XenoSaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose

Gut, aber nicht ziemlich so gut wie Episode I!

Tags: Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews

Posted by Ludwig on Apr 26th, 2005

Title Players
XenoSaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose (title page) 1
Developer Publisher Genre Online
Role-Playing No


After the first fantastic entry into the insanely elaborate Xenosaga series, RPG fans (excluding those with pitifully short attention spans) have been eager to experience the next helping of Monolithsoft’s tale of interstellar intrigue and, more importantly, saucy blue-haired robots. Judged by its individual merits, Episode II is an excellent RPG. However, much like you’d be expected to treat someone differently if they were the son of a king; it’s only fair to judge this part of the saga according to the preceding game. Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose (meaning Beyond Good and Evil) implements several changes to the battle and character customization systems of Episode I – some good and some…well, whichever equivalent you can think of for “not good”. Personally, I’d go with “disappointing”. Even though the storyline and characters are as engrossing as ever, the episode and some of its design decisions impart the distinct feeling of eagerly grabbing sweets from a bowl, only to discover that the cache of candy has been laced with thumbtacks.


There’s plenty of eye candy to be found here, as Xenosaga Episode II pushes and generally abuses the PS2 hardware to a fair extent. At one point, I could actually hear a pitiful whimpering emanating from the console.

“Too much colored lighting…please help me…” it said faintly.

“Don’t worry; I’ll put Astro Boy in right after I get to a save point!”

And just for reference, I talk to all of my consoles. It’s very therapeutic. I mentioned to the PS2 how the game creates a very compelling sci-fi world, filled with sprawling cities, enormous spaceships and a ridiculous amount of animated holographic displays, and how the sheer sense of scale conveyed was phenomenal. It remarked that this episode also features a change of scenery at one point, as the cast of characters gets to explore less sterile environments in the forms of beautifully rendered forests and icy wastelands. We both agreed that the battle animations were very good, and that they rounded out the visual package quite nicely.


“But you know, PS2, those pre-battle loading times are a bit long at times. I was waiting for ten seconds for that last fight to load.”

“I apologize profusely. There’s a good reason for that, I’m sure.”

“Is it because of the new character designs?”

“Uh…yes. That’s it. That’s exactly it. More polyester.”

“You mean polygons, right?”

“Yeah. Sure.”


Characters have received an upgrade in the visual department too, though it would be more accurate to say that they briefly popped in for reconstructive facial surgery between episodes. Gone are the saucer-eyed and slightly disproportionate anime stylings, replaced with more mature character designs. While this can easily be seen as a form of selling out and making the game more appealing to the mainstream market, the more realistic designs really suit the philosophical tones of the storyline more closely. That being said, the characters established in Episode I are already so unique and well developed that a superficial change such as this has very little impact in the end, especially for players of the preceding game.


Unless you flippantly exchange terms such as “U-DO anti-retrovirus” and “UMN geodesic structure” in everyday conversation, some experience with the previous episode is pretty much required in order to enjoy (or even comprehend) the second part of the saga. Being part 2 of 6, this chapter finds itself in the unenviable position of not being the introduction, middle or ending of the overall story arc and is relegated to essentially being the midpoint of the first half. As far as midpoints go, however, it’s still an extremely compelling part of Monolithsoft’s ludicrously complex saga. While it spends less time moving the main thread along and much more time on delving into the histories and relationships of Junior and his psychotic nemesis, Albedo, it still manages to incorporate several planet-busting revelations all the way up to the mysterious conclusion. A new villain is introduced, the Old Miltian conflict is clarified and the mystery surrounding the much sought after Y-data is partially resolved – if you’re a fan of the series, consider yourself enticed.


No discussion of the Xenosaga series would be complete without mentioning the cutscenes. Presented in 5.1 surround sound (assuming your hardware is capable) and directed with a great deal of excitement and elegance, they’re really superb conduits for such an epic storyline. Yes, there are hours upon hours of cutscenes – get over it. The pacing may not be the best, with large chunks of cinema often preceding equally large chunks of dungeon exploration, but if you can’t derive some form of entertainment from robots blasting each other in an aerial ballet of destruction or a meticulously choreographed swordfight, you probably shouldn’t bother with this title. Seriously, rather spend your time on something more constructive, like taking tennis lessons or inventing scuba-karate.


Tenacious team tactics are required to succeed with the game’s intricate battle system, a pleasingly deep and malleable combo-based affair that’s much more diverse than what can be found in Episode I. Providing a much needed alternative to the recent glut of real-time combat systems that gleefully reward senseless button mashing and incompetent AI partners, the turn-based engagements demand that you capitalize on enemy weaknesses and coordinate your party of 3 combatants (any of which can be exchanged with 4 others during combat) to maximum effect. With the exception of characters more suited to providing support than directly attacking, every combatant can initiate a string of attacks, each one varying in type and effect (slashing, piercing, striking, and elemental, for example). The more stock points a character has, the more attacks they can insert into the combo. This is an important aspect to consider when you choose the option of stocking a point for the next round, as there are certain useful attacks which can only be dealt once you’ve reached a specific point in your attack chain.


Further depth comes in the form of the zone/break system, whereby you must discover the weak spots of an enemy and attack them in a specific order. Once you’ve managed to do that, the enemy enters a critical state and consequently provides an opportunity to either knock it to the ground via a “down” attack or send them careening into the air with the appropriately named “air” attack. When an opponent is in either one of these juggled states, the damage inflicted becomes multiplied. Now, you need quite a lot of stock points (you can save up to 3) to accomplish all of this stuff in one go, and so a more appropriate course of action would be to divide the task between all your characters.


That’s where the boost meter comes in. It gradually fills as various actions are carried out, be that attacking or receiving damage, and once filled enables a character of your choice to skip right to the front of the turn order queue. By planning ahead, stocking points appropriately and making efficient use of your boost bar, you’ll be able to send an enemy into its critical state with one character, follow up with an air attack and, before the enemy even has a chance to come crashing down, inflict massive damage by boosting the rest of your characters in succession. Boosting also opens up the possibility of a Double attack, a visually spectacular and frequently devastating blow carried out by two characters working in unison. The battle system sounds rather complicated, and indeed, I went cross-eyed several times whilst describing it, but the various strategies required for success quickly become second nature.


There’s more to the battle system than what I described (like magic, status effects and turn modifiers), but the most important aspect to consider is simply that it’s highly addictive and layered with strategic possibilities. Coming to grips with the combat is one of the best parts of the game, as defeating enemies, especially the imposing bosses, hinges more on how strong your strategies are as opposed to how strong your characters are. Leveling up still has its rewards, but it’s not the definitive path to victory as it is with many titles in the genre.


Occasionally, your characters get to hop into E.S. mechs, very large robots fit for trampling city blocks and blowing up other, very large robots (that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?). Unlike the worthless A.G.W.S. craft of the first game, you’re forced to use and upgrade these craft at several points in the game. The battle system has several differences when compared to the one used for on-foot engagements, but the core concepts of boosting and stocking points remain unchanged. The mech battles provide a good change of pace and allow for some interesting tactics (as the pilots you choose determine the special attacks available to you), though the simplified battle system, which mainly revolves around stocking and intercepting enemy attacks, could have done with some more further development. Of course, you can’t complain too much when you’re at the helm of a hulking piece of destructive machinery (though I do complain about my car from time to time).


Upon entering the realm of the RPG, it should come as no surprise that whenever a vanquished foe keels over, the heroes promptly rob the resulting corpse of potions, shiny baubles and experience points. The undignified bunch in Xenosaga is no different, though they’ve become less picky in how they spend their precious points. The character customization in this episode has been, for lack of better words, dumbed down. Well, I suppose I could have gone with “stupidified” or “shallowmized” too. Regardless, the multitude of ways in which character-specific techniques could be built up and modified in the first episode has been thrown out the window here, replaced by an entourage of killing machines equipped with blank states.


Aside from the most basic attacks, every combatant’s techniques are chosen from the same shallow pool. While this allows you to take any character in whichever direction you want, the loss of individuality and unique abilities is too great a trade-off. There’s no real reason to pick one character over the other now, nor is there a reason to enhance certain character traits over others. The skill-based development system is also devised in way that to forces you into unlocking some useless skills for everyone before you can progress to more meaningful ones. For example, if you’re building up a supporting spell caster, you’ll inevitably have to waste points on skills that are more suitable for a physical attacker. The adoption of this system may have initially appeared to provide you with more freedom, but with such a limited range of skills shared between 7 characters, it actually constricts even more than before. Furthermore, it’s no longer possible to even equip characters with different weapons or accessories. What makes even less sense is the complete nonexistence of stores – you can’t buy equipment or items. Ever. This is made up for partially by enemies’ tendency to drop loads of healing and status alleviating items, but that’s just applying a bandage to the massive, gaping wound that resulted from the developer tearing out a perfectly sensible RPG tradition in the hopes of simplifying things.


Another stumble backwards from the original game comes in the form of sound. The new voice actors are hit-and-miss (way miss when it comes to KOS-MOS, MOMO and especially Canaan), but at least the voice actor for the Kefka-esque Albedo remains the same. The ridiculous amount of overacting that accompanies his psychotic ramblings easily makes him one of the best villains to ever feature in a videogame. Though the various explosions and spaceships whizzing by sound great, the music is distinctly lacking. It’s lacking Yasunori Mitsuda, who magnificently scored the previous episode, to be precise. Now, Yuki Kajiura has done a great job creating some stirring musical pieces for the cutscenes, but the composer that created the in-game music should be thrown in front of a speeding bus. That’s what happens when you compose in-game music that really belongs in an elevator – an elevator where you pray relentlessly for the hoisting cable to snap and bring your misery to a merciful end. I much preferred the deathly silence that accompanied the exploration during Episode I.


That about sums it up – I preferred Episode I to this. Episode II is not a bad game by any imaginable stretch and is, in fact, a great RPG. Backed by a truly engaging battle system, excellent graphics, a fantastic story and an interesting cast of characters, it is hard not to recommend the game to eager fans of the series and of the genre. However, as a sequel, Episode II makes a couple of regrettable mistakes, most of all in the silly simplification of character customization and the tossing out of something as fundamental as item stores. Fans should be willing to forgive all of this just for the sake of seeing the next part of the epic saga, and that’s arguably the only audience that matters with an epic 6-part RPG saga.

What Works Score
+ Excellent graphics that convey an imposing sense of scale.
+ Deep and endlessly addictive battle system.
+ Engrossing story told through mesmerizing cutscenes.
+ Interesting cast of characters.
+ Great soundtrack during non-interactive segments. 		7.9
What Doesn't
- Overly simplified character customization.
- No money, character equipment or stores? That doesn’t make sense.
- Mech battle system could use some more development.
- Loading times are a tad long.
- Nightmarish in-game elevator music.
- Uneven voice acting.
Under the Shrink-wrap
A great RPG when it stands on its own two feet, but as part of the Xenosaga series it loses its balance and tumbles into the realm of disappointment.
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