockable optional outfits, and a small increase in your starting skill points. Ending the first game with a level 99 party with maxed-out skills and all the best items doesn’t actually provide a real benefit here. Which is kinda strange to me, given that you really need to have played the first game, plot-wise. I had expected an Ultima-style ability to import high-level characters.
Speaking of the story: The fact that it opens with two stoic, monotone characters playing off of each other is kinda random. But in retrospect, might have made for a better game overall. Jin, Canaan and chaos are all secondary characters at best in this game. This game is primarily the story of Jr. and Albedo, and the rest of the cast is either there to have small subplots, or be mysterious. Similar to the writing in Xenogears, they tend to have characters take their turn in the spotlight, then just tag along mindlessly for half a disc. The first game was about Shion, Allen and KOS-MOS; the three of them do very little of note here.
Shion, on that topic, is still a really problematic character, and the presence of her older brother—which gives her the opportunity to come off as a spoiled brat—only makes it worse. (The fact the voice actress is playing her like she’s 15 doesn’t help.) I don’t think she demonstrates any competence at any point during the game.
After the opening flashback segment, we return to the “present”, immediately following the events of Xenosaga I. The first thing you notice is that all of the characters have been redrawn for the system graphics, and it’s not an improvement—they look even more plastic and doll-like than before. Similarly, a number of the voice actors have changed, and the results are mixed at best.
One definite improvement: When you load up a saved game, the loading screen is a short synopsis of the story thus far. That is excellent, especially is a game this plot-heavy and complex. They’re also generally better about providing save points with reasonable regularity, including before or after long cutscenes.
Like the predecessor, the story/dungeon/sidequest sequence is badly paced and feels padded. The third “dungeon” is actually the exact same long area twice, the second time with a “winter” reskin and palette-swapped enemies. The disc switch comes right after that, which makes me wonder if they added the second segment just to pad out Disc 1 and make it seem more worthwhile.
They’ve dropped the equipment system entirely—the only thing characters can equip are skills, and everyone has access to the same list of learnable skills (including ether powers, so everyone can use the same magic if you want). There’s no money and no stores—though you can “sell” items for one sidequest, and you unlock a lot of bonus stuff if you actually complete it.
The battle system has been redone, and is similar but more obtuse. The kid gloves come off as soon as you have your original party back, so you’d better get a quick handle on how boosting, stock and combos work now. Elemental weaknesses and buffs/debuffs are important, but the game isn’t actually going to advise you of that or give you useful information as to when it’s coming into play. You either need to puzzle out all the quirks for yourself, or resign yourself to really long battles of attrition as you pound through massive piles of hit points.
The Segment Address sidequest returns, but the dumb-ass email chain has been replaced with the “Global Samaritan System”, which involves hunting down people that need stuff done and delivering their mail / playing their minigame / bringing them 10 bear asses. Now, they’re still often well-hidden and apparently there are traps in some of them that force you to fail (making the skill that would be the prize Lost Forever), but at least they’re mostly self-contained. And I give the designers credit for a vaguely-feasible excuse why Shion wants to deliver somebody’s mail and keeps getting prizes for doing so. Also, most of them aren’t missable at any point—you can load up a save in the post-game and still go back and do them all, for as little plot sense as that makes.
They can’t seem to decide how large A.W.G.S. vehicles (also called E.S., known to the rest of us as “gears”) are relative to humans. In the first game, you could have characters jump into their AWGS during most battles, and they were only about 50% taller than the humans. In this game, they’re treated more like Xenogears, where they’re at a different and much larger scale than the humans and you use them to travel different areas and fight different enemies. (The AWGS game system here is okay—you can decide the pilot and co-pilot of each vehicle, which changes the available special abilities. Only one of the three vehicles can use the pilot’s Ether skills, and you only have two fighters and one backup in the battle regardless. So there’s some strategy to it, but it can also quickly devolve into just attacking and healing with the same two AWGS.)
Finally, the writer’s tendency to produce larger and larger threats but then unceremoniously drop them (in this case, the Omega System really should have, you know, DONE SOMETHING) is frustrating, but not nearly as much as their desire to keep all the villains mysteeeerious and therefore completely unsympathetic. A bunch of the villains in this game could have been really interesting characters if we had a clue to their motivations beyond “I’m way smarter than you and refuse to explain myself.” Albedo is still creepy as fuck, like a really well-done Joker, but even he doesn’t get used to potential because he’s not the primary threat (despite being half of the primary plotline) for a good chunk of the game.
Overall: Do I seem unimpressed? I was. They squandered a lot of potential the first game had for the series by making the visual experience and primary game experience (the battle system) worse. They fixed a bunch of my complaints about the first game, only to introduce new ones. I guess I should be happy there’s only one more of these to play, instead of the four they originally planned?
