Xenosaga II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose

When I first heard of Xenosaga, I hadn’t played Xenogears, the so-called prequel. I didn’t even know that there was supposed to be a connection between the two games. Now that I look back, I think that it was a good thing having never played the PS1 classic, since it allowed me to focus only on Xenosaga’s story, instead of comparing it to it’s supposed predecessor. After I finished Xenosaga, I started playing Xenogears, and I found my self linking the stories from a Xenosaga fan’s point of view. This caught my interest, and I was avidly awaiting the release of the second Episode to see how the two games would tie in. A bit frightened by the not so positive reviews from Japanese fans, I threw myself back into the Xenosaga universe.

Story
I think that it’s safe to say that most fans anticipated the game not for the gameplay, but for it’s massive story, so I’ll start with that. Der Wille zur Macht left us with a lot of unanswered questions. What is KOS-MOS, and what is her relationship to Shion? What are the Gnosis? What is the Zohar and Abel’s Ark? For those who thought that Episode II would bring us an answer, prepare for a disappointment. Jenseits von Gut und Bose mainly focuses on the relationship between the U.R.T.V.s, but the game also sheds some light on the events that led up to the Miltian Conflict and the appearance of the Gnosis. We learn more about Momo’s connection to the Y-Data, Shion’s brother Jin is brought to the foreground, and his old rivalry with Margulis, leader of U-TIC is being explained, but there are also new enemies showing up like the Ormus organisation that claims to be the rightful owner of the Zohar.

The already massive story is developed even more, and things that may seem trivial at first turn out to be the catalysts for major events later on. The problem is that the game doesn’t provide enough answers. It appears that the Gnosis have been pushed into the background, and as where they were a permanent threat in the first game, they only appear in Encephalon dives in this episode. While the story of the U.R.T.V.s is wrapped up nicely in the end, it’s not enough for the fans who waited nearly two years for this game. The game itself concerning the story is too short and it hesitates at unimportant events. There are major plot twists in the game, but they don’t appear to be connected to any of the major questions that fans posed themselves after the first game.

Characters
As said before, the game sheds light on the U.R.T.V.s, more specifically Jr. and Albedo. Their past together is explained in great detail, but the other characters do not get this kind of development. We learn a bit more about Momo, and her relationship to Yuli and Joachim Mizrahi, but I feel that they already explained enough about this in the first game. The game gives hints about Ziggy’s past and his connection to one of the Testaments, and it also focuses on Shion’s and Jin’s family life a bit. But those enigmatic characters that deserved some explanation like KOS-MOS or chaos barely have anything important to do. There are some developments near the end, but it’s not enough to fulfill my expectations. As for the supporting cast, there are some new plotlines being developed, but yet again the game just teases the fans.

Looks
As for the graphics and designs in the game, I generally don’t care about them, but the cinematics in the game deserve to be mentioned. Xenosaga II is just like a predecessor not a game, it’s a movie. I’d recon that about 60% of the normal game is filled with cutscenes, and the occasional dungeons just seem like fillers. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the direction of the scenes has been done wonderfully, the choreography in the various confrontations between characters (Jin and Margulis!) is just amazing, and you’d almost forget that you are playing a game. The dungeons are another story. Although you get to spend some time in the open air, the majority takes place into bland buildings that don’t really allow much interaction with the environment except for shooting the occasional box or climbing a ladder. Episode I also suffered from this problem, and it’s a shame that they didn’t do anything about this.

One of the major changes compared to Episode I is the design. Where as Der Wille zur Macht had a rather generic anime look, Jenseits von Gut und Bose tries to be more adult. Some of the designs are barely affected, but the major changes can be found in Shion and Momo. Momo had that “kawaii” cute look in the first game, but she now looks older, more like a teenager because of the new design. And where as Shion looked cute and friendly with her glasses, she now looks like a bitchy company employee. I’m rather fond of the changes, since the anime style didn’t seem to fully grasp the seriousness of the story. The only complaint I have is that character’s hands look pretty awful, especially in some major story moments.

Sound
While Yasunori Mitsuda did a great job composing the first game’s music, he has been replaced by Yuki Kajiura, known for her electronic style mixed with the occasional female voices through it. In my opinion, this style blends in perfectly with the mood that the game tries to create. Even though Mitsuda created some of the better character themes, like Albedo, Kajiura shines when it comes to cutscene music. The scenes itself are already breathtaking, but combined with awesome songs like “Communication Breakdown” or “Lamentation” (my personal favorites), it’s an engulfing experience. The only comments I have is that her music isn’t used that much. Take “Lamentation” for example. It’s played in only one scene, while it can set the mood for a sadder moment at countless times in the game. Instead, we get a bland theme written by the other composer, Shinji Hosoe, which brings us to my second comment.

While Kajiura takes care of the cutscene music, Hosoe is responsible for the tunes in towns, dungeons, battles and some minor story moments. I’m not a fan of his style. It sounds bland and repetitive, and when you walk around a town for hours to do sidequests, they irritate me so much that I put the sound on mute. His battle theme is ok, but after hearing it for the hundredth time, you’ll hate it. Although some of the songs like his sadder themes are enjoyable, they just don’t have a large impact on me. I personally would have liked it more if Yuki Kajiura was responsible for the entire soundtrack.

The voices in Episode I were great, and that’s why I don’t really understand why the added new ones for some characters. Shion has a new voice actor, which gives her a bit more emotion than in the first game, but she also sounds too bitchy for her character at some moments. KOS-MOS also got a new voice that sounds more human. Although it was weird first, it’s understandable that she sound like this, seeing the evolution that she’s undergoing. The new voice of Momo fits with the design, sounding more adult, but not with the cheerful and cute character that I was used to from Episode I, but I don’t really mind it.

The only voice that bugged me a bit was chaos, surprisingly, since he didn’t change. He just sounds so dull and monotonous, while he had a normal voice, although hiding some sadness in the first game. As for the best voice, once again Albedo steals the crown for this one. There is no way a villain can sound more evil than this, the only downside is that they just used the exact same laugh as in Episode I in certain scenes.

Gameplay
And now for one of the most important aspects, the gameplay. Episode I’s gameplay was noted for it’s complexity, with the different points that you got to customize your characters, but also because of the simplicity of the battle system. The second episode changes this a bit. In battle, an enemy is divided in different zones that you can hit. When you hit these in the correct order, the enemy goes into “Break” mode, and you can do more damage. What’s more, you can use some character’s special attacks to “Air” or “Down” enemies, allowing you to do even more damage. After the battle, characters receive experience, skill points and class points. The class points are used to unlock to unlock skill levels that contain skills that can be acquired by distributing the skill points. These skills are the same for every character, so you can chose how to customize them specifically, but in the end you’ll most likely turn them into cardboard copies.

Aside from the normal attacks, characters also get Ether spells from the skill system, and Double Techs, combo’s with another character, to kick some ass in battle. But here comes the problem. Every fight in the game can be won by using the Break system, and since this can only be achieved by chaining regular attacks, you will only use Ether spells and Double Techs on rare occasions, to heal or just to see what they look like, and even then they do shit damage. Even the final boss only requires you to find in the Break code, heal occasionally and obliterate him with normal attacks. I don’t like this, I want my final fight to be a chance to display the most powerful skills to take him on, I do not want to repeat the same attacks that I also used to kill the first enemy in the game with. This gets even worse later on during the sidequests where the battles are tougher, but you still use the same attacks over and over just boring you to death. When I finished the game, I was so sick of it that I had to wait a month before I could find myself doing some optional quests for completion.

Another factor of the gameplay that has changed is that there are no shops whatsoever. You don’t buy your items, you find them, and even then it are just healing items or enhancing items, but no equipment, since you can’t equip anything to your characters. Instead, you get three skill slots where you can equip skills learned by the skill system. I’m not a big fan of this, because I like it when I actually see changes in my character’s stats because of new and rare weapons found, not some lousy “Strength +2” skill. It also takes out the character customization, since it makes the most sense to equip everyone with the strongest skills. Another point of criticism is that you can only find healing items. Although other games like Wild Arms 3 have proven that this can be executed in a good way, Xenosaga fails at this, just because there aren’t enough items around, and you only rely on your ether spells to heal at crucial moments. Sure, your Ether Points get recovered after a battle, but if you run out of them in a battle, and you have no restore items, you’re screwed.

One final point of criticism on the gameplay is the execution of the dungeons. First of all, the things are huge, and while you only visit 7 of them, they’ll take you over 10 hours to complete. Now why is that? The developers had the brilliant idea to place a switch to open a door on one side of the dungeon, while it opens a door on the other side of the dungeon, forcing you to backtrack a lot, of course filled with battles. This is about the top of the puzzle system in the game, which is just boring and make the dungeons feel more like a chore on your way to the next cutscene. As for the battles, even though they aren't random, they are practically unavoidable. You maneuver trough small paths, forcing you to fight every encounter on your way, and even though there are traps to stop the enemies in their paths, since you can’t get past them you’ll still have to fight them.

Where as Episode I offered the A.G.W.S. system, II has replaced it with the E.S. system. I like this change, since the A.G.W.S suits were useless in the first game, because you couldn’t heal or revive them, and because they weren’t powerful enough. The E.S. suits are different, seeing as how you are forced to use them in certain dungeons. With the help of Momo you can also restore their energy, which makes it a bit easier. The battles are kinda hard, especially some boss battles, but they are fun. An E.S. is piloted by two characters and depending on who you pair up, you get different skills, making the battles pretty cool. Every turn you charge Force Points, and the more of them you have, the more powerful skills you can use. The E.S. look impressive in battle, but they just look too small when roaming around.


Extras
As for the sidequests they’ll easily take up 15 hours of your time. Aside from the return of the Segment doors and the occasional optional boss, most of them are executed through the Global Samaritan Campaign. This consists of around 30 quests that are given to you by citizens of Second Miltia or the Kukai Foundation. Although it’s a nice idea, I didn’t like it. What’s the problem with it then? First of all, the two cities are huge, so it’s already quite a chore to find the characters who will give you a quest. Some of them are not readily available, so you’ll first have to meet the requirements. This means that you are forced to keep going back to the same people to see if they have a quest for you.

The second problem is the utter dullness of the quests. Let me give a few examples. One of them requires you to wash windows. And how do you do that? By rotating the right analog stick. Easy you say? Guess again, because the control for this is just awful, you’ll have to rotate the stick really carefully all the way round because the game can’t recognize it otherwise. Another notorious quest among fans is finding back memory fragments of a robot. The problem is that these are scattered over Second Miltia and Kukai, and since you have to find them in order, you’ll spend an hour going back and forth talking to everyone over and over again to get them. The rest of the GS sidequests consist of either this kind of dull errands, or you’ll just have to resort to button bashing.

What is your rewards for these quests then? Some characters will give you Secret Keys, that unlock some more skills, most of the times ones that you’ll never actually use in battle anyway. Other characters give you Double Techs, and although they look nice as I’ve said before, they are just useless in a serious battle. You’ll also get some useful items like restorative potions on occasion, and they are pretty welcome in this game, since you can't buy them.

After you’ve finished the game, you can create an extra save file that unlocks some optional dungeons. The dungeons are as bland as the storyline dungeons, and they are filled with some pretty hard enemies. The first few dungeons are nice, but I soon got bored with the battle system since it always took so god damn long, so I just gave up on them. After you’ve finished these, there are also 3 optional bosses added for the US version, but since I didn’t finish the dungeons, I haven’t fought them yet, and I’ll probably won’t.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I’d like to say that the game has been a bit of a disappointment. The story failed to live up to my expectations by providing more new questions than answers, and seeing as how we waited this long for Episode II, you'd expect a bit more out of everything, but instead the main issues get pushed to the third episodes. The gameplay system is pretty cool and innovative in the beginning, but because of the lack of personal customization and the repetitiveness in battle, you’ll get bored by it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Having read that, I'm glad I didn't invest in the game.

I bought the original sight unseen, review unread, because of Xenogears and Mitsuda. Having played (and beaten) the former, I was ready for a tale with a twisty, incomprehensible story, deeply flawed gameplay, but strong characters and music.

The game ended just when it felt like it should be getting started; based on your review, it seems like the sequel is more of the same sans Mitsuda with the same bland gameplay and story that makes Xenogears (Disc 2) seem like a masterpiece of pacing and interactivity.

It also seems that the game isn't even connected to Xenogears after all; what a gyp.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Saga was never meant to be "connected" to Gears as far as storyline goes. Producer interviews and the like all state this multiple times. I thought people would have picked up on that by now.

I have a question, Enkidu, this sounds like it's been written a long time ago.

Quote:

it looks like we’ll wait even longer for a successor.

This implies that you don't know when episode 3 is coming out, like it was written well before Also Sprach Zarathustra came out.

Are these reviews stuff you just wrote and created specifically for this project?

Edit: Apparently not.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/review/R103462.html

Well, the email of that author matches with yours, so I'll assume it's you.

No more copy/pasta of existing reviews you wrote until I get this sorted out.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Colonel Skills

Saga was never meant to be "connected" to Gears as far as storyline goes. Producer interviews and the like all state this multiple times. I thought people would have picked up on that by now.

Oh, I've picked up on it now. It's then that was the problem. It's just one of many deep problems with the series that I became aware of as I played it.

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Fair enough. I guess as a bigger fanboy than most when the first Saga came out, I learned about it not being connected quite early on. I can see how people would have missed it though.

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I'm pretty certain back when Episode I was coming out, they were saying it'll be a long ass saga and Xenogears was like Episode 5 or something (and many were hoping that would mean an eventual remake). Rumors, hearsay and so on, but it explains why people expected the story to connect to it.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Qwarky

I'm pretty certain back when Episode I was coming out, they were saying it'll be a long ass saga and Xenogears was like Episode 5 or something (and many were hoping that would mean an eventual remake). Rumors, hearsay and so on, but it explains why people expected the story to connect to it.

That's exactly what I heard; there were even some FAQ's for both Gears and Saga that supported this.

Xenogears was labeled Episode V in its closing credits; that, the similar terminology, and the appearance of the Zohar and Deus' theme in the opening Xenosaga video were enough to convince me.

FELIPE NO

I only found out about Xenogears after learning aobut Xenosaga, because of the various guides on gamefaqs that tried to forge a connection between the games, so naturally I assumed that there was some sort of link, not in the least because of the similar names.

I have written this review a long time ago, not for this specific project. The one posted on gamefaqs that you linked is the exact same one, and written by me. It was never stated that these reviews had to be brand new, in fact, I think Blah stated that you can cross-post reviews in your journal (I had it posted in there, but I deleted most of that a long time ago). I skimmed to see if there was anything that was out of date, or not fit to be posted on here (several of my reviews included scores, for example), and I must have just missed the bit in the conclusion.

Isn't this why we create a thread in the first place, so that other members can edit and point out mistakes like this?

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Oh, no. I didn't mean it directed at you. I merely thought Orion was making the mistake now, but that was clarified.

It's not your fault. If there was a post regarding this in the brainstorming thread, I missed it. We have come to the conclusion that we would prefer original content. We won't remove your existing reviews, but we won't accept more that were submitted elsewhere first. Sorry for any misunderstanding, and I also apologize that we're still working this out as we go. ;_;

Look for a rule thread soon.

Jam it back in, in the dark.