Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose

"The hardcore will say "What happened?" The casual will say "What does Jenseits von Gut und Bose mean?""

Fans of the original Xenosaga loved it for the deeply complex story and deep plotlines, but overall were somewhat turned off by its reliance on high-end cutscenes. Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose, whose strange German subtitle, roughly translated to English, means "Beyond (or The Other Side of) Good and Evil", cuts down its heavy reliance on cutscenes, but in doing so, seems to have sacrificed its gameplay to a much simpler playing experience.

Visuals: 8/10
The visuals are a bit nicer than in the original, with an overall look and style you'd expect from a sort of "Space Opera" such as this. The character models have also been redesigned from the first game to look much more realistic; A great change in the eyes of some, a horrible mistake to anime fans. But, while the visuals are nice, I HAVE seen better in OLDER RPGs, and there simply is no excuse for anything less. Or maybe I'm just being harsh and nitpicky. You decide this one.

Audio: 4/10
The audio in this game is all round fairly decent, until someone makes an attempt to speak. The background noise in the game is exactly what you'd expect in a game like this, but as an RPG, the voice acting here is just horrid and unforgivable. To illustrate, imagine a badly dubbed Japanese movie. Now, take the horrible voice acting there, and beat it with an ugly tree. Not a stick. The entire. Friggin'. Tree.

Gameplay: 4/10
The way the story us presented this time around fills me with mixed emotions. The story itself is pretty nice, but the way the game paces the story, and the direction it goes in is just.....off. Characters appear, then disappear without a trace, for no real identifiable reason, other than "I am evil. I must fight you."

As for the actual gameplay, it is equally as disappointing. Here is a basic run-through of the majority of the game:

You are here.

Go here.

Find out how to make the next cutscene start.

If there isn't a cutscene, find the nearest boss battle and complete it.

You are now here.

Lather, rinse repeat. Ad nauseum. This game seems to live by the concept of linearity at it's very core, as the game allows very little in terms of letting players explore any place within the game, even with the option side-quests. Not to mention that level-design in and of itself is fairly repetitive, and can get boring quite easily.

Another change that was definitely another one of the answers in the long list of responses to the question "What can we do to make our fan base hate us?" was the removal of a money system. The game has no currency or money, and as a result has no shops. You'll eventually end up piling up all of your healing items and whatnot for the bigger and meaner enemies, because you'll never know when you'll find something better. This also, of course, means that equipment and the like have gone AWOL. This means that if you want to make your character stronger, the only method of doing so is by leveling up your characters, or learning different skills.

Speaking of leveling up, the combat system in which you do just that has really lost all intelligence and strategy involved with it the first time around. Depending on what skills you have, your characters can do anything from cast spells or raise your stats, but really have no real purpose to this system, because every character in the game can learn the exact same skills. Every skill in the game can be learned by every character. After discovering this fact, I went back and tried to play through the entire game with my original three characters, and did it with relative ease.
As for the fighting itself, it mainly consists of asking yourself "What is this enemies' weakness?", finding out what hurts the enemy, and abusing it until the ugly little punk's weak points until they're dead. After you learn the weak spots, battles simply become a memory game of which Achilles' Heel goes with what enemy.

Overall Entertainment: 5/10
Now, if you're a hardcore Xenosaga fan, don't let my review stop you from buying this game. Hell, even if I told you not to, you'd probably do it anyways. What I'm trying to say is, this game will still completely engulf the hardcore fans of the series, but probably shouldn't even be considered for the casual fan. With all the troubles and problems with this sequel, and the short play time (completion takes about 20 hours, INCLUDING cutscenes), those who aren't absolutely obsessed with this series should stay away. AS FAR AS POSSIBLE.

Overall Score: 5/10
While the game has had a pretty celebrated life so far, this will be one game in the series that will end up being the bastard child of the Xeno- series. Even if you're a die-hard Xenosaga fan, a rental is al I can recommend for this one. You're slacking Namco; I'm disappointed. Really, I am.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/07/05