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The best

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: August 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I thought this game was one of the best!!! For a while there I thought i was watching a movie! LOL!! I like the battle a lot more than #1 and I thought Shion looked a whole lot better and the same with KOS-MOS. This game was sooo cool. I think this game was a lot longer, too. I think this game had way kool graphics and it was suspensful and entertaining!!!

--Alex-- if ur wonderin i am 13

Good story, terrible game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: March 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

After all the years of anticipating a Xenosaga sequel, I was certainly expecting something better than this. The first Xenosaga was a wonderful, moving story and a joy to play. Mitsuda's musical score really added to the dramatic flair of the gameplay. Sadly, in this game, we really only see the epic story and the good graphics return, leaving the rest to erode in its wake. The music is, for the most part, cheesy mall music during the gameplay, thereby solving the mystery of why there was no score for the gameplay in the first one. These tracks range in quality from "irritating" to "debilitatingly awful," almost without exception. Wesley Willis could have produced a better gameplay soundtrack. The cut-scene music is better, but in no way matches the glory and beauty of the first.
The rest of the game seems quite generic, and difficult. I am reticent to say that even though I am only about 10 hours into the game, from what I have seen and others have told me, from this point on, the game seems to become a levelling nightmare, more like a chore than a holiday. Levelling takes forever too, because the normal battles are inexorably difficult, long, and frequently give you insufficient experience needed to beat the bigger bosses. Even though the game itself is horrid, I am enjoying the plot, and looking forward to seeing how this develops. Keep this in mind if you decide to buy the game.

Very Disappointed

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: March 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I like this game very much except for some problems.:
*)It's Very short, it could Probably be completed in 25 hrs..
*)They gave the characters some face lifts which I hated because they looked better enough the last game.
*)As for being a picky person I HATE some of the new voices for the old characters.
*)KOS-MOS looks Horrible.
*)Very Stupid Skills Systems.
*)You can't buy weapons or items. You can only get them through battles, destroying objects, and treasure chests.
*)Oh, and last but not least, the loading speeds. I for some reason didn't care about the saving speed.

A disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: April 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The subtitle Jenseits von Gut und Boese is clearly a reference about Friedrich Nietzsche and his critic against Religion in general. Famous sentence: "God is dead". Unfortunately in German this also has another meaning. When something is beyond good and evil, it is so awful, that there are almost no words to describe it. Although harsh, this is the more fitting meaning of this subtitle.
Graphics: Although boasting about the progress in graphics, the game looks more or the less the same. The characters have improved, except for the hands, and especially in close up the mimic can be quite convincing. The game also has some nicely done backgrounds. FFX may still point a finger and laugh, but it is a rather nice looking game.
Story: It is interesting enough that you finish the game, however it is excessively short and seems to be only a subplot to the overall plot. Considering Xenogears is Episode Five and the other Episodes also have to deal with Lacan and another form of Fey, the one who created Emeralda I think, this should actually have been the end of the Kos Mos-chaos plotline. Had they actually made it the subplot of a much bigger game, that would have been a great improvement. The story is centered entirely on Rubedo and his relationships to his twin Albedo and to a lesser degree his brother Negredo. Also his relationship with Momo is explained. There are some slight intermezzos with Shion and her brother Jin, the rest of the cast is more or less irrelevant for the story. KOS MOS saves Shion from time to time, which opens the question why she isn't a more powerful character in game, Ziggy is only featured because Momo clings to him, and chaos is as mysterious as ever. Of course half the storyline is lost in the usual cryptic dialogue of enemies.
The one thing that is bothersome about the story, besides its length, is the fact that all its protagonists are kings and queens of misery. No other game features that much suffering and self-pity. Especially Shion exceeds in that aspect, and here voice only adds to being annoying.
Sound: Awful. There is no other term to describe it. Especially Second Miltia. MIDI at its finest.
Gameplay: The battle system comes close to being an absolute catastrophy. There are no longer any techs. Unless you stock, you just watch your character walking up to the enemy and hitting them twice. Stocking and boosting is much to important.
Without the Sword skills (e.g. Flame sword) this game is almost impossible to play, which also means, since you have to exploit the elemental weaknesses of the enemy, that the three characters, who already have an elemental alignement, Shion, chaos and Ziggy, are useless for most battles. Still, even using these, unless you stock and use elemental chains, the most damage you will do is about 450 points. With the later enemies having mostly over 5000 Hp the battles are not only boring, but also endless.
Mostly in RPGs you have one character, usually the main protagonist, who is an absolute powerhouse. However due to the battle mechanics, all characters are about the same, and you have to choose them according to situation. Hence, the possibility to switch characters in battle. I won't even complain about the fact that only the three characters who actually finish the battle get Skill and Class points, since I already made it clear that this battle system is seriously flawed and this is only one of its minor annoyances.
There are no cure magics strong enough to actually refill your HP. At later levels, some of your characters will have at least over 2000 HP, unfortunately the strongest healing magic, Medica 2, used by the strongest magic user, Momo, only gives about 500 HP. Need I say more. Even combining two Medica 2s by boosting doesn't help, because this will result in a Medica 2 all.
Items do not really make up for this lack, since most enemies just hand over small Medikits, and there is no shop.
There are actually two kinds of status ailments. Status ailments are annoying as such, without you having to differ between Poison L (the most common group) or Poison H (rather rare, and even rarer are the items for curing it).
Side Quests mostly consist of endlessly traveling back and forth between Miltia and Kukai Foundation and talking to people or collecting items. Considering the considerable loading times, this is even more annoying then it should be. You can finish the main game including most of the side quests in 35 hours. There are some epilogue dungeons that will stretch this by maybe another ten hours.
A last critic, though I do not know if this is true for everyone. On my television the character portraits were cut off at the top, making the amount of HP I had at the moment sometimes hard to read.
Though still enjoyable to play because of the storyline, even though the generall plot was only advanced in the last 15 minutes of the game, and the pretty graphics, the gameplay has so many faults that I would clearly advise to rent this game rather than buy it. Normally RPGs are too long to make renting profitable, but this really is no problem here.
I do hope they improve the gameplay for the third episode. Since they also planned on remaking Episode V, Xenogears, I am really anxious about Episode 3.

Well Done

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: April 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I thought the first game was so-so; the 2nd much better. The combat is simpler to understand but more complicated to use - you start with all the fighting techniques you're going to get. Its up to you to figure out which characters and combinations of attacks work well in a given situation. Its a bit confusing until you get the hang of it. Bosses are a bit more complicated - you need to mix up the attacks of more than one character to be effective. There's always one major weakness to be uncovered.

As far as the series - well, the story doesn't end here - if anything, it gets more complicated. Only a few loose ends are resolved, and several new ones are added.

After the game ends, be sure to save - then continue using saved data. The game continues with a huge side quest that's not series related but has a story all its own.

Over all - there's room for improvement, bt I'd say its better than FFX2.

Great sequel, but not too innovative

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: July 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

While I'm not fan of the series (In my opinion Xenogears is still a better game) this continuation improves in every aspec, visuals, battle depth, and exploration. The game was given a more mature look to the characters, but if you played the first game you'll notice that the graphics are the same. The Sound department is inproved a little bit (The first game to me lacked sound in exploration mode making it a little borred). The story is as deep and intriguing as expected and a lot of unanswered questions from the first game are answered here. If you haven't played the first one you'll feel lost at the begining but you'll catch on soon enough.

Now for the battle system. Its almost the same as the previous installment, except this time the enemy has different zones were you can hit them. With different atacks you hit different zones of your enemy and most enemies have their own weak zone. By hitting the weak zone the enemy breaks his defense and you can inflict more damage. Further more, you can boost ahead and combo the enemy with your party. There are a lot of atributes to consider, for example your attacs can either do piercing or slashing, physical or ether attacks. Since each of your party members have different atributes, that makes everyone usefull. However, once you figure out how to use stocks and boosting toguether some characters become unnecesary in many battles, therefore in time they become weak because you dont use them offten.

The exploration mode is deeper than before, with side missions to complete, thats a welcome adition. Some gamers will find the cut scenes exiting and interesting , but other gamers will preffer more gaming time, Good thing that you can skip the scenes. With upgrades to every aspect this sequel is a decent one, but it doesnt break the innovation barrier. Its a great unique RPG.

Changes are good

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: March 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Right?
Pros:
-Good graphics
-Good story(Picking up where the 1st one's emotionally bizzare, but excellent story left off)
-Pretty good way to get skills(class points to get class, and buy classes, and get skills, it's pretty easy)
-Cinematics are fast paced and action packed
-No more using bio sphears at save points. Save points automaticly heal you, and bisphears are used at the menu to completley heal
-While fighting you can carry on your boost you have left from the last fight, and carry it on to the next
-This series continues in a ok way
Cons:
-I was under the imression that data from the first one, like HP, attacks and such could be continued on this but NOOOO!!! They say here's some bonus stuff, good job, and uh, we just screwed you over
-I miss a whole lot of stuff like
--Buying and selling(This is one of the main pricipals of almost every RPG. Taking this out just pissed me off. No more buying cool upgrades, or selling crap like scrap iron(I have enough scrap iron in my game to make a friggin gun)
--Voices(They ruined this. Shion, Kos-Mos, Momo, Chaos, Mary, ect voices were replaced by worse ones. If they were to replace Al Bhedo's voice, that really would have been horrible, but Kos-Mos' voice change just really ruined her more than anyone)
--Models(I thought it would be nice to see them mature a bit, but now, I take it back. I miss the good ol anime style look. The worst changes were made to Kos-Mos(At first I thought she looked great, but the voice-acting shut me off like a computer), and Momo, she was so cute in the first one, but now she looks older, and sounds like an obnoxios little girl)
--Battle System(Ah the nuber 1 thing I and so many are complaining about. The first one was almost flawless, it had awsome cinamatics during battle, and had a 2 punch then just blast them the fudge away, or do level up the speed with skill points and kick the crap out of the ASAP. Now this game just toatly abandoned all of that. Stocking is a pain, but you have to do it, unless you want a looooooong battle. But stocking also leaves you volnurable, leaving the enemies to stomp a new @$$-hole in you. Theres no more big moves like Last Symphony, or X-Buster(Oh wait, the put that on a E.C., who cares?! It's for Kos-Mos!!) You can't have 3 E.C.s(or AWGS) on the screen, unlike the 1st one. The only bigtime cinematic moves are doubles, but they suck, so I tend not to use them. In the first one I hated the tedious cut-seenes in the first one because I anxious to get back to the battle system, but in this one I'm a wanna sit and watch a cut seene because of the battle system. Episode 1's battle system was like a automatic, easy to use, and fun, but now it's like they changed it to a for-jorkin' Stick Shift. It's hard to convert, altho I'm getting a little better with it, I just miss doing tech attacks from the first one.
-2 discs!? For what!? The first disc of this was only 9 hours, and the second was only 12 hours. The first one was 40 hours. And 2 disc RPGs are longer than that(Ex. Star Ocean was 2 discs, and 70 hours of fun)

My first review before I edited was based off what I saw when my friend played it, and my first hour of playing. He let me play a few battles, and it was pretty cool, but when I found out the full story for myself, I understood what he ment by when he said, "Don't buy it, just remember the story from when I played it" I didn't wanna listen, because I thought we had our own opinions, and I thought my experience would be diffrent, but it our diffences were close to a simile. At first I thought I could use data from the 1st one one this game, so I leveled up everyone to the point where I could beat the final boss without even worrying, but now that I did all that for nothing, I'm just pissed to a high degree, and not only that alot of the changes weren't satisfactory. Well, this game is just a sequal that experimented with the wrong things, like Devil May Cry 2, Sukoden IV, The World is not Enough, ect. Too bad it didn't pull a Splinter Cell(PT), Metal Gear Solid 2, or Resident Evil 4). Altho all of this is just messed up, this game still is playable, and those who want to keep up with the Xenosaga series should definitly get this. But those who moderatley liked the first one or hated it, will be dissapointed, hate this, or not even pick it up. Personaly, I think it wasn't worth the $50 price tag.

peace

not good

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 23
Date: January 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

don't get this game when it comes out. you will be dissapointed since the cutscenes look boring. other than that avoid this came no questions do it.

Something Wrong

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 12
Date: February 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

... As far as a review, the game looks great, I can't wait for it to come out. I do hope that there is less dialogue in this one than in the first one. Other than that I'm really looking forward to this one. ...

terible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 19
Date: February 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

namco's xenosaga 2 really looks horible. with scenes that have bad cgi. so don't get this game.

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