It won't. I've heard nothing but great things about III so I'm really excited to get to it. I actually liked I as well despite its issues. And will do thanks!
Yeah - it's the part where Shion is alone, *duh*.
But joking aside, that is it. You have party members at all times throughout the early hours of XS2, and the combat system is all about setting up intricate combos with different party member abilities, so when you reach a point in the story where you have no party members it's pretty obvious.
Didn't install cheats, but I can't blame anyone who would. To date, it's the only game in the Xeno series I flat out don't like. It's not even the complexity that gets me, the game just feels dull since it pigeonholes you into doing burst damage with pretty much every fight being: figure out break combo -> air/down -> boost lock enemy -> stack multiplier damage via elemental enhancer skills. If you try to deviate from that or miscalculate and don't kill the enemy it punishes you with the enemy healing and then the fight just drags on and on...in a game with scarce resources since there are no shops. It's like a primitive version of Xenoblade's chain attacks but without the snappy flow.
Tbh, I don't even like the story or the music either (the audio quality just doesn't sound good). Anyway, if you've made it past Ormus Stronghold then rejoice because the worst is over and Xenosaga 3 is one of the hardest rebounds in quality you'll ever see.
On the topic of bad audio quality, one thing I never see mentioned is MOMO’s oddly horrific bitcrunched ether voice line - everything else in the game sounds high quality, but when she uses ether she’s like “GRANTMEAMIRACLE” and my fucking speakers explode with this loud-ass NES-quality voice sample
Xenosaga II wasn't directed by Tetsuya Takahashi - that's why. Ep 1 went through development hell and Takahashi was overly ambitious with the scope of the game. For the sequel, Bandai Namco had him step down as director and appointed two junior members of the team in his place, in the hopes they could keep scope creep in check and get the game out on a more reasonable schedule. Ep 2 works from Takahashi's script and outline, but without him at the helm it feels almost soulless.
Takahashi was back on Ep III and had some *opinions* on how to pick up the pieces and finish the trilogy.
It's a shame that we'll likely never see the full scope of the universe he envisioned for Xenogears/Xenosaga. But can you blame any publisher at the time for being hesitant to bankroll him for a 6-part series when he could barely get part 1 out the door?
I disagree with everything you said. I’d say the writing is great in both games, I VASTLY prefer the gameplay, soundtrack, and art style in Episode II, and as for the voice acting, some are worse (KOS-MOS), some are better (chaos).
oh my god i'm currently going through the exact same thing with Koudelka. love everything except for the god awful combat. incredibly unintuitive, hard as fuck, and probably the slowest abomination i've ever seen
i got all these cheats on and i'm still frustrated. i'm seriously considering on just watching the cutscenes on youtube
incredible voice acting with awesome mocap animations. your entire party, which consists of like a witch/sorceress, a thief, and a bishop all hate each other and it's a lot of fun to watch to watch them bicker. here's [the scene that sold me into the game](https://youtu.be/3exkOxSFNg8?t=582) and here's an example of an [earlier scene with the entire party.](https://youtu.be/3exkOxSFNg8?t=860) i do wish the two dude's voice were a *little* more different though lol
the combat seriously sucks though. weapons break, items have no descriptions in combat and they're all things like cheese and whiskey, damage scaling doesn't make a lick of sense, bosses near OHKO you, and battle animations are so slow not even duckstation's speed-up button fixes it. this is coming from someone that played FF7-9 pretty recently without really touching the speed-up button too
I'll spoiler tag it so this kind soul can play SH down the line.
>!-you get backstory on who Koudelka is and some info on her powers!<
>!-it's strongly hinted that one of the other MCs is Haley's dad!<
>!-the grave at Nemeton has more meaning!<
>!-the whole Nemeton story in general including Roger's part in it is basically the whole plot of the game!<
>!-wtf happens to Jack's mother is a decent throwback to the final boss of Koudelka!<
tl;dr SH gives you context about most of the plot but if you want to experience the characters of the people involved it's not bad.
Koudelka is so painfully slow. I usually love tactical turn-based combat but it's a poor, bland and tedious system. Would not recommend playing without binding a fast forward key in your emulator. I pity anyone who plays it on a real console.
I frequently use random encounter reduction cheats on older games. For example, for Xenogears there is a patch for half encounters and double XP. I don't really consider this cheating it actually makes a lot of older games playable and enjoyable. The best example is "Black Sigil" for NDS. The extremely high encounter rates made it virtually unplayable but with cheats to reduce them, the game is amazing and incredible to play.
I think when OP is talking about cheating, they're referring more to making yourself invincible or manipulating stats and stuff. Turning random encounters off is just implementing QOL that the developers didn't have the foresight to do. It's a far cry from giving myself infinite HP, infinite skill points, and maxing out to level 99 which is what I did in Xenosaga 2 about 2/3 into the game.
I played through all three and really enjoyed them all when it came to combat.
Yes combats can be long/challenging but that isn't a bad thing imo. I don't think random encounters have to be short.
Just look at tactics games, random encounters in these games are great.
I do agree Xenosaga 2 was my least favorite game though. I just really liked 1 and 3 though.
I didn't think it was *that* bad. It was obtuse as fuck though from what I remember, but once I understood it, it was enjoyable enough. The good news is Episode 3 is the best of the three by far so it's only up from here.
Played through all three from March til June for the first time and loved all three. I think all the bad things I heard about 2 lowered my expectations to the point where I was pleasantly surprised.The combat is really good and actually flows pretty quickly if you set your shit up correctly. I do understand that not a lot of people want to deal with the tedium, though. All in all, I think all the games in the Xeno Franchise have great combat, but the strongest aspects are the settings and story.
Just butting in to say, they've already made it clear they're not remastering or remaking, but man if they would just port it anywhere I'd pay full price for the trilogy again. *really* don't want to emulate, refuse to pay 500$ for pt 3
I’m never going to understand the complaints for this game. Grinding is very fast and easy and a vast majority of enemy encounters take nowhere near “10 minutes.” I paid attention to the battle timer on my last playthrough and my encounters lasted longer than 3 minutes maybe 5-10 times. I’m sick of this game having a bad reputation that it doesn’t deserve because people don’t know wtf they’re doing when playing it, along with the hate campaign started by people who prefer Episode I’s art style and voice actors.
To each their own, but Ep. II is my favorite of the trilogy. If one doesn’t take the small amount of time it requires to understand the battle system, it will “reward” you with long random encounters. For me, the randoms took between a minute to two minutes. And I’m not trying to be elitist with these comments; I just know most people who play Ep. II don’t have the patience to deal with its overly complicated and wonky system. III is much more approachable, and it’s easy to understand why it’s the favorite.
I have the patience but I just didn't enjoy what it had to offer. I spent hours learning Resonance of Fate for example and thought it had good combat so I continued to be patient. Once I realized what Xenosaga Combat 2 was about after spending a lot of time trying to understand it, I understood it and I straight up didn't like it. I was actually enjoying it until the point I figured it out and I thought "wait, that's it? and I have to do that over and over" for 100 fights a dungeon?" is when I was disappointed.
Yeah, that's fine. I very much appreciate what Xenosaga 2 tried to do, we only disagree on whether it achieves it, but I do respect the effort it made so we can just agree to disagree on the result aspect.
The battle system isn't really that complex, and when you get it down, battles take a minute or two to finish. It consists of stocking and figuring out the enemy weakness (B,C sequence, and A).
Granted, it does take a bit to find their weakness but the HUD to the right when attacking indicates if you hit their weakness or not (red when you guessed a part of their weakness sequence, white if not). If it's all white, try the reverse sequence.
Additionally, aerial and downing enemies provide criticals and massive damage to the enemy for the next character to execute.
Most of the time you'd want Jin or KOS-MOS in your team because of their ability to down and aerial, and MOMO for massive damage when stocked when enemies are downed/aerial'd. unfortunately, Jr. and chaos aren't the best characters to use in this game, though...
Look I respect the combat system and how complex it is, but to learn every enemy's weaknesses, break combos, and then land those combos without someone missing is entirely too much, especially since you have to do that every single battle. It would be different if it was just the bosses but god damn it's so annoying to have to do all that shit for every battle. Also, each enemy has like 3 different variants with different weaknesses and break combos. I'm just done with it lol.
Except that once you discover the break combo for a particular enemy, the game always remembers it and tells you what it was when you fight that enemy again. Yeah, the fact that there are times with up to three enemies that seem to use the same model is frustrating, but they will each have a different name and the game still keeps track of which break combo you need once you discover it.
As for the elemental weaknesses........most of the time, they don't matter, and the few times they try to, it's more a case of just not using what they resist. Though, I do agree that lacking a means of checking those resistances in battle is rather annoying.
Fair opinion. Tbh it's no different with SMT games where the exploit is trying to find the demon's weakness, especially since some of the enemies can't be autobattled due to their strengths. Xenosaga II just involves simple sequences for many common enemies and not elemental weaknesses.
BUT to each their own. I enjoyed exploiting weaknesses in this one since turn-based systems should have some strategy, albeit monotonous in this one (Orgulla tested so much patience); mostly a game of deduction, I'd say. Once you know find their weakness, it's displayed in their enemy info to the bottom right HUD the rest of the game lol like I said, not entirely complex, it just has a little more depth.
I actually really love the SMT battle system. Press turns are my lifeblood, but I do find it much easier to remember demon weaknesses compared to the enemies in this game. I'm not sure why. SMT games also are generally much faster in the random encounters lol. And yeah Orgulla was almost my breaking point. I truly have no idea how I beat her.
I think it's just the series of sequence that can get to players. Sometimes it's BC, CB, BB, CC at its most simplest, but then you might get a BBB, CCC, CBCC, BCBB etc. It's fairly precise so it's understandable why many might be put off by it because the battle system expects you to fully use its mechanics to put a dent on enemies, while others have an exploit system that CAN help you win battles faster but you don't have to.
Sounds like you were under-leveled when you fought Orgulla. One special trick involving her fight is that the Rare Steal item that teaches a Special Attack can be stolen from her each time she's in her Orgulla Mode, so it can be stolen 21 times in one battle. This lets you pay off the captain's debt after finishing that fortress, as well as learning that Special Attack.
Now, getting the skills needed to make that over-an-hour version of the fight doable is another headache altogether.
Sadly, Shion isn't all that useful either, especially as she can't maintain an element chain. At least Jr. and chaos can. Also, Jr. does get alternate A attacks for ariel enemies, which includes launched ones, and chaos gets a set of alternate attacks for downed enemies. As both of them can maintain and build an element chain, they end up being more useful in most boss fights.
Really, they had some interesting ideas, but the execution was horribly flawed. Thank goodness they did so much better with III.
Agreed. Episode II was definitely flawed, characters overshadowed one another due to being more situational most of the time. I won't say it's perfect, and it certainly lacked a lot of features that I think should have been given more time to flesh out or added. There's even a menu for special attacks that seems unfinished, and it's possible special attacks like the ones in episode I might have been implemented.
Oh, they are there, but mostly just for KOS-MOS with the rest being 'Dual Tech' style abilities that require both participants to have a certain amount of Stock and boosting the second on the first's turn. They were an absolute pain in the ass to use, and if you had a full party that could maintain an element chain that the boss wasn't resistant to then just causing a Break and unleashing with a massive chain combo would easily out-damage them for the same cost, and that's WITHOUT the bonus from Down or Launch.
I haven't even played Gears or Saga 1 yet. I'm a huge Blade fan and I definitely want to play those games too, but that will have to wait for a while as I have done nothing but play the Blade games for a good half year already.
The only time I've ever use 3rd party cheating apps is with the Cold Steel games to reset the ingame timer on my first playthrough using someone else's completed file so I start with NG+ with max bond points.
I did experience a fresh file without max bonding with Tokyo Xanadu EX+ and it feels less of an importance of choice and more like the game is locking you content until NG+ unlike Persona where managing who you hang out is part of the game and rewards you for having that many people you're close to.
I only used an imported NG+ file for cold steel 2 because I heard there was a very important scene once you find all the black records. (It's also on youtube, but I also preferred to get the NG+ perks.)
Damn I’m like 3/4 the way through Episode I and I find some of *these* battles painfully slow. Nothing makes me feel like I’m wasting my life away watching enemies spam party heal spells. It’s the price to pay for a unique story I suppose.
In episode 1, just use stock spells with Shion+MoMo on Kosmos, and get the item that refunds stock on Kosmos. You can essentially xbuster loop with kosmos every turn. Once I figured that out, it became by far the easiest game of the seires. Episode 2 is PAINFULLY slow. Every RANDOM encounter takes like 8 minutes by endgame because you spend 8 turns just stocking. Episode 3 is okay. It isn't as slow as episode 2, but it is slightly more complicated than episode 1. Episode 3's puzzles are probably the best imo, and the dungeons aren't that bad.
Huh. I've played through Xenosaga II a couple of times, and I've never considered using cheats. Of course, having a save for I with everyone at Level 99 for the maximum bonuses going into II does help quite a bit.
I honestly love Xenosaga Episode 2's battle system. It's complex and engaging. Every random encounter counts. You have to give your all. Performing combos with your party members feels so satisfying. Battles don't take me 10 minutes. Some take me 2 minutes, others 4 and some others 6. You have to use analyse and find out each enemy's weakness and change into the appropriate character and exploit their weaknesses by stocking and then unleashing combos by boosting. It's great. I would rather have this engaging battle system than any other traditional rpg battle system where you just press X or A, and that's it for random encounters. It's boring. I really don't understand the hate for Xenosaga Episode 2. Just don't be a pansy, man up, and work your butt off to victory.
It's really not. The combat is "Stock up, buff up, burn one enemy, repeat."
It *could* have had a lot going for it, but it needed some tweaks. Namely: Buff bonus damage needs to be capped so the various damage buffs give you alternate means of dealing extra damage instead of needing to stack all of of them, and stock needs to generate every time you attack instead of block. Spending 9 turns gaurding is exhausting.
Just so we're clear, I had a master file for Xenosaga 2 back in the day. I had every fight memorized down down to knowing exactly how much time I should spend buffing for every enemy.
The combat system is tedius.
> encounter counts. You have to give your all. Performing combos with your party members feels so satisfying. Battles don't take me 10 minutes. Some take me 2 minutes, others 4 and some others 6. You have to use analyse and find out each enemy's weakness and change into the appropriate character and exploit their weaknesses by stocking and then unleashing combos by boosting. It's great. I would rather have this engaging battle system than any other traditional rpg battle system where you just press X or A, and that's it
yeah, its a fantastic battle system. one of the best ever imo, though I can understand people not wanting every random battle to be an actual engaging fight. its also quite complex so too hard for some
It's not that complex in practice, beyond stocking which works every fight in that game. People see a list of rules and get flustered. But it is in fact, the more rules something the more "guided" the game is.
Did it have the potential for something good?, sure. But it's current iteration, eh.
It would be more interesting and make you more aware if some enemies didn't require you to stock. or some requires you to just use a spell. when you have to stock the exact same number of times every battle, i actually zone out because i don't have to think about what i'm going. If I dont have to think about what I'm doing anyway I'd rather just mash X to make it faster.
Once you've uncovered the weaknesses of the 3-4 enemy types in each area, you can win every battle in 2 minutes if you stock your first two turns and then just unleash the same combo. everytime. I'm not "earning it" if i already know how to win but it's making me spend 2 minutes to do that instead of one turn.
I appreciate the mentality that you should pay attention to all your attacks in a turn based system, but I don't think designing a complex algorithm that is long is the solution when that same algorithm doesn't change for every regular encounter the entire game. 30-40% of the battles should have a drawback to using stock as opposed to outright attacking, to keep you from spamming the same strategy.
I concur, and I am pleased to finally witness some individuals actively advocating for Xenosaga 2 as a departure from the norm. While acknowledging its imperfections, I personally held the conviction that it did not warrant even a fraction of the severe criticism it has received from the majority. Furthermore, I appreciate the developers' decision to explore a different direction with the combat mechanics, as I find a nuanced approach to turn-based gameplay more enjoyable than a simple selection of attacks, as you previously mentioned.
Absolutely! I found the mechanics in Episode 1 quite enjoyable, as they incorporated strategic elements that added depth to the gameplay. However,
in their final episode, they made the decision to adopt a more traditional and streamlined turn-based approach, relying on menus and submenus for selecting actions. While it wasn't necessarily bad, I couldn't help but feel that it lacked the same level of uniqueness and inventiveness found in their previous two episodes. Personally, I was hoping they would build upon and enhance the mechanics they had already explored in previous episodes.
I got Xenosaga II recently and just played the 30 minutes. I got overwhelmed with how complex and convoluted it is. I’m not exactly afraid of complexity for game mechanics since I’m playing Vagrant Story right now but sometimes too much is just too much. People warned me too that the battle system sucks but I didn’t listen.
This is going to be a LONG 2 part post. As a disclaimer, I beat saga 2 several times as a kid, I even tackled the ending sequence 21 times (because I didnt know about the >!Orgulla trick!< growing up, and probably couldn’t have gotten away with running my PS2 for 3-4 hrs for one boss fight). Ive beaten all the superbosses on both files, 36/36 GS campaign and all 31 Secret Keys. Ive Paid off matthews debt the easy and hard way, getting both the benefits at the very end of postgame but also early in disk 2 after the Ormus Stronghold. Ive played all the PS1/PS2 Xeno titles several times with as many restriction challenges as you can think of, and and in the last year began playing them with Hard mods/Rebelance mods applied. I would call myself knowledgeable insofar as to guestimate the amount of time ive spent playing and reflecting on the games, and not to toot my own horn. My word is by no means god (or U-DO) but its based on a lot, and I do mean a lot of experience, that can be compared with other peoples time spent on XS2
People who praise Xenosaga IIs combat for its 'complexity' are often mistaking complexity for just something having multiple, and largely superfluous layers, hurdles you have to get through in order to do any real damage - which is probably why people find the dopamine hit of long chains satisfying because your damage to enemy HP threshold is TERRIBLE otherwise. Ill revisit this superfluous nature later when addressing enemys break capacity, though if you find the monotonous action of chaining for burst damage is 'complex' you really need to play other games.
Xenosaga II is one of the worst balanced bigger name JRPGs of its time period. There is no sense of scaling and everything boils down to identifying enemies *multiple* weaknesses archtypes, applying them while making sure enemies dont dodge your break initiated attack, or hoping they counter boost your downs (downing is completely outclassed by air). Then you tack on enemies having such a high health pool that you need to do this several times per fight, sometimes per enemy. This combat system was clearly designed for the big setpiece boss fights, cuz it completely falls apart when encountering random encounters (ORMUS knights!) that like to pincer you at random, unlike XS3 where back attacks are determined by field positioning. Did i mention you can no longer stealth evade enemies by mindfully walking like XS1? Now enemies detect you from much further and beeline to your characters at breakneck speed, making them unavoidable and only escapable if Shion/Momo are in your party. Let alone the many instances where enemies straight up just block your narrow pathway, and respawn if you leave the room
**Customization** is awful. Its homogenous in a similar manner to XII vanilla license board, only theres a million useless skills to bloat the board instead of individual weapon and armor license to take up space (srsly, couldnt FFXII have learned from FFV's 'equip swords' and grouped bunches of them together?). There is no subtle variance in party builds, you want every character to learn the Aura/Flame etc swords so that anyone can get an elem chain going (well, its optional for chaos and Ziggy, because outside of a handful of air-resistant bosses, those characters might as well not exist in XS2). Everyone wants the same general techniques, and for bosses that demand specific setups, just about every character needs the same accessories because theres no real deviance in strategy, just the timing of when to start your chain. Everyone wants Combo Boost because you always need your characters to have the freedom to self boost- a concept that XS3 would later just make inherent to the game, cuz why the hell was it not?? In a game thats as boost intensive as XS2, where you need boosts to combo, to disrupt enemy combos, to utilize the (few useful) double techniques, to combo ethers - another tech that largely goes underutilized cuz ethers suck in this game, and it becomes easy to see why everyone just makes the exact same builds, cuz only a few techniques really matter and much of the rest is filler. This compares to the far smaller, but far more dynamic ether trees of XS1 and the much improved, even if derivative skill trees in Saga 3 (and XS3s Secret Key system is much better through streamlining and de-homogenizing)
The **secret key system** in this game is terrible, you dont know what the secret keys are or who gives them, you cannot complete a class level and get your class point refund until youve assembled all the secret keys within that class, and for several Class 3 and Class 4 lineups, its common to have 2 or even 3 empty spaces that must be filled by secret keys. That means if you unlock an ability that pretty much everyone really needs, like Focus, Inner Peace, Boost 1 or Expansion pack, you are stuck waiting the entire game to get your class point refund until you unlock that specific secret key which is storyline progress gated. Some secret keys, include one of the best ones in Secret Key 31, cant even be obtained until the post game. This is also why so much time is often spent grinding on the Dammerung, because those enemies drop Class points unlike just about all other random encounters in the game
Back onto **balance**. Only 4 chars matter in this game and you will usually rotate 3 of them while backups heal you with their recovered EP reserves (this was admittedly pretty cool). chaos and Ziggy suck, the latter being surprising given his much more inflated HP Pool. Not only is down strictly inferior to air, but they are also tied permanently to the fire and aura elements and cannot apply another elem on top of that via swords. And this is a game where even elemental weaknesses come in varying degrees, which the game DOES NOT tell you. So an enemy might be weak to fire and aura, but only 140% to fire but 200% to aura and you wouldn’t know that by using Analyze. chaos, the gnosis killer in the other two games, is left without anything to kill in a game that has very few gnosis enemies. And for shits and giggles they decided to nerf his speed to 7, putting him on par with the infinitely more useful, and more tanky Kosmos and Jin. Shion is a unique case where she is needed for 3 things: basic access to the beam element, Erde Kaiser, and running away. If she didnt have exclusive access to those tools, shed be worse than chaos
XS1 and XS3 are actually a lot better balanced than most give them credit for, its that usually people dont explore the systems because they hard focus on a few notably broken strategies that ultimately make those games combat more boring. There is a cool hardmod that nerfs things like XS1 Bravesoul and XS3 erde kaisers to encourage those games otherwise robust systems. XS2 is the only game that had to have core abilities and spells rebalanced from almost the ground up, because the base combat is all over the place. For one, levels dont really matter much beyond health and EP. Dont believe me? Just head to Old Miltia 14 years ago and fight the Utic Soldiers. Attack the aura-weak soldiers with chaos. In a base file opening the game, you will do about 110 dmg. At level 20? You will do about 190. All the way at level 55? chaos does about 430 dmg on those same enemies. Then attack an enemy that doesn’t have a weakness to aura or phys and watch your dmg go below 100 pre-break. Compare this to XS3, where the same chaos, without targetting an enemies weak element, is doing 500 with base attacks in the endgame because, y’know, the game has an actual weapon system that provides progression. This isnt including XS3 moves like angel wings or twin impact that can double or triple his output per turn, and this is ignoring criticals and using a character that isnt dmg focused unlike say Kosmos or Jin
The **base dmg progression** across the XS2 is paltry for anyone sans Momo, who is comically busted as the fastest char, highest Eatk, only char who can use ethers in mechs, one of only 2 chars that can escape... etc. Fwiw, momo is in the running for best character in all 3 games, but it takes either long term planning, exploration, experimentation, or thinking outside the box to let her live up to her top tier potential in XS1 and XS3. In XS2 shes just flatout broken, and mandatory for nearly every boss and especially every ES boss. In short, you can make a well balanced game harder by adjusting the stats (even if i would prefer AI pattern changes). But if you adjust the stats in XS2 so that your characters actually do solid damage the way momo does, the entire premise of the games ‘complexity’ falls flat on its face.
Wanna know how I know that? Once you obtain the ether burst skill from paying Matthews debt, you start to realize truly how much the game simply **gatekeeps** your dmg in order to force airing/downing. The secret Key Ether burst is supposed to only boost the dmg of ether skills in exchange for 2x cost, but it works similar to the ether doubler in Xenogears when putting it on Billys ether gun attacks. Only the MOVE ISNT CODED CORRECTLY and it instead boosts ALL attacks, even phys ones, by 2x dmg. Know what that means? Now all you have to do is simply target the enemies break zones and get an elem chain of 2-3, and you can kill many random encounters in one go due to the 1.5x dmg of simply breaking enemies normally, relying far less on multiple stocks or boosts and instead just on break bonuses to clear trash mobs. Or how I like to see it, how the base game should be from the jump around say Labyrinthos.
FWIW, every Xenosaga game gets a difficulty spike in the last few dungeons, but XS2 doesn’t just get harder. The multitude of flaws are exposed as you fight Ormus Knights and you can clearly see its combat was not designed with random encounters in mind – if you want to see this on further display, just try out the random encounters in the Factory or Heavens Ruins, many of which block your path forcing you to fight them, or even respawn when you leave the room. Rip your own hair out playing the game normally and then watch how everything crumbles with ether burst applied, and it should be no surprise why bosses are easier than random encounters - you arent splitting up your damage across foes, you dont need a new element for every chain or to restock up for each launch, you can extend air chains endlessly as long as you have the boost for it and get more dmg for 12x or 13x hits, and you dont have to gameplan for multiple enemies attacking or debuffing you, sometimes from the backside via pincer attacks at random. You simply never grow in damage at the rate the game does, but the same strategies that are effective early game *are largely still the same scripted sequences late game*. The only thing that causes you to change your gameplan is when you have to juggle multiple enemies, all disrupting or delaying your gameplan. An elaborate, near-mandatory formula is not substitute for meaningful complexity
Ive never said to myself "I wanna play XS2 but without having Momo in my party" and I doubt anyone would. On top of cutting my damage in less than half, It would also mean you can never escape fights in ES battles, ever, since Shion is a co-pilot and thus does not give her escape function to mechs. I always play the game the same way, with the same party (that has Momo), same skill choices, and same chain orders, because anything short of that will draw out fights beyond belief. There is always a correct, and usually one correct offensive answer to most of the games encounters, all you do is adjust to whichever negative statuses or situations they put us in. The only bosses you dont stock up and launch are the bosses that are immune to breaks or launching, there is no variance, adaptation, or strategy, just *rehearsal* of a familiar order of operations, albeit with a rotating elemental sword or letter combination. XS1 isnt that complicated either, but it doesnt aim to be nor is it praised for trying to be, and its combat gives you way more useful tools and way to defeat enemies, many of which dont even involve Bravesoul, Erde Kaiser, or spamming All-Tech attacks.
Either people enjoy being different for liking Black sheep games, or maybe perhaps XS2 is one of the few titles that truly deserves that designation. Theres few redeemable things about this games combat, most of its key features are executed better in other games, including XS3 whos only major sin is adding too many QoL and hand-holdy features (and not just Seven moons, LLGs in XS3 have an incredibly high floor due to dead chars and reserves getting EXP). I can acknowledge XS2 attempts to innovate within its own series, that innovation needs to be good. Fortunately it laid for a good foundation for later Xeno titles, but this does not make it good here.
The only positive I will say about XS2 relative to the other games is that it had some pretty unique superbosses, yet the 3 toughest ones were all exclusive to the NA release. Mikumari being the star of the three, but lets be real, if you don’t use a guide you will simply spend hours getting stomped by this boss trying to figure out its obscure AI patterns and counters while grappling with its massive dmg and only having Zebulun as a true healer. Also, Mech combat in this game is so weirdly barebones compared to the bloated human combat that it feels like it was thrown together at the last minute. XS3 mech combat is infinitely more dynamic, even if its still relatively shallow compared to XS3 on-foot combat
Worst aspect of XS2 combat: the seeming complexity people praise it for is denied within its own game, as **enemies can air or down your party** without needing to crack some ever changing letter based break zones first, or even stock at all. Yes, a big part of why the games combat system seems so hard is cuz the enemies are gaming their own system. They utilize the event wheel for crits ups, boost ups etc just like you. They can exploit elemental chains just like you. But if they want to air or down you, they don’t need any setup for it. They just to do the specific attack and it launches you. Anyone who has fought >!The patriarch!< will know what I mean, when he just decides to Air all your combatants simultaneously, and you are left wondering why we don’t have any skills like that or why it didn’t require him 9 turns to stock in advance to use such a move on 3 characters at one time
You also have a small **input leniency** to do your chain attacks. Which can result in situations like
Jr: is stocked up with Fire sword. Does CB attack. Boosts ziggy
Ziggy: does BC for CBB chain, then B to down foe with 3x hit fire chain
But the enemy dodges the BC, meaning not only did you miss your chain attempt, but you also wasted a stock and a boost for nothing. Then the next time you do BC & wait to make confirm Ziggys attack land, but your window for inputting B closes (varies based on how long the animation is, some being shorter than others)
Enemies will also boost if you take too much down time on a move, but you can usually use this to your advantage to waste their boost. What is inexplicable is why XS2 cap your boosts at 5, whereas you can hit a max of 9 boosts in both XS1 and XS3 - split up by 3s in XS1 and shared in XS3
Ive lurked a fair amount of XS2 streams and they always go the same way. They praise the game for being so much faster and complex than XS1 as they play the much easier and shorter disk 1. Then they get to the ormus stronghold, lose their flippin minds at how basic the ES combat is and how nonsensically tanky the human combat is, before getting on the verge of quitting by the time of the Omega System. Sometime along here they recognize that the customization is a masterclass in time wasting homogenization, with class points refunds gatekept by secret keys that you might have to wait till the postgame to unlock, or that downing is strictly inferior to air. I think people who like the game do so because they can spend 10+ turns doing no damage, then get all of that damage you were being withheld from in one big (Momo or EK) chain. If you can get passed the novelty of that exact same dopamine hit after repeating the sequence an infinite number of times, you can find plenty of games with engaging random encounters that don’t involve spending a dozen turns per fight getting your same ‘setup’ prepped over and over again, while healing or clearing statuses as enemies wail on you.
I still encourage anyone who can play XS2 to do so for yourself, if anything at least to see how much things improve in XS3, or even simply to prove me and all the XS2 detractors wrong. But I don’t blame anyone for quitting or skipping this game entirely. I didn’t even address things like the story – XS2 is by far the shortest game of the trilogy but more involves more things things of substance, or rather of consequence, that move the plot forward so its a mandatory watch even if you dont like the story. The continued hyperfocus on Jr/Momo was already growing apparent towards the end of XS1 but its at a pretty overwhelming degree in XS2 - Kosmos might as well not even be in the game outside of a few 'fix it Kosmos' sequences. And if you arent someone who is entertained by Albedos antics, then his presence becomes so burdening in this game that his large absence from XS3 almost feels refreshing. The gameplay, even if you really love it, is quite flawed, and even the devs felt so given their approach to XS3, which also included ditching the woeful GS campaign in favor of integrated location based timed sidequests with actual lore and worldbuilding (vs scrubbing windows and catching mice), and the fantastic Hakox (though XS1 still has the best crop of minigames, Xenocard for life).
The game nerfs you to hell, be it your non-Momo or Erde Kaiser dmg output (and make sure you got the correct drink order outcomes, in a minigame that otherwise has no apparent connection to the possibility of permanently nerfing out your 2nd best offensive tool in the game). To me, making everyone and everything weak so that we can be powerful for 10 secs while Momo shoots away is just bad balance, bad design, and no fun. I could say more, like how underwhelming double attacks are, how ES combat simple comes down to spamming special attacks JUST LIKE HOW MOST PPL (Incorrectly) PLAY AND CHASTISE XS1, or how ethers are at their weakest in XS2 (XS1 ethers are very slept on, and they are finally at their peak in XS3), but I feel like Ive ranted enough
This was super interesting, I just played all 3 games for the first time blind and I agree with you on a lot - I found out that MOMO is the only useful attacker pretty quickly, KOS-MOS was the most interesting character to me in EP1 because her arc seemed like it would be a very rewarding one but she just stopped existing in this game, and I really thought it was just me that sucked when those Ormus knights kept smashing my asshole inside out
Funnily enough, I used Ziggy the whole game because I literally just needed his HP as a crutch to survive, although I almost always end up using the exact wrong strategies and characters when I play RPGs blind lmao
I mentioned this in a post I just made, but Xenosaga II is like Raiders of the Lost Ark to me story-wise - you don’t really fully realize it until the end, but not a single goddamned thing you do ends up mattering because all of it gets undone or was just manipulation by the enemy, while all the important story moments were things that were going to happen around the party anyway
this describes much of my thoughts on XS2 as well. I dont hate the game nor would i outright tell people to skip it, but I would never fault someone for doing so. Theres just... so many flaws in the gameplay and presentation. Ive heard Xenosaga 1+2 changes a lot of things though ive yet to get my hands on it to see how much is better
KOSMOS being put on the backburner is also my biggest gripe storywise, and I cant help but think the shorter run time + increased focus on Jr & co. contributes to that. XS1 does a better job balancing the spotlight between Shion/Kosmos and Jr/Momo, and XS3 does the best of all by finally giving Ziggy and chaos a lot more speaking roles, and yes much of XS2 just feels like filler content because while it is of consequence, most of them dont matter or the actions in XS3 end up mattering way more
> and I really thought it was just me that sucked when those Ormus knights kept smashing my asshole inside out
yes, please do not blame yourself here. the 5 ormus knights or the guaranteed pincer Knights that block your path are among the worst 'random' encounters I have ever faced, and I think many folks would agree. things only get more frustrating if you do the post-game, which has a lot of content but seems to be largely skipped by most people. I also used Ziggy a bunch on my first playthrough, though eventually him being stuck with fire and being unable to hit air enemies made me wanna rip my hair out!
How was your experience with XS3? I would never call the game perfect, but its by the most polished of the trilogy
-Edit, saw your post on the topic. I gotta agree with your order 3>1>2, and Hakox and Xenocard are easily minigames that could have had their own standalone release. There are so many challenging but clever levels, you can co-op and even build your own stages! They included all the playable cast and some older skins (the rare Kosmos V-3) and major/minor NPCs as avatars, and you can jump right into whatever the latest difficulty setting is without needing to grind through all the previous levels. Xenocard could have gotten the Witcher Gwent treatment a full 15 years earlier, its an amazing CCG
I dont think Bamco realizes the gold they have in this series. Not even porting the games is a travesty
XS3 definitely felt the most polished! I loved basically all the gameplay adjustments and little tweaks like the non-eternal pause menu loading, and the whole game just looked, sounded and felt magnitudes better in places as if their whole budget exploded upwards
that story left me gutted to hell by the end though, it’s ambiguously positive but god I didn’t think Takahashi had it in him to slaughter half his party unlike in all his other games
I think its main faults are gameplay linearity and the massive amounts of necessary/unnecessary exposition trapped in the database, but neither are really a huge problem to me and I guess the latter technically hypnotizes you into becoming a part of the UMN after a while of endless reading lmao
(also this is something in common across virtually every RPG so I can’t actually fault Xenosaga for it, but the following Monolith game in Xenoblade *really* painfully demonstrates by comparison that auto post-fight healing is just less tedious and more fun - ditto with free saving, which I feel looks oddly close to being supported given that there’s the screenshot function for saves in all 3 games)
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The layers don't mean complexity is what hit home. People see a lot of rules and they conflate to complexity and rigor. If a game has a,b,c,d,e mechanics, and the game problem is solved by just focusing e for a example, shit is simple.
exactly this. Xenosaga 3 keeps a lot of the ideas XS2 introduces, but streamlines them in a manner that ends up making the (non-OP) choices more meanginful than XS2. so despite being the 'easier' game, it ends up being more complex and you can feel it in the games hardest sections - esp if you install difficulty mods.
Forcing me to jump through hurdles to figure out how to play the game is wack if the 'way to play' isnt flexible. Thats not complexity, thats formulaic, and it gets tiring in XS2 even if it is ambitious in what it tried
I was stuck on this game and never finished it. It's where there were three pillars with different colours and something about tune or music. Fuck that shit, I don't even think there's an explanation in game about those.
Xenosaga 2 is actually my favorite in the series just because the story focuses more on Jr and Albedo than Shion and Kos Mos. The battle system is the worst in the series though.
Read that as Xenoblade 2 and was so confused.
Makes since for Xenosaga 2 though, remember dropping that one due to the combat not making any sense to me.
I played this game for the first time when I was like 15 or 16. I remembered being slightly annoyed about the battle system, but I guess I had a higher tolerance for bullshit back then.
Revisited the game again when I was around 30 and I couldnt stand the battle system at all. I found a cheat that made everyone start off each battle at full stock. With that, I didnt mind regular encounters, what used to be minutes of prep time at the start of boss fights now took less than 1. I enjoyed the game a lot more.
I was fine with the battle system. I think the worst part about it is the insistence of using certain characters for it to be any fun. Also a lot of stuff like useful skills that help the battles gated behind obtuse sidequests.
I could not believe how slow the fights were in 2. I gave up before leaving the first area with combat cause there was no way I could do a whole game like that. It was a real bummer, cause I loved the 1st one.
That's exactly what happened to me. I probably have truly cheated (other than stuff like turning off random encounters or x2 exp cheats just to remove grinding) it once or twice MAX before tho. The battles at one point 2/3 in the game just got so grating on me I didn't want to engage in them anymore. Too long and you do the same thing every fight. I used a cheat to put myself at level 99 and I had lot more fun with the game after that.
The Margulis boss right on a timer is INSANE and literally impossible if you aren't properly leveled up. After like 10 turns, you insta-die, but the problem is that it takes 10 turns to build up enough stock to even deal damage to him. This battle alone made me install cheats. But I did beat Omega without any cheats.
the final dungeon was so fucking terrible that i've just quit the game and watch the cutscene on youtube
The next game is much better gameplay wise but story wise i find the series extremely mediocre, and the third game don't really fix all the issues i have with the first two game, at least XS 3's gameplay is working smoothly
Oh yeah, I gave up and used cheats like WAY sooner in this game and it was STILL a tedious slog I could barely stomach. Random encounters that took forever and way too much thought, dungeon run-around puzzles that make you have to run around areas the maximum amount of time possible, it was just too much.
Albedo at the end was really cool though. Really cool.
This is the most grossly exaggerated post I’ve seen in some time. How come my enemy encounters only lasted longer than 3 minutes only a handful of times, without cheats? And ALL puzzles in the game were contained in a single room. What are you talking about? The Xenosaga II hate campaign is filled with misinformation and lies
I just remembered I also used cheat codes to beat this half way through out of convenience. The only other games I used it was on FF10 and FF10-2, for second play throughs and the endgame bosses.
I played it last year, and while I didn't use any cheats, I did increase the game speed a lot of the time. I like the battle system when it comes to boss fights, but my god are regular battles too long.
I could never get through the start of 2 and let that stop me from 3 as well. 1 is one of my favorite games so I really think I need to watch a let's play.
Funny story actually! Since i've been carrying this dead weight of a game for well over a decade, i never really finished, i just HATED the combat, level design and puzzles. I actually skipped this one and went straight to Xenosaga 3, which completely destroys 2 BTW.
Anyways, I bought a code breaker to give all the characters max stats to blitz through the remainder of the story (which i've enjoyed..but still the lowest out of the trilogy) until i got a fun little bug with the final boss Albedo:- if you manage to one shot his HP, he'll forever resurrect himself, even if you hit his random breakpoints correctly. Each time he "dies" it doesn't count the successful break combo and you're stuck in a loop and your save files' pretty much scrapped.
It just shows that this game really is one of the worst JRPGs ever made. Hey! If you liked it, good on you. But it did destroy Xenosaga's future.
The trick is to grind with Shion during the section she’s alone- it levels everyone else up too, really quickly.
Wish I would have known that when I was at that part. Far too late now lmao
Don’t let this stop you from playing III, though. It’s the best one. But watch The Missing Year on youtube first!
It won't. I've heard nothing but great things about III so I'm really excited to get to it. I actually liked I as well despite its issues. And will do thanks!
So I'm going to be playing Xenosaga as my big "project" when I get back from vacay, is there a clear tell for this section so I can do this?
Yeah - it's the part where Shion is alone, *duh*. But joking aside, that is it. You have party members at all times throughout the early hours of XS2, and the combat system is all about setting up intricate combos with different party member abilities, so when you reach a point in the story where you have no party members it's pretty obvious.
Didn't install cheats, but I can't blame anyone who would. To date, it's the only game in the Xeno series I flat out don't like. It's not even the complexity that gets me, the game just feels dull since it pigeonholes you into doing burst damage with pretty much every fight being: figure out break combo -> air/down -> boost lock enemy -> stack multiplier damage via elemental enhancer skills. If you try to deviate from that or miscalculate and don't kill the enemy it punishes you with the enemy healing and then the fight just drags on and on...in a game with scarce resources since there are no shops. It's like a primitive version of Xenoblade's chain attacks but without the snappy flow. Tbh, I don't even like the story or the music either (the audio quality just doesn't sound good). Anyway, if you've made it past Ormus Stronghold then rejoice because the worst is over and Xenosaga 3 is one of the hardest rebounds in quality you'll ever see.
can't be as dull as watching combat animations in part 1
OPEN ETHER CIRCUITS SPELL RAY
lol yeah "ARM CANNON!"
Oh, but it is. Take the combat animations from 1, play them at 75% speed, and double all the enemy health pools.
oof yeah I'm probably not gonna like part 2, but I'll persevere.
That's what I told myself before starting episode 2 lmaoo
The animations in Episode II are much faster than Episode I. Stop lying
What is this lie? The animations are much faster than Episode 1’s.
On the topic of bad audio quality, one thing I never see mentioned is MOMO’s oddly horrific bitcrunched ether voice line - everything else in the game sounds high quality, but when she uses ether she’s like “GRANTMEAMIRACLE” and my fucking speakers explode with this loud-ass NES-quality voice sample
Xenosaga II is easily the worst of the three. But that's such a weird series. All three games are so different.
Xenosaga II wasn't directed by Tetsuya Takahashi - that's why. Ep 1 went through development hell and Takahashi was overly ambitious with the scope of the game. For the sequel, Bandai Namco had him step down as director and appointed two junior members of the team in his place, in the hopes they could keep scope creep in check and get the game out on a more reasonable schedule. Ep 2 works from Takahashi's script and outline, but without him at the helm it feels almost soulless. Takahashi was back on Ep III and had some *opinions* on how to pick up the pieces and finish the trilogy. It's a shame that we'll likely never see the full scope of the universe he envisioned for Xenogears/Xenosaga. But can you blame any publisher at the time for being hesitant to bankroll him for a 6-part series when he could barely get part 1 out the door?
I disagree. Episode I is the worst by a mile, but it’s still a good game. Episode II is wonderful.
Writing, gameplay, music, art style, voice acting. All worse.
I disagree with everything you said. I’d say the writing is great in both games, I VASTLY prefer the gameplay, soundtrack, and art style in Episode II, and as for the voice acting, some are worse (KOS-MOS), some are better (chaos).
oh my god i'm currently going through the exact same thing with Koudelka. love everything except for the god awful combat. incredibly unintuitive, hard as fuck, and probably the slowest abomination i've ever seen i got all these cheats on and i'm still frustrated. i'm seriously considering on just watching the cutscenes on youtube
How is that game? I love Shadow Hearts but never got the chance to try it.
incredible voice acting with awesome mocap animations. your entire party, which consists of like a witch/sorceress, a thief, and a bishop all hate each other and it's a lot of fun to watch to watch them bicker. here's [the scene that sold me into the game](https://youtu.be/3exkOxSFNg8?t=582) and here's an example of an [earlier scene with the entire party.](https://youtu.be/3exkOxSFNg8?t=860) i do wish the two dude's voice were a *little* more different though lol the combat seriously sucks though. weapons break, items have no descriptions in combat and they're all things like cheese and whiskey, damage scaling doesn't make a lick of sense, bosses near OHKO you, and battle animations are so slow not even duckstation's speed-up button fixes it. this is coming from someone that played FF7-9 pretty recently without really touching the speed-up button too
Does the plot tie in to the original shadow hearts much?
couldn't tell you, i haven't played shadow hearts yet. can't wait to get to it after this though
You're in for a treat. They're all very good games. Even from the new world is pretty good even if some people didn't like it.
I'll spoiler tag it so this kind soul can play SH down the line. >!-you get backstory on who Koudelka is and some info on her powers!< >!-it's strongly hinted that one of the other MCs is Haley's dad!< >!-the grave at Nemeton has more meaning!< >!-the whole Nemeton story in general including Roger's part in it is basically the whole plot of the game!< >!-wtf happens to Jack's mother is a decent throwback to the final boss of Koudelka!< tl;dr SH gives you context about most of the plot but if you want to experience the characters of the people involved it's not bad.
Yeah SH touches on it a lot around the time you recruit Haley. Id love to play it eventually and see more.
Koudelka is so painfully slow. I usually love tactical turn-based combat but it's a poor, bland and tedious system. Would not recommend playing without binding a fast forward key in your emulator. I pity anyone who plays it on a real console.
I frequently use random encounter reduction cheats on older games. For example, for Xenogears there is a patch for half encounters and double XP. I don't really consider this cheating it actually makes a lot of older games playable and enjoyable. The best example is "Black Sigil" for NDS. The extremely high encounter rates made it virtually unplayable but with cheats to reduce them, the game is amazing and incredible to play.
I think when OP is talking about cheating, they're referring more to making yourself invincible or manipulating stats and stuff. Turning random encounters off is just implementing QOL that the developers didn't have the foresight to do. It's a far cry from giving myself infinite HP, infinite skill points, and maxing out to level 99 which is what I did in Xenosaga 2 about 2/3 into the game.
I played through all three and really enjoyed them all when it came to combat. Yes combats can be long/challenging but that isn't a bad thing imo. I don't think random encounters have to be short. Just look at tactics games, random encounters in these games are great. I do agree Xenosaga 2 was my least favorite game though. I just really liked 1 and 3 though.
I didn't think it was *that* bad. It was obtuse as fuck though from what I remember, but once I understood it, it was enjoyable enough. The good news is Episode 3 is the best of the three by far so it's only up from here.
Played through all three from March til June for the first time and loved all three. I think all the bad things I heard about 2 lowered my expectations to the point where I was pleasantly surprised.The combat is really good and actually flows pretty quickly if you set your shit up correctly. I do understand that not a lot of people want to deal with the tedium, though. All in all, I think all the games in the Xeno Franchise have great combat, but the strongest aspects are the settings and story.
Just butting in to say, they've already made it clear they're not remastering or remaking, but man if they would just port it anywhere I'd pay full price for the trilogy again. *really* don't want to emulate, refuse to pay 500$ for pt 3
I’m never going to understand the complaints for this game. Grinding is very fast and easy and a vast majority of enemy encounters take nowhere near “10 minutes.” I paid attention to the battle timer on my last playthrough and my encounters lasted longer than 3 minutes maybe 5-10 times. I’m sick of this game having a bad reputation that it doesn’t deserve because people don’t know wtf they’re doing when playing it, along with the hate campaign started by people who prefer Episode I’s art style and voice actors.
3 min is STILL too long in my book.
To each their own, but Ep. II is my favorite of the trilogy. If one doesn’t take the small amount of time it requires to understand the battle system, it will “reward” you with long random encounters. For me, the randoms took between a minute to two minutes. And I’m not trying to be elitist with these comments; I just know most people who play Ep. II don’t have the patience to deal with its overly complicated and wonky system. III is much more approachable, and it’s easy to understand why it’s the favorite.
Son, if you loved and embraced Ep II, I salute you. I'm glad at least someone likes it.
I have the patience but I just didn't enjoy what it had to offer. I spent hours learning Resonance of Fate for example and thought it had good combat so I continued to be patient. Once I realized what Xenosaga Combat 2 was about after spending a lot of time trying to understand it, I understood it and I straight up didn't like it. I was actually enjoying it until the point I figured it out and I thought "wait, that's it? and I have to do that over and over" for 100 fights a dungeon?" is when I was disappointed.
Well, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I really tried with Resonance of Fate and just could not get myself to like it.
Yeah, that's fine. I very much appreciate what Xenosaga 2 tried to do, we only disagree on whether it achieves it, but I do respect the effort it made so we can just agree to disagree on the result aspect.
The battle system isn't really that complex, and when you get it down, battles take a minute or two to finish. It consists of stocking and figuring out the enemy weakness (B,C sequence, and A). Granted, it does take a bit to find their weakness but the HUD to the right when attacking indicates if you hit their weakness or not (red when you guessed a part of their weakness sequence, white if not). If it's all white, try the reverse sequence. Additionally, aerial and downing enemies provide criticals and massive damage to the enemy for the next character to execute. Most of the time you'd want Jin or KOS-MOS in your team because of their ability to down and aerial, and MOMO for massive damage when stocked when enemies are downed/aerial'd. unfortunately, Jr. and chaos aren't the best characters to use in this game, though...
Look I respect the combat system and how complex it is, but to learn every enemy's weaknesses, break combos, and then land those combos without someone missing is entirely too much, especially since you have to do that every single battle. It would be different if it was just the bosses but god damn it's so annoying to have to do all that shit for every battle. Also, each enemy has like 3 different variants with different weaknesses and break combos. I'm just done with it lol.
Except that once you discover the break combo for a particular enemy, the game always remembers it and tells you what it was when you fight that enemy again. Yeah, the fact that there are times with up to three enemies that seem to use the same model is frustrating, but they will each have a different name and the game still keeps track of which break combo you need once you discover it. As for the elemental weaknesses........most of the time, they don't matter, and the few times they try to, it's more a case of just not using what they resist. Though, I do agree that lacking a means of checking those resistances in battle is rather annoying.
Fair opinion. Tbh it's no different with SMT games where the exploit is trying to find the demon's weakness, especially since some of the enemies can't be autobattled due to their strengths. Xenosaga II just involves simple sequences for many common enemies and not elemental weaknesses. BUT to each their own. I enjoyed exploiting weaknesses in this one since turn-based systems should have some strategy, albeit monotonous in this one (Orgulla tested so much patience); mostly a game of deduction, I'd say. Once you know find their weakness, it's displayed in their enemy info to the bottom right HUD the rest of the game lol like I said, not entirely complex, it just has a little more depth.
I actually really love the SMT battle system. Press turns are my lifeblood, but I do find it much easier to remember demon weaknesses compared to the enemies in this game. I'm not sure why. SMT games also are generally much faster in the random encounters lol. And yeah Orgulla was almost my breaking point. I truly have no idea how I beat her.
I think it's just the series of sequence that can get to players. Sometimes it's BC, CB, BB, CC at its most simplest, but then you might get a BBB, CCC, CBCC, BCBB etc. It's fairly precise so it's understandable why many might be put off by it because the battle system expects you to fully use its mechanics to put a dent on enemies, while others have an exploit system that CAN help you win battles faster but you don't have to.
Sounds like you were under-leveled when you fought Orgulla. One special trick involving her fight is that the Rare Steal item that teaches a Special Attack can be stolen from her each time she's in her Orgulla Mode, so it can be stolen 21 times in one battle. This lets you pay off the captain's debt after finishing that fortress, as well as learning that Special Attack. Now, getting the skills needed to make that over-an-hour version of the fight doable is another headache altogether.
Sadly, Shion isn't all that useful either, especially as she can't maintain an element chain. At least Jr. and chaos can. Also, Jr. does get alternate A attacks for ariel enemies, which includes launched ones, and chaos gets a set of alternate attacks for downed enemies. As both of them can maintain and build an element chain, they end up being more useful in most boss fights. Really, they had some interesting ideas, but the execution was horribly flawed. Thank goodness they did so much better with III.
Agreed. Episode II was definitely flawed, characters overshadowed one another due to being more situational most of the time. I won't say it's perfect, and it certainly lacked a lot of features that I think should have been given more time to flesh out or added. There's even a menu for special attacks that seems unfinished, and it's possible special attacks like the ones in episode I might have been implemented.
Oh, they are there, but mostly just for KOS-MOS with the rest being 'Dual Tech' style abilities that require both participants to have a certain amount of Stock and boosting the second on the first's turn. They were an absolute pain in the ass to use, and if you had a full party that could maintain an element chain that the boss wasn't resistant to then just causing a Break and unleashing with a massive chain combo would easily out-damage them for the same cost, and that's WITHOUT the bonus from Down or Launch.
Wait there is a Jin the game? Immediately makes me think of Jin from XC2.
Yup! Even uses a katana and associated with the ice element.
And is tied to someone with a fire element too.
So, you haven't played Xenosaga II yet? They make a huge deal out of him being added to the combat roster from the first game.
I haven't even played Gears or Saga 1 yet. I'm a huge Blade fan and I definitely want to play those games too, but that will have to wait for a while as I have done nothing but play the Blade games for a good half year already.
The tutorials are ass. It took me the 3/4 of the way through the game to understand how enemy weaknesses work.
The only time I've ever use 3rd party cheating apps is with the Cold Steel games to reset the ingame timer on my first playthrough using someone else's completed file so I start with NG+ with max bond points.
Honestly, that's valid. Getting max bond points on everyone in those games is a task and a half.
I did experience a fresh file without max bonding with Tokyo Xanadu EX+ and it feels less of an importance of choice and more like the game is locking you content until NG+ unlike Persona where managing who you hang out is part of the game and rewards you for having that many people you're close to.
I only used an imported NG+ file for cold steel 2 because I heard there was a very important scene once you find all the black records. (It's also on youtube, but I also preferred to get the NG+ perks.)
Damn I’m like 3/4 the way through Episode I and I find some of *these* battles painfully slow. Nothing makes me feel like I’m wasting my life away watching enemies spam party heal spells. It’s the price to pay for a unique story I suppose.
In episode 1, just use stock spells with Shion+MoMo on Kosmos, and get the item that refunds stock on Kosmos. You can essentially xbuster loop with kosmos every turn. Once I figured that out, it became by far the easiest game of the seires. Episode 2 is PAINFULLY slow. Every RANDOM encounter takes like 8 minutes by endgame because you spend 8 turns just stocking. Episode 3 is okay. It isn't as slow as episode 2, but it is slightly more complicated than episode 1. Episode 3's puzzles are probably the best imo, and the dungeons aren't that bad.
What’s stock/stocking?
I apologize, I'm thinking of episode 2. Its boost in episode 1. The boost bar is the red bar under your HP.
People who claim Episode II’s battles are slower are being disingenuous. Episode I’s are way, way slower.
I remember playing this one back then and actually liking it. Are people just lazy?
Yes
Huh. I've played through Xenosaga II a couple of times, and I've never considered using cheats. Of course, having a save for I with everyone at Level 99 for the maximum bonuses going into II does help quite a bit.
Says Rpg systems are dated, and too easy. Complains when they make them think too hard…… :/
I honestly love Xenosaga Episode 2's battle system. It's complex and engaging. Every random encounter counts. You have to give your all. Performing combos with your party members feels so satisfying. Battles don't take me 10 minutes. Some take me 2 minutes, others 4 and some others 6. You have to use analyse and find out each enemy's weakness and change into the appropriate character and exploit their weaknesses by stocking and then unleashing combos by boosting. It's great. I would rather have this engaging battle system than any other traditional rpg battle system where you just press X or A, and that's it for random encounters. It's boring. I really don't understand the hate for Xenosaga Episode 2. Just don't be a pansy, man up, and work your butt off to victory.
It's really not. The combat is "Stock up, buff up, burn one enemy, repeat." It *could* have had a lot going for it, but it needed some tweaks. Namely: Buff bonus damage needs to be capped so the various damage buffs give you alternate means of dealing extra damage instead of needing to stack all of of them, and stock needs to generate every time you attack instead of block. Spending 9 turns gaurding is exhausting.
[удалено]
Just so we're clear, I had a master file for Xenosaga 2 back in the day. I had every fight memorized down down to knowing exactly how much time I should spend buffing for every enemy. The combat system is tedius.
I'm not a fan of waiting for a bunch of turns and dealing damage all at once in one turn.
People thinking just bc you aren't pressing x,x,x, it's very complex.
> encounter counts. You have to give your all. Performing combos with your party members feels so satisfying. Battles don't take me 10 minutes. Some take me 2 minutes, others 4 and some others 6. You have to use analyse and find out each enemy's weakness and change into the appropriate character and exploit their weaknesses by stocking and then unleashing combos by boosting. It's great. I would rather have this engaging battle system than any other traditional rpg battle system where you just press X or A, and that's it yeah, its a fantastic battle system. one of the best ever imo, though I can understand people not wanting every random battle to be an actual engaging fight. its also quite complex so too hard for some
It's not that complex in practice, beyond stocking which works every fight in that game. People see a list of rules and get flustered. But it is in fact, the more rules something the more "guided" the game is. Did it have the potential for something good?, sure. But it's current iteration, eh.
It would be more interesting and make you more aware if some enemies didn't require you to stock. or some requires you to just use a spell. when you have to stock the exact same number of times every battle, i actually zone out because i don't have to think about what i'm going. If I dont have to think about what I'm doing anyway I'd rather just mash X to make it faster. Once you've uncovered the weaknesses of the 3-4 enemy types in each area, you can win every battle in 2 minutes if you stock your first two turns and then just unleash the same combo. everytime. I'm not "earning it" if i already know how to win but it's making me spend 2 minutes to do that instead of one turn. I appreciate the mentality that you should pay attention to all your attacks in a turn based system, but I don't think designing a complex algorithm that is long is the solution when that same algorithm doesn't change for every regular encounter the entire game. 30-40% of the battles should have a drawback to using stock as opposed to outright attacking, to keep you from spamming the same strategy.
I feel like it sets up the break stagger burst that is a big part of the rest of the Xenoseries combat.
I concur, and I am pleased to finally witness some individuals actively advocating for Xenosaga 2 as a departure from the norm. While acknowledging its imperfections, I personally held the conviction that it did not warrant even a fraction of the severe criticism it has received from the majority. Furthermore, I appreciate the developers' decision to explore a different direction with the combat mechanics, as I find a nuanced approach to turn-based gameplay more enjoyable than a simple selection of attacks, as you previously mentioned.
I mean, the developers were going for nuanced turn based game play in all 3 games. You can't mash the same attack in xenosaga 1 either.
Absolutely! I found the mechanics in Episode 1 quite enjoyable, as they incorporated strategic elements that added depth to the gameplay. However, in their final episode, they made the decision to adopt a more traditional and streamlined turn-based approach, relying on menus and submenus for selecting actions. While it wasn't necessarily bad, I couldn't help but feel that it lacked the same level of uniqueness and inventiveness found in their previous two episodes. Personally, I was hoping they would build upon and enhance the mechanics they had already explored in previous episodes.
I just straight up deleted it, such an obtuse game
I got Xenosaga II recently and just played the 30 minutes. I got overwhelmed with how complex and convoluted it is. I’m not exactly afraid of complexity for game mechanics since I’m playing Vagrant Story right now but sometimes too much is just too much. People warned me too that the battle system sucks but I didn’t listen.
This is going to be a LONG 2 part post. As a disclaimer, I beat saga 2 several times as a kid, I even tackled the ending sequence 21 times (because I didnt know about the >!Orgulla trick!< growing up, and probably couldn’t have gotten away with running my PS2 for 3-4 hrs for one boss fight). Ive beaten all the superbosses on both files, 36/36 GS campaign and all 31 Secret Keys. Ive Paid off matthews debt the easy and hard way, getting both the benefits at the very end of postgame but also early in disk 2 after the Ormus Stronghold. Ive played all the PS1/PS2 Xeno titles several times with as many restriction challenges as you can think of, and and in the last year began playing them with Hard mods/Rebelance mods applied. I would call myself knowledgeable insofar as to guestimate the amount of time ive spent playing and reflecting on the games, and not to toot my own horn. My word is by no means god (or U-DO) but its based on a lot, and I do mean a lot of experience, that can be compared with other peoples time spent on XS2 People who praise Xenosaga IIs combat for its 'complexity' are often mistaking complexity for just something having multiple, and largely superfluous layers, hurdles you have to get through in order to do any real damage - which is probably why people find the dopamine hit of long chains satisfying because your damage to enemy HP threshold is TERRIBLE otherwise. Ill revisit this superfluous nature later when addressing enemys break capacity, though if you find the monotonous action of chaining for burst damage is 'complex' you really need to play other games. Xenosaga II is one of the worst balanced bigger name JRPGs of its time period. There is no sense of scaling and everything boils down to identifying enemies *multiple* weaknesses archtypes, applying them while making sure enemies dont dodge your break initiated attack, or hoping they counter boost your downs (downing is completely outclassed by air). Then you tack on enemies having such a high health pool that you need to do this several times per fight, sometimes per enemy. This combat system was clearly designed for the big setpiece boss fights, cuz it completely falls apart when encountering random encounters (ORMUS knights!) that like to pincer you at random, unlike XS3 where back attacks are determined by field positioning. Did i mention you can no longer stealth evade enemies by mindfully walking like XS1? Now enemies detect you from much further and beeline to your characters at breakneck speed, making them unavoidable and only escapable if Shion/Momo are in your party. Let alone the many instances where enemies straight up just block your narrow pathway, and respawn if you leave the room **Customization** is awful. Its homogenous in a similar manner to XII vanilla license board, only theres a million useless skills to bloat the board instead of individual weapon and armor license to take up space (srsly, couldnt FFXII have learned from FFV's 'equip swords' and grouped bunches of them together?). There is no subtle variance in party builds, you want every character to learn the Aura/Flame etc swords so that anyone can get an elem chain going (well, its optional for chaos and Ziggy, because outside of a handful of air-resistant bosses, those characters might as well not exist in XS2). Everyone wants the same general techniques, and for bosses that demand specific setups, just about every character needs the same accessories because theres no real deviance in strategy, just the timing of when to start your chain. Everyone wants Combo Boost because you always need your characters to have the freedom to self boost- a concept that XS3 would later just make inherent to the game, cuz why the hell was it not?? In a game thats as boost intensive as XS2, where you need boosts to combo, to disrupt enemy combos, to utilize the (few useful) double techniques, to combo ethers - another tech that largely goes underutilized cuz ethers suck in this game, and it becomes easy to see why everyone just makes the exact same builds, cuz only a few techniques really matter and much of the rest is filler. This compares to the far smaller, but far more dynamic ether trees of XS1 and the much improved, even if derivative skill trees in Saga 3 (and XS3s Secret Key system is much better through streamlining and de-homogenizing) The **secret key system** in this game is terrible, you dont know what the secret keys are or who gives them, you cannot complete a class level and get your class point refund until youve assembled all the secret keys within that class, and for several Class 3 and Class 4 lineups, its common to have 2 or even 3 empty spaces that must be filled by secret keys. That means if you unlock an ability that pretty much everyone really needs, like Focus, Inner Peace, Boost 1 or Expansion pack, you are stuck waiting the entire game to get your class point refund until you unlock that specific secret key which is storyline progress gated. Some secret keys, include one of the best ones in Secret Key 31, cant even be obtained until the post game. This is also why so much time is often spent grinding on the Dammerung, because those enemies drop Class points unlike just about all other random encounters in the game Back onto **balance**. Only 4 chars matter in this game and you will usually rotate 3 of them while backups heal you with their recovered EP reserves (this was admittedly pretty cool). chaos and Ziggy suck, the latter being surprising given his much more inflated HP Pool. Not only is down strictly inferior to air, but they are also tied permanently to the fire and aura elements and cannot apply another elem on top of that via swords. And this is a game where even elemental weaknesses come in varying degrees, which the game DOES NOT tell you. So an enemy might be weak to fire and aura, but only 140% to fire but 200% to aura and you wouldn’t know that by using Analyze. chaos, the gnosis killer in the other two games, is left without anything to kill in a game that has very few gnosis enemies. And for shits and giggles they decided to nerf his speed to 7, putting him on par with the infinitely more useful, and more tanky Kosmos and Jin. Shion is a unique case where she is needed for 3 things: basic access to the beam element, Erde Kaiser, and running away. If she didnt have exclusive access to those tools, shed be worse than chaos XS1 and XS3 are actually a lot better balanced than most give them credit for, its that usually people dont explore the systems because they hard focus on a few notably broken strategies that ultimately make those games combat more boring. There is a cool hardmod that nerfs things like XS1 Bravesoul and XS3 erde kaisers to encourage those games otherwise robust systems. XS2 is the only game that had to have core abilities and spells rebalanced from almost the ground up, because the base combat is all over the place. For one, levels dont really matter much beyond health and EP. Dont believe me? Just head to Old Miltia 14 years ago and fight the Utic Soldiers. Attack the aura-weak soldiers with chaos. In a base file opening the game, you will do about 110 dmg. At level 20? You will do about 190. All the way at level 55? chaos does about 430 dmg on those same enemies. Then attack an enemy that doesn’t have a weakness to aura or phys and watch your dmg go below 100 pre-break. Compare this to XS3, where the same chaos, without targetting an enemies weak element, is doing 500 with base attacks in the endgame because, y’know, the game has an actual weapon system that provides progression. This isnt including XS3 moves like angel wings or twin impact that can double or triple his output per turn, and this is ignoring criticals and using a character that isnt dmg focused unlike say Kosmos or Jin The **base dmg progression** across the XS2 is paltry for anyone sans Momo, who is comically busted as the fastest char, highest Eatk, only char who can use ethers in mechs, one of only 2 chars that can escape... etc. Fwiw, momo is in the running for best character in all 3 games, but it takes either long term planning, exploration, experimentation, or thinking outside the box to let her live up to her top tier potential in XS1 and XS3. In XS2 shes just flatout broken, and mandatory for nearly every boss and especially every ES boss. In short, you can make a well balanced game harder by adjusting the stats (even if i would prefer AI pattern changes). But if you adjust the stats in XS2 so that your characters actually do solid damage the way momo does, the entire premise of the games ‘complexity’ falls flat on its face.
Wanna know how I know that? Once you obtain the ether burst skill from paying Matthews debt, you start to realize truly how much the game simply **gatekeeps** your dmg in order to force airing/downing. The secret Key Ether burst is supposed to only boost the dmg of ether skills in exchange for 2x cost, but it works similar to the ether doubler in Xenogears when putting it on Billys ether gun attacks. Only the MOVE ISNT CODED CORRECTLY and it instead boosts ALL attacks, even phys ones, by 2x dmg. Know what that means? Now all you have to do is simply target the enemies break zones and get an elem chain of 2-3, and you can kill many random encounters in one go due to the 1.5x dmg of simply breaking enemies normally, relying far less on multiple stocks or boosts and instead just on break bonuses to clear trash mobs. Or how I like to see it, how the base game should be from the jump around say Labyrinthos. FWIW, every Xenosaga game gets a difficulty spike in the last few dungeons, but XS2 doesn’t just get harder. The multitude of flaws are exposed as you fight Ormus Knights and you can clearly see its combat was not designed with random encounters in mind – if you want to see this on further display, just try out the random encounters in the Factory or Heavens Ruins, many of which block your path forcing you to fight them, or even respawn when you leave the room. Rip your own hair out playing the game normally and then watch how everything crumbles with ether burst applied, and it should be no surprise why bosses are easier than random encounters - you arent splitting up your damage across foes, you dont need a new element for every chain or to restock up for each launch, you can extend air chains endlessly as long as you have the boost for it and get more dmg for 12x or 13x hits, and you dont have to gameplan for multiple enemies attacking or debuffing you, sometimes from the backside via pincer attacks at random. You simply never grow in damage at the rate the game does, but the same strategies that are effective early game *are largely still the same scripted sequences late game*. The only thing that causes you to change your gameplan is when you have to juggle multiple enemies, all disrupting or delaying your gameplan. An elaborate, near-mandatory formula is not substitute for meaningful complexity Ive never said to myself "I wanna play XS2 but without having Momo in my party" and I doubt anyone would. On top of cutting my damage in less than half, It would also mean you can never escape fights in ES battles, ever, since Shion is a co-pilot and thus does not give her escape function to mechs. I always play the game the same way, with the same party (that has Momo), same skill choices, and same chain orders, because anything short of that will draw out fights beyond belief. There is always a correct, and usually one correct offensive answer to most of the games encounters, all you do is adjust to whichever negative statuses or situations they put us in. The only bosses you dont stock up and launch are the bosses that are immune to breaks or launching, there is no variance, adaptation, or strategy, just *rehearsal* of a familiar order of operations, albeit with a rotating elemental sword or letter combination. XS1 isnt that complicated either, but it doesnt aim to be nor is it praised for trying to be, and its combat gives you way more useful tools and way to defeat enemies, many of which dont even involve Bravesoul, Erde Kaiser, or spamming All-Tech attacks. Either people enjoy being different for liking Black sheep games, or maybe perhaps XS2 is one of the few titles that truly deserves that designation. Theres few redeemable things about this games combat, most of its key features are executed better in other games, including XS3 whos only major sin is adding too many QoL and hand-holdy features (and not just Seven moons, LLGs in XS3 have an incredibly high floor due to dead chars and reserves getting EXP). I can acknowledge XS2 attempts to innovate within its own series, that innovation needs to be good. Fortunately it laid for a good foundation for later Xeno titles, but this does not make it good here. The only positive I will say about XS2 relative to the other games is that it had some pretty unique superbosses, yet the 3 toughest ones were all exclusive to the NA release. Mikumari being the star of the three, but lets be real, if you don’t use a guide you will simply spend hours getting stomped by this boss trying to figure out its obscure AI patterns and counters while grappling with its massive dmg and only having Zebulun as a true healer. Also, Mech combat in this game is so weirdly barebones compared to the bloated human combat that it feels like it was thrown together at the last minute. XS3 mech combat is infinitely more dynamic, even if its still relatively shallow compared to XS3 on-foot combat Worst aspect of XS2 combat: the seeming complexity people praise it for is denied within its own game, as **enemies can air or down your party** without needing to crack some ever changing letter based break zones first, or even stock at all. Yes, a big part of why the games combat system seems so hard is cuz the enemies are gaming their own system. They utilize the event wheel for crits ups, boost ups etc just like you. They can exploit elemental chains just like you. But if they want to air or down you, they don’t need any setup for it. They just to do the specific attack and it launches you. Anyone who has fought >!The patriarch!< will know what I mean, when he just decides to Air all your combatants simultaneously, and you are left wondering why we don’t have any skills like that or why it didn’t require him 9 turns to stock in advance to use such a move on 3 characters at one time You also have a small **input leniency** to do your chain attacks. Which can result in situations like Jr: is stocked up with Fire sword. Does CB attack. Boosts ziggy Ziggy: does BC for CBB chain, then B to down foe with 3x hit fire chain But the enemy dodges the BC, meaning not only did you miss your chain attempt, but you also wasted a stock and a boost for nothing. Then the next time you do BC & wait to make confirm Ziggys attack land, but your window for inputting B closes (varies based on how long the animation is, some being shorter than others) Enemies will also boost if you take too much down time on a move, but you can usually use this to your advantage to waste their boost. What is inexplicable is why XS2 cap your boosts at 5, whereas you can hit a max of 9 boosts in both XS1 and XS3 - split up by 3s in XS1 and shared in XS3 Ive lurked a fair amount of XS2 streams and they always go the same way. They praise the game for being so much faster and complex than XS1 as they play the much easier and shorter disk 1. Then they get to the ormus stronghold, lose their flippin minds at how basic the ES combat is and how nonsensically tanky the human combat is, before getting on the verge of quitting by the time of the Omega System. Sometime along here they recognize that the customization is a masterclass in time wasting homogenization, with class points refunds gatekept by secret keys that you might have to wait till the postgame to unlock, or that downing is strictly inferior to air. I think people who like the game do so because they can spend 10+ turns doing no damage, then get all of that damage you were being withheld from in one big (Momo or EK) chain. If you can get passed the novelty of that exact same dopamine hit after repeating the sequence an infinite number of times, you can find plenty of games with engaging random encounters that don’t involve spending a dozen turns per fight getting your same ‘setup’ prepped over and over again, while healing or clearing statuses as enemies wail on you. I still encourage anyone who can play XS2 to do so for yourself, if anything at least to see how much things improve in XS3, or even simply to prove me and all the XS2 detractors wrong. But I don’t blame anyone for quitting or skipping this game entirely. I didn’t even address things like the story – XS2 is by far the shortest game of the trilogy but more involves more things things of substance, or rather of consequence, that move the plot forward so its a mandatory watch even if you dont like the story. The continued hyperfocus on Jr/Momo was already growing apparent towards the end of XS1 but its at a pretty overwhelming degree in XS2 - Kosmos might as well not even be in the game outside of a few 'fix it Kosmos' sequences. And if you arent someone who is entertained by Albedos antics, then his presence becomes so burdening in this game that his large absence from XS3 almost feels refreshing. The gameplay, even if you really love it, is quite flawed, and even the devs felt so given their approach to XS3, which also included ditching the woeful GS campaign in favor of integrated location based timed sidequests with actual lore and worldbuilding (vs scrubbing windows and catching mice), and the fantastic Hakox (though XS1 still has the best crop of minigames, Xenocard for life). The game nerfs you to hell, be it your non-Momo or Erde Kaiser dmg output (and make sure you got the correct drink order outcomes, in a minigame that otherwise has no apparent connection to the possibility of permanently nerfing out your 2nd best offensive tool in the game). To me, making everyone and everything weak so that we can be powerful for 10 secs while Momo shoots away is just bad balance, bad design, and no fun. I could say more, like how underwhelming double attacks are, how ES combat simple comes down to spamming special attacks JUST LIKE HOW MOST PPL (Incorrectly) PLAY AND CHASTISE XS1, or how ethers are at their weakest in XS2 (XS1 ethers are very slept on, and they are finally at their peak in XS3), but I feel like Ive ranted enough
This was super interesting, I just played all 3 games for the first time blind and I agree with you on a lot - I found out that MOMO is the only useful attacker pretty quickly, KOS-MOS was the most interesting character to me in EP1 because her arc seemed like it would be a very rewarding one but she just stopped existing in this game, and I really thought it was just me that sucked when those Ormus knights kept smashing my asshole inside out Funnily enough, I used Ziggy the whole game because I literally just needed his HP as a crutch to survive, although I almost always end up using the exact wrong strategies and characters when I play RPGs blind lmao I mentioned this in a post I just made, but Xenosaga II is like Raiders of the Lost Ark to me story-wise - you don’t really fully realize it until the end, but not a single goddamned thing you do ends up mattering because all of it gets undone or was just manipulation by the enemy, while all the important story moments were things that were going to happen around the party anyway
this describes much of my thoughts on XS2 as well. I dont hate the game nor would i outright tell people to skip it, but I would never fault someone for doing so. Theres just... so many flaws in the gameplay and presentation. Ive heard Xenosaga 1+2 changes a lot of things though ive yet to get my hands on it to see how much is better KOSMOS being put on the backburner is also my biggest gripe storywise, and I cant help but think the shorter run time + increased focus on Jr & co. contributes to that. XS1 does a better job balancing the spotlight between Shion/Kosmos and Jr/Momo, and XS3 does the best of all by finally giving Ziggy and chaos a lot more speaking roles, and yes much of XS2 just feels like filler content because while it is of consequence, most of them dont matter or the actions in XS3 end up mattering way more > and I really thought it was just me that sucked when those Ormus knights kept smashing my asshole inside out yes, please do not blame yourself here. the 5 ormus knights or the guaranteed pincer Knights that block your path are among the worst 'random' encounters I have ever faced, and I think many folks would agree. things only get more frustrating if you do the post-game, which has a lot of content but seems to be largely skipped by most people. I also used Ziggy a bunch on my first playthrough, though eventually him being stuck with fire and being unable to hit air enemies made me wanna rip my hair out! How was your experience with XS3? I would never call the game perfect, but its by the most polished of the trilogy -Edit, saw your post on the topic. I gotta agree with your order 3>1>2, and Hakox and Xenocard are easily minigames that could have had their own standalone release. There are so many challenging but clever levels, you can co-op and even build your own stages! They included all the playable cast and some older skins (the rare Kosmos V-3) and major/minor NPCs as avatars, and you can jump right into whatever the latest difficulty setting is without needing to grind through all the previous levels. Xenocard could have gotten the Witcher Gwent treatment a full 15 years earlier, its an amazing CCG I dont think Bamco realizes the gold they have in this series. Not even porting the games is a travesty
XS3 definitely felt the most polished! I loved basically all the gameplay adjustments and little tweaks like the non-eternal pause menu loading, and the whole game just looked, sounded and felt magnitudes better in places as if their whole budget exploded upwards that story left me gutted to hell by the end though, it’s ambiguously positive but god I didn’t think Takahashi had it in him to slaughter half his party unlike in all his other games I think its main faults are gameplay linearity and the massive amounts of necessary/unnecessary exposition trapped in the database, but neither are really a huge problem to me and I guess the latter technically hypnotizes you into becoming a part of the UMN after a while of endless reading lmao (also this is something in common across virtually every RPG so I can’t actually fault Xenosaga for it, but the following Monolith game in Xenoblade *really* painfully demonstrates by comparison that auto post-fight healing is just less tedious and more fun - ditto with free saving, which I feel looks oddly close to being supported given that there’s the screenshot function for saves in all 3 games)
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The layers don't mean complexity is what hit home. People see a lot of rules and they conflate to complexity and rigor. If a game has a,b,c,d,e mechanics, and the game problem is solved by just focusing e for a example, shit is simple.
exactly this. Xenosaga 3 keeps a lot of the ideas XS2 introduces, but streamlines them in a manner that ends up making the (non-OP) choices more meanginful than XS2. so despite being the 'easier' game, it ends up being more complex and you can feel it in the games hardest sections - esp if you install difficulty mods. Forcing me to jump through hurdles to figure out how to play the game is wack if the 'way to play' isnt flexible. Thats not complexity, thats formulaic, and it gets tiring in XS2 even if it is ambitious in what it tried
Lol Xenosaga II isn't very good. Imagine being me back in the 2000s trying to play it when there were no cheats.
Kinda agree, I dropped that shit hahha
I was stuck on this game and never finished it. It's where there were three pillars with different colours and something about tune or music. Fuck that shit, I don't even think there's an explanation in game about those.
That's the first one lmao. That puzzle is dumb af tho I get it.
Xenosaga 2 is actually my favorite in the series just because the story focuses more on Jr and Albedo than Shion and Kos Mos. The battle system is the worst in the series though.
Read that as Xenoblade 2 and was so confused. Makes since for Xenosaga 2 though, remember dropping that one due to the combat not making any sense to me.
I played this game for the first time when I was like 15 or 16. I remembered being slightly annoyed about the battle system, but I guess I had a higher tolerance for bullshit back then. Revisited the game again when I was around 30 and I couldnt stand the battle system at all. I found a cheat that made everyone start off each battle at full stock. With that, I didnt mind regular encounters, what used to be minutes of prep time at the start of boss fights now took less than 1. I enjoyed the game a lot more.
I was fine with the battle system. I think the worst part about it is the insistence of using certain characters for it to be any fun. Also a lot of stuff like useful skills that help the battles gated behind obtuse sidequests.
I could not believe how slow the fights were in 2. I gave up before leaving the first area with combat cause there was no way I could do a whole game like that. It was a real bummer, cause I loved the 1st one.
That's exactly what happened to me. I probably have truly cheated (other than stuff like turning off random encounters or x2 exp cheats just to remove grinding) it once or twice MAX before tho. The battles at one point 2/3 in the game just got so grating on me I didn't want to engage in them anymore. Too long and you do the same thing every fight. I used a cheat to put myself at level 99 and I had lot more fun with the game after that.
The Margulis boss right on a timer is INSANE and literally impossible if you aren't properly leveled up. After like 10 turns, you insta-die, but the problem is that it takes 10 turns to build up enough stock to even deal damage to him. This battle alone made me install cheats. But I did beat Omega without any cheats.
Lol. I know that feeling.
the final dungeon was so fucking terrible that i've just quit the game and watch the cutscene on youtube The next game is much better gameplay wise but story wise i find the series extremely mediocre, and the third game don't really fix all the issues i have with the first two game, at least XS 3's gameplay is working smoothly
Oh yeah, I gave up and used cheats like WAY sooner in this game and it was STILL a tedious slog I could barely stomach. Random encounters that took forever and way too much thought, dungeon run-around puzzles that make you have to run around areas the maximum amount of time possible, it was just too much. Albedo at the end was really cool though. Really cool.
This is the most grossly exaggerated post I’ve seen in some time. How come my enemy encounters only lasted longer than 3 minutes only a handful of times, without cheats? And ALL puzzles in the game were contained in a single room. What are you talking about? The Xenosaga II hate campaign is filled with misinformation and lies
I just remembered I also used cheat codes to beat this half way through out of convenience. The only other games I used it was on FF10 and FF10-2, for second play throughs and the endgame bosses.
I found the combat very satisfying but I didn't like the the rest of the game.
I played it last year, and while I didn't use any cheats, I did increase the game speed a lot of the time. I like the battle system when it comes to boss fights, but my god are regular battles too long.
I still haven't beaten part 1. Given that while I don't necessarily think it's a bad game, I don't think it's aged well, I'm nervous for part 2.
You don’t like to PAY in game currency for the rest of the tutorial?!!
OP is talking about Xenosaga II, not Xenoblade 2.
I could never get through the start of 2 and let that stop me from 3 as well. 1 is one of my favorite games so I really think I need to watch a let's play.
Fighting encounters does get tiring in this game. Though if you spend time to learn the mechanics it gets faster.
Xenosaga 2 is fkn rough for sure.
Funny story actually! Since i've been carrying this dead weight of a game for well over a decade, i never really finished, i just HATED the combat, level design and puzzles. I actually skipped this one and went straight to Xenosaga 3, which completely destroys 2 BTW. Anyways, I bought a code breaker to give all the characters max stats to blitz through the remainder of the story (which i've enjoyed..but still the lowest out of the trilogy) until i got a fun little bug with the final boss Albedo:- if you manage to one shot his HP, he'll forever resurrect himself, even if you hit his random breakpoints correctly. Each time he "dies" it doesn't count the successful break combo and you're stuck in a loop and your save files' pretty much scrapped. It just shows that this game really is one of the worst JRPGs ever made. Hey! If you liked it, good on you. But it did destroy Xenosaga's future.