Makes every RPG mistake in the book.
Now the sequel is here... for a while now but anyway it's here with much less expectation compared to the first, and the developers still doesn't fail to let down the fans once again. Xenogears II makes just about every mistake of RPGs known by man kind.
Let's go to detail from the graphic.
The graphics are greatly improved over the first game.... at least technologically. The original game wasn't great game graphically, but it did have unique sense of style and it stood out marginally positively. Because of the unique design, the first Xenosaga didn't look very out of the place even when the animation wasn't smooth as you would like. Now the style has changed to make the characters look much more realistic but the animation of these characters became even more stiff. It results very unnatural characters and even the cut scenes doesn't look as smooth now due to more stiff expressions these characters make. Aside from few nice settings like water with great reflection and sexier Kos-Mos and Shion, overall the graphical improvement ends up only hurting the game rather than improving upon it. For a game that relied so heavily on it's cut scene presentation, it is quite shameful to see the game suffer from stiff animation. Still, some areas look so good so let's just say its double edged sword. It did help in some way and hurt in some way so let's leave it at that.
RPG rule #1: Graphic means little if presentation isn't great.
Second problem would be voice acting.
Normally, I wouldn't consider voice acting such a big problem in a game, but in this game it is quite serious. The reason why voice acting is quite a problem is not because it is utterly horrible. It's bad but not horrible and bearable, but for a game that half of the thing you do is watching cut-scenes, it becomes quite a huge problem. The biggest problem is that so many of voice actors from the first game didn't return. The game starts off immediately after the first game ended, but during that short moment, it seems all these character went through serious personality changes and big smoking habit to ruin their voices. The voice alone isn't only problem, but the personality just seem so different with all these new voice actors coming in. It seems non of the new voice actors have played or heard how first game was done. Shion who in the first game was well-mannered girl comes to the sequel as a girl with slight attitude and her personality seems more rough. Chaos who in the first game was soft but warm type of person comes in the sequel as emotionless doll like person. Also Kos-Mos voice changed as well. From robotic emotionless somewhat mature voice, become this high toned girly voice who tries to imitate how robot would talk. This makes Kos-Mos loses alot of personality where in the first game really felt like an emotionless robot. This is all very very unfortunate. Even the music quality seemed to suffer, as first game although there are many zone without music but the music was done in high quality.
Luckily, the ones who recieved new voice actors are the characters that seemed to not talk as much as the first game. Shion and Kos-Mos feels like less important characters in this game and Jr who does seem very important character still managed to keep his voice from the first game. It looks like some budget problem. Terrible move by developers. They should've just saved money by not working on new gameplay which is diastrous.
RPG rule #2: Voice acting matters ALOT. So does music, make sure they are high quality. If sequels, keep it constant with previous game.
Gameplay took a serious step backwards compare to the first game. Granted the first game didn't have strong battle system as well but second one is even worse. Well, good news is there is no longer lengthy attacks you just have to keep watching over and over. Bad news is everything else. The battles are extremely confusing and you will really have to read carefully the tutorial or you will most likely be lost. It still uses square triangle and circle as method to input the "combo" to determine what attacks you do, but this time around the sequence results as one attack unless you have "stock" to add addtional strikes. sounds like the first game but it isn't because now each character has specific types of attack instead of triangle being ether and square being physical. some character like MOMO and Shion dont even have the option of having square and triangle combo. oddly none of the combo really seems to matter aside from trying to break and get enemy down or air which is very confusing and most will not bother trying. Also the damage distribution is incredibly unbalanced. you will notice right from beginning before fighting the very first boss after you are out of flashback sequence. You will notice chaos doing fairly reasonable damage to regular monsters and soilder type, but all of sudden against the boss, he does less than 10 damage when MOMO is doing 300 damages and the boss has thousands of HP. Also some characters would have 1000 HP while MOMO would have like 300. the game feels incredibly unbalanced.
So like 10 options of doing combo is mostly meaningless as you even hit the zone the damage difference is barely noticible, the new battle system and all these different combo seems too complicated and not very effective in terms of doing better damage. In the end it is better to find which character does better damage and use the other two for curing and buying time while the high damage character stock up. Also new skill system is.... not very forgiving. now all the character can basically get same skill and same magic. At least in the first game they did try to make things unique for each characters, but in second one everyone gets the same sets of skills, it's upto you to open which ones. However, the new skill system is very unforgiving.
RPG rule #3: Don't make frustrating gameplay. Make sure pacing of difficult of monsters are even, and usefulness of characters. Keep the battle system SIMPLE.
If you are like me.... who tends to not read the tutorial and just go right in, and when you see a skill you just try to get most expensive one thinking that probably is better skill, not very unreasonable right? I mean that can happen, its not just me right? anyway. I have made that grave mistake and saved it. First you get two type of points for skills. C.P (Class Points) and S.P (Skill Points) how this system works is you have list of class. the list as branches of classes and you open these using class points. once you open a class each of the class branch has 4 skills which you learn using skill points. The problem is.... the only way to get Class Points is by defeating bosses or learn all 4 skills in a class branch. I made terrrrrrible mistake of unlocking class branch without any skill in yet. they are listed as ????? and until you discover those skills somehow, you will never learn anything because you can't get Class points. The character I gave this to was Chaos, and he died against the bosses, resulting him not gaining and class points and he is left in the dark. he doesn't help with the future boss so I end up not using him, he never gets class points, he is left alone in the dark, waiting for those skills to somehow appear. Not that i'd use chaos again since he isn't strong as the first game.
RPG rule #4: Keep the magic system simple. Don't make magic system that is very punishing for wrong choices players make.
it seems developers changed who will be good and who will be bad. Momo who was fairly weak in the first game, all of sudden is given a bow and becomes one of strongest hitter. Kos-Mos is mere shell of herself but she is still fairly strong, and chaos feels like this game's MOMO. Compare to first game, getting the skill points are easier, but the whole battle system and magic system just became overly complicated for players to think, "Is this worth it?" Is it worth it to learn a battle system that would need long text of manuals for you to remember and magic system equally complicated and would punish you for a mistake.
That's not where gameplay problem ends, The exploration aspect of the game is again terrible. For a RPG that has enemy appear on the map and engaged by contact with them...., the control is way too unresponsive resulting, very very frustrating experiance when you explore. random encounters would be less frustrating since my running mechanic won't be such a hassel. in some camera angle, you will have hard time just running straight. Normally controls aren't big issue in RPGs and here it still isn't huge issue, but it is noticible issue here. Also the world you visit feels more like level than roaming around and exploring, a big negative in RPG.
RPG rule #5: Make it adventurous. Dungeon crawling isn't exploring in adventurous way.
Now for most important part of any RPG, the story.
Also the most disappointing part of Xenosaga series. Xenosaga does have heavy reference to biblical references. The whole Kos-Mos and the cross, "Ye shall be as God", Gnosis being salt a reference to Sodom and Gomura, the six wings from Kos-Mos indicating angel, 666 on Jr's hand, etc etc etc. Just about entire game story is based on references of bible. That's great, its always a good theme and materials to get your messages across. Unfortunately, Xenosaga fails to represent these bits and pieces in any coherent way. So many characters just seems too omnipotent without good reasoning. Everyone knows way too much and everyone has past involving things somehow. The entire story is way too abstract like a bad dream, and sometimes that makes good story. Not this time. The lack of personality consistancy and any type of organization being present, the story becomes nothing but developers way of expressing themselves, and completely ignoring the players and providing for them. The whole game feels very much like doing what developers want, instead of showing and thinking remotely about fans. Some may call it art, but i wouldn't because they failed in so many ways to express themselves in more coherent ways. Not only that, they haven't expressed themselves clearly as well making it a failure in every sense. In the end it just feels like developers being aggrogant with themselves and unable to see the fans need and wants. If they were great like Hideo Kojima, fine do that but they aren't. As result the game has unclear expression with very disorganized and dynamic story that is noticibly created as it went along instead of well planned storyline. Otherwise, the pacing wouldn't be this irregular.
RPG rule #6: Story must be deep, but also entertaining and reasonable. Apparently this rule doesn't apply very well since fans just accept garbage.
it is very hard to believe that the creators of Xenogears were involved with this game. What happened? did the frustation of unable to express themselves completely ruined their vision? I know they had problems with Square and had to rush the RPG sensation Xenogears, but now they do have all the resources and time. Why did it come down to this? When a RPG series leaves Square it often fails in many ways. First it was Breath of Fire and now it's Xenosaga. The saddest part is often when RPG developer decide to use abstract and more expressive story than coherent one, fans love it and think its great. People tends to praise the unknown because they fear of being critized for not knowing. I for one am not afraid, and this game is bad from story to gameplay. Just because Xenogear was great doesn't mean Xenosagai s great as well. At least try to look up the references this game uses before praising it all time great. Most likely I'll be crucified in this by giving such a low score, although most of the raters won't even read what I have wrote. Still I say what I have to say about this game and thats that.