Imagine this. A book that has sold millions across the globe, awarded for its fascinating and complex storytelling, makes it way to the rest of the world (in this case, PAL countries) but only in the form of a much smaller book that highlights certain story elements, key roles of the characters but in a much more incoherent, prose manner that leaves out certain character developments and major plot developments. Then, we’re given the entire sequel in all its glory, expected to understand all the events of the original book. Summarise that, and you’ve got the treatment PAL gamers have received with the Xenosaga series – the full sequel packed with a hefty 4hour plus DVD showcasing most of the major scenes from the original.
While we aren’t left in the shadows of not understand the plot of Xenosaga Episode II, it doesn’t help when we have to go through the torture of watching a long – very long – DVD movie that doesn’t quite explain the story in its full entity and leaves a question as to why Namco didn’t release the original in the first place. Anger aside, the Xenosaga series has picked-up a lot of fanfare due to its fantastic sense of dedication to its story and visual appearance, and rightly so, and it's good to see that PAL gamers are back on the board with another long awaited RPG series hitting our shores.
While Xenosaga Episode II expresses it’s beauty through what the series is profound for, in the meantime, it misses out on a number of key RPG elements that are needed to make a game complete. And what the game does miss out on hurts what could’ve been a much more complete experience.
Chances are you wouldn’t have played the original and are now thrown directly into a story that makes absolutely no sense to you. In a sense, the extra DVD that is bundled with the game is a must to watch if you want to understand anything in Xenosaga Episode II. To summarise, unlikely heroine Shion Uzuki, an engineer, and a number of her misfit friends are tasked with preventing the powerful Zohar weapon from falling into the wrong hands. Of course, the story is occupied with a number of seesawing twists of events including test-tube babies who were genetically modified to destroy an evil energy form, terror groups whose ambitions are to bring destruction to the galaxy, time warps and a bionic femme-fatale who has as much personality as a nut. To say the least, the story of Xenosaga Episode II is a complex one, and one that’ll require gamers to play close attention to if you’re expected to understand all the smaller details of the mysterious story.
Hands-up if you just want to play the game and not watch all these cut scenes.
The story is one of the game’s merits, it has as many action scenes, plot twists and love scenes than your average Hollywood blockbuster. However, one of the games most obvious hiccups is that the game’s characters have absolutely no development and aside from two or three characters in your main party, you don’t really have an understanding as to why they’re there. Perhaps this is something we learn from playing the first game, but it is still clearly evident that the development of characters is left virtually untouched entirely. And in an RPG of such magnitude, it is one of major disappointments of the game.
One of the major issues that the original Xenosaga was criticised for was that its cut-scenes were far too long, which made up most of the game. This seems to be the case for Xenosaga Episode II as well. For a large portion of the game you will be sitting through hour-long cut-scenes that only require you to move forward to a certain room to trigger the next cut-scene – and this was something that made the game a tad disappointing. The story and its cut-scenes are absolutely superb, but with the gap of actual gameplay early on so far apart in makes the game a little bit tiresome. This brings up a number of problems with the games formula also. For the first six hours you would’ve experienced roughly one-hour worth of battle time, and it isn’t long after until you are fighting in your first tough battle. Xenosaga Episode II isn’t your typical Japanese styled RPG either. It has a much more complicated battle system that requires a bit of thought as to which character you’ll have on your team, what areas of the enemy you’ll hit and how you’ll execute effective combos. And having little time to experience the battle system previously, it does act as somewhat as a hurdle when you begin the game. But this is merely a trait of the series. The developers, Monolith Software, were after a storybook like game, and having these long, story-filled cut-scenes are only part of the entire experience.
While the battle system can be seen as a difficult hurdle at first, it is however one of the most fascinating battle systems to experiment with. Instead of unleashing your typical attack, magic and summons like other RPG titles, Xenosaga Episode II focuses on gamers realising the strengths and weaknesses of each enemy. Your characters will be able to attack specific zones on the enemy, labelled zone A, B, or C, as well as using magic attacks. These different zones act to where you’ll be hitting an enemy. For example, Zone A might be a high attack, B a middle attack and C acting as a low attack. Each of the enemies you come across will be weaker in certain zones, and if gamers hit their enemies in zones in a certain order will allow gamers to break enemies. Break requires gamers hitting enemy weak zones in a certain order for them to become more vulnerable to attacks, which means you’ll inflict much more damage once you’ve unleashed a break on your enemy. Characters are able to stock their attacks, meaning they’ll be able to unleash up to three attacks in the one turn for that one party member. Also, when laying a successful hit on an enemy you’ll slowly fill your gauge for your party’s boost metre, which means you’ll able to give other party members another attack before their enemy can attack. On paper this is a lot to take-in to understand, and after playing the game for a few hours it still is a lot to take in. But once fully understanding how to set up a 12 attack combo chain on enemies it opens a completely new experience, and in my opinion, one of the most unique battle systems used in an RPG game.
Stocks, chains, zones? All sounds like business gibberish to me.
Xenosaga Episode II is a turn-based RPG, but doesn’t include random battles – which seems to be all the rage these days. This opens up a few new gameplay options for the game. While in the environment you have the option to out-run nearby enemies to avoid battles with them, gamers can also trigger traps that’ll give them an advantage when entering a battle. Traps are scattered throughout the game, and can be shot at before a battle, which will immobilise enemies for a short period. While enemies are immobilised gamers can choose to overtake the enemies and avoid the battle altogether, or enter a battle with an advantage – extra boost attacks, a full combat phrase of just you attacking or your attacks being more powerful. These traps are usually few and far throughout the game, but can be considered helpful during certain occasions. The only real problem with the game choosing the ‘run into enemies’ before battle is that the camera system works as a problem more than a beneficial inclusion. The cameras are pre-positioned in the environment, which, at times, can make it difficult to see whether there are any enemies behind or in front of you.
Having the option to interact with the environment also enables one of the best features of the game – in game puzzles. One noticeable exclusion from most RPGs these days is that most games feel that dungeon puzzles are no longer needed. But when looking at games such as Golden Sun that is clearly not the case. Xenosaga Episode II is no different. There are plenty of puzzles throughout dungeon areas, which may simply require you to move blocks to form a bridge from one platform to the next or weighing-up water levels to unlock doors. And since Xenosaga Episode II hasn’t got random battles, it makes participating in these puzzles a bit more exciting, and allowed the developers to unleash a few toughies in there also.
Like any RPG, the game includes a number of long side-quests that can have gamers blasting away at locations for hours, while others will have gamers merely conducting a special hangover remedy (bacon and eggs in the morning always works for me – Ed). These are usually quite fun to participate in and a lot of them are merely working out puzzles, while others require a lot more running around. This is something that is needed though, since the main adventure will last gamers anywhere between 18-22hours, which is surprisingly short for an RPG title.
Sunglasses inside? Gene Simmons has damned us all.
The visuals have made a drastic improvement from the original, opting a much more realistic approach than previously. Characters are modelled much better, textures seem to be well balanced and the animation and style of all the characters look a lot more realistic. The environment is absolutely stunning and goes to show that the good old PlayStation2 still kicks out quite a bit of horsepower. The backgrounds draw quite a bit of distance, and are nicely varied and well detailed.
Audibly speaking, it’s hard to compare what was suppose to be an excellent score, but the soundtrack of Xenosaga Episode II seems to be perfectly well-balanced and varied to fit the existing mood of each setting. The voice acting is usually well done, but there seems to be a thing called ‘over acting’ with some of the characters. Lead character Shion Uzuki has a terrible voice-actor who over exaggerates her scenes from yelling, crying and dialogue that doesn’t fit the personalities and mood of the other characters.
It is hard to rate Xenosaga Episode II. In many ways it is an RPG fans dream, but in other regards it is missing a lot – which could be caused by not being able to play the original. Xenosaga Episode II is a complex RPG title that presents a lot of solely missed gameplay elements – dungeon puzzles, complex story and a fascinating combat system to boot - but it fails to execute a number of key elements such as character development. Xenosaga Episode II won’t be drawing in any new RPG gamers, but rather acts a nice game for RPG experts to sink their teeth in, since it is a game they’ll more than likely appreciate.
Monolith Software are one of the best RPG developers around and I’m still optimistic that their next Xenosaga title in the series will rekindle their successful track record in what currently stands as a love/hate series.
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