Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose

"I'll show you what a real battle is like."

I jumped right into the second game after playing the first one and I have to say...how did they manage to screw this one up so badly? If their aim was to produce a game with long cutscenes and excruciating battles, then they've done their jobs here.

But I'll do a break down from what I've been able to find so far:

Battle System: 1/10
First things first. The biggest drawback of the game is that the battle system is simply atrocious! As in the first game, the healing items and spells are useless. But this time around, the battle system is set up to keep you boosting so that you can follow one player's turn with another. Patient attacking while healing in-between doesn't really work. The enemies will do more damage than what you can heal. The only solution is to level up a lot, which means that the game boils down to having each area a training ground for a boss. The battle system in the first game was much better; I simply have no idea why they felt the need to re-invent it. The AWGS that Shion, Jr. and chaos used in the first game aren't available at the outset of this game, for whatever reason. I found myself running away quite a bit simply because I was attacked from both sides and I didn't like that. There are no special techniques available either. I would have been just as happy if they had used the same battle system all over again, similar to what happened in the .hack series. From what I've been able to discern, item shops are few and far between...I haven't even been able to figure out yet if you get to earn any money or not. This makes it hard to buy the right sort of items and get things the way you want them.

Boss Fights: 1/10
As a result of the bad battle system, the boss fights boil down to whether you have the right level or not. Whether you've done enough training. Every single time I encountered a boss, the first time, I was defeated. It's just so very difficult to inflict a lot of damage in a short amount of time and since the boss can boost just like can while the healing spells/items suck, I was trounced easily. The only solution is to raise your stats so that you can manage the battle a little easier. This really took all the fun out of the boss fights for me.

Story: 10/10
The story is, once again, the strongest element of the game. In the first game, that was a good thing. In this game, that's a bad thing. The counterpoint of a compelling story with frustrating/useless battles makes the game take on a very different kind of feel. It feels like a game whose only purpose is to tell a story and not give the user a good experience while playing.

Characterization: 10/10
The characterization, from what I have seen, goes even farther than what was presented in the first game. That's good because without having characters worth caring about, this game would have turned me off during the first dungeon. There are actually more characters in this game than the first one. Shion's brother, Jin, is involved and some of the baffling mysteries about things are finally revealed. The first game set in play so many things that weren't generally understood that the second game must naturally be a game of explaining what all those things are and what bearing they have on the story. This process is actually a positive, as more backstories are revealed.

New Graphics: 4/10
The second game in the Xenosaga series features re-vamped graphics for some of the characters. In Shion's case, it's an improvement. For KOS-MOS, it's a huge step back. In fact, the entire character of KOS-MOS changed because she looks like a completely different person from who was in the first game. It also didn't make a lot of sense to me how this was supposed to be a continuous story but all those abilities that were unlocked through email now don't appear. It's like a lot of things in the first game simply didn't happen, while it's clear that many other things did. The game designers basically made a brand new game with a continuing story.

Side Quests: ?/10
I haven't gotten this far yet. The GMS thing looks interesting and you get segment addresses too. But I haven't gone deep enough into the game to really find out if there is any worthwhile value in the side quests of this game. I have trouble believing that these will make up for the absolutely awful battle system, though.

Overall: 3/10
In the first game, the story overcame the game's flaws. The second time around, the game's flaws overcome the story. I got about seven hours in only to be defeated by yet another boss when I finally decided enough was enough. The only solution I can think of is to use a cheat disc to give my characters outlandish strength...which defeats the whole purpose of playing to begin with.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/24/09

Game Release: Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose (US, 02/15/05)