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Xenosaga 2
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Game Name:
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Xenosaga 2 |
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Console:
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PC |
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Reviewed:
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Unknown |
The first thing that struck me about this game was when I opened the box and found not one, but two DVDs for gameplay. Since the first game was very heavy on cut scenes I was expecting a very long game. Instead it’s fairly average in terms of size – I completed it in about 40 hours according to the in game clock. There weren’t anywhere near as many cut scenes either and those that were there weren’t as long as the ones in the first game. As such, I’m pretty much at a loss as to why the game comes on two DVDs. It’s not like you swap over half way either, the game has barely started when you switch to the second DVD.
In terms of graphics, Xenosaga 2 is pretty much on par with the first game. The audio however has been fixed – the speech is easy to hear now and isn’t obscured by the music. You can also turn on subtitles. Some of the voice actors from the first game seem to have been replaced. Either that, or they have changed they way they voice the character for some reason.
Since I’d finished the first game I was interested in seeing what effect importing the save file would have - apparently not much. Loading in the clear data from Xenosaga unlocks some swimsuits and gives you a bonus to your starting skill points. Each character has their own swimsuit which can be equipped; in combat this provides a few nice bonuses. You need to unlock each swimsuit first though which generally is done via a sub quest.
The plot is a direct continuation from Xenosaga. It starts immediately after the events of the first game. The same cast of characters are in this game with one playable addition – Jin. Jin is Shion’s brother and appears a few times briefly during the first game. He wears black clothes and carries a sword with him. Jin is an expert swordsman and has a background with some of the characters from the first game – Shion doesn’t get along with him so well though.
The combat system in Xenosaga 2 is quite evolved from the first game. Some things are still the same – characters have their turns with the frequency based on their agility and the turn order is indicated via some icons on screen. You can boost a character to make their turn happen sooner. There is a small spinning gauge which changes as each combatant takes their turn. In the first game this had four icons – nothing, critical, boost and skill points. This has changed only slightly – the nothing icon now is one of four random possibilities. The options are nothing, ether boost, turn cancel and reverse boost. The nothing option still makes no change to that combat turn. Ether boost will increase the effectiveness of any ether based technique used in that turn – this includes both ether spells and ether based attacks. Turn cancel works like this – if you attack someone whose character icon is visible on the turn order indicator then they will disappear from the indicator and thus have their next turn delayed. Reverse boost changes the recipient of any boost gauge filling for that round which is caused by physical attacks. Normally the boost gauge is filled by performing attacks – the more damage you do the more the gauge is increased – if this icon is showing then attacking the enemy will fill their boost gauge and vice versa.
Boosting has changed from the first game, instead of each character having their own boost gauge; each side in a fight share a boost gauge. Boosting is also more useful than just getting a turn in first or on a particular turn icon. Boosting is needed for double ethers, double attacks and zone breaks. Double ethers work like this – if two characters know how to cast the same ether spells (or a certain pair of ethers - only a limited number of ethers can be double cast) and the second character boosts during the first characters turn you can perform a double ether casting which greatly increases the power of the ether that is cast and might change its effectiveness. For example, double casting a single person healing spell will make it affect every friendly character in battle. Double attacks are special techniques that can be unlocked during the game (usually via sub quests). Each double attack requires a specific pair of characters to execute and those characters need a certain number of points on their stock gauges. Double attacks can only be used once during each battle and are set up the same way as double ethers. There is a maximum of three points on the boost gauge for either side.
Zone breaks are a new and useful way of improving the damage dealt to an enemy. Almost every opponent has a zone break. This is a basically an attack pattern that will break past their defenses and make them vulnerable to being aired or grounded. Most characters have three basic attacks commands available to them – these are done using the square, triangle and circle buttons. The triangle and square attacks work together as a pair – hitting either or both in any order counts as one attack. The circle button counts as one single attack. These attacks target a certain “zone” which is indicated as a letter that appears onscreen during the attack. The three zones are A, B and C. If you hit an opponent in a specific series of zones you will have broken their defenses – you’ll know if you have hit the correct zone because the letter will appear in red. At that point, certain characters can air or ground that opponent. KOS-MOS and Jin are able to air opponents while Chaos and Ziggy can ground them. They do this using an attack with the circle button after the zone break combo has been completed. While an opponent is in the air or on the ground they will take a lot more damage from any attack – including ether spells. There are some catches though, if an opponent is in the air only Shion, Momo, KOS-MOS and Jin are able to hit them with normal attacks. Plus, the attacks need to be linked via boosting. If Jin hits an opponent into the air for example, unless someone else is boosted behind him that opponent will drop to the ground after Jin’s attack. However, when they drop to the ground they will be grounded for the rest of the following characters turn which can be used to give someone like Ziggy a change to inflict some damage. Zone breaks might take a team effort to pull off – most enemies have only a zone break of two characters (eg. BC). But some stronger enemies and bosses might have a zone break of three or four characters (eg. CBBC). This will require one character to perform a CB combo with a second character boosted behind them to perform a BC combo followed by a grounding or airing attack – or even boost a third character to perform the air/ground. Some larger characters can only be grounded, not aired while a rare few cannot have a zone break applied to them at all.
To properly utilise zone breaks you need to make use of the stock gauge. During their turn a character can choose to stock which stores up an attack for later use. They can stock up to three times, and when they are ready they can unleash some or all of their stocked attacks as well as the attack for their current turn. This is most useful for zone breaks – let one character air or ground an opponent then have everyone else pound on them in turn. The damage for each consecutive attack during a zone break increases so it’s possible to dish out massive damage in a short period of time. The damage also increases if it has the same element (fire, ice, aura, thunder) with each consecutive attack.
Just hitting an enemy isn’t enough though; there are now vulnerabilities to consider. An enemy will be weak or strong against each of the following: striking, piercing, slashing, beam, ether, physical, fire, ice, lightning and aura. Each characters attack has one or more of these attributes – the more you have that an enemy is weak to, the more damage will be dealt. As such, enemies will be take different amounts of damage from different characters depending on the attributes of their attack. For example, enemies that are weak against fire can be crushed by Ziggy who does fire damage with his normal attacks. However, if the enemy is also weak against piercing damage he won’t do as much damage as Junior if he’s had a spell cast on him to make him do fire damage with his attacks. Or if the enemy is weak against ether attacks and strong against physical then Momo with her ether based arrows and the fire sword ether will do more damage. The attributes for an attack are shown so you can pick the best character/attack for each opponent.
Shion and Momo are the most changed with regards to fighting style. They no longer can perform hand to hand attacks – instead all of their attacks are ranged. Shion fires electrical bolts and beam shots from her personal weapon while Momo fires arrows from a bow. Both of them do ether based damage, neither have a triangle or square attack and both of them are the only ones who can perform the A zone break hit.
The skill system from the first game has been given a complete overhaul. In the first Xenosaga, each character had their own specific skill tree which defined their role – you could give a skill to another character though for a cost in points. In Xenosaga 2 there is a unified skill table which everyone can access. Skills come in three varieties – mastered, ether spells and equip able. When a mastered skill is learned then the character who learns it will be benefiting from it at all times from then on. Ether spells are cast by characters and are mostly only able to be used during combat – only healing ethers can be cast outside of combat. Skills need to be equipped before they have any effect. Each character has three slots for equipping skills (the swimsuits count as a skill) with a fourth available if a certain master skill is learned. When equipped, a skill will give you a bonus of some sort – generally they boost stats or give resistances. You can adjust what is equipped to suit the opponents you will be facing. The skill tree has four levels, each of which has a number of classes. At the start of the game you have no skills learned and the only level you can access is level 1. To learn skills you must first unlock a skill class. Each character has two sets of skill points – normal skill points and class skill points. Class skill points are the only thing that can unlock classes – most monsters do not give out classes skill points – generally only bosses do. Once you unlock a class there will be four skills which can be learned by spending skill points. The cost is higher for each level and even higher for the last class of a level (which costs more class points to unlock). The skills in each class are usually linked together by function to some extent – for example, you might find four mastered type skills that improve resistance to certain attacks in one class. If you learn all four skills in a class you will be given a class point bonus of 1.5 times the cost of unlocking that class in the first place. Also, once you learn all the skills in a class the next level of skills can be learned by that character – you will still need to pay a cost in class points to access them though. Not every skill is available from the start; many require a secret key to be found before you can learn them. These keys are, as expected, mostly found via sub quests. Unless you spend a lot of time playing the game, you won’t have enough skill points to learn every skill for a character so it’s best to specialise. Also, Momo and Shion have the highest ether skills so it’s generally best to leave the casting up to them. Other characters can cast ether spells but they won’t be as effective or last as long.
Unlike the first game, characters not involved in combat will gain experience and levels – however only characters who are in the party when combat finishes will gain skill points. Xenosaga 2 has a feature similar to Final Fantasy X – you can swap characters during their turn to bring someone else into the battle. Unlike FF X though – the character you bring in will have a delay before they will have a turn – unless you boost them. For example if you run into enemies who absorb aura based attacks and you have Chaos in your party, you should swap him out of the fight since all of his melee attacks do aura damage.
One thing that shocked me greatly was money in the game – there isn’t any. I can’t think of the last RPG that didn’t have money – even Final Fantasy VIII in which money wasn’t important, still had money. You can’t buy any items during Xenosaga 2 – everything you have has to be looted or stolen from enemies and chests or obtained as a quest reward. The only place where money is mentioned is during one really tough quest. Captain Mathews of the Elsa (the ship that flies you around everywhere) has one mother of a debt – 10, 000, 000 credits worth. You can’t whip out your Galactic Express card to pay for it either since you have no cash in any form. The only way to pay off the debt is to sell items off. If you want to do this using normal items or equipment you’ll need to spend several days or weeks fighting enemies and selling the loot. There are a few rare items worth 500,000 credits though and I’ve read that there are tricks which allow you to get many copies of two of them (but it still takes hours to do) otherwise most common items only sell for a few thousand. Most of the sub quests in the game are part of the global Samaritan campaign – this starts early in the game and details of your quest are noted in a special log. These quests can be pretty vague though – like go and find someone, somewhere else in the game and the log generally doesn’t give you many details on what you need to do if you forget. Other GS missions require a bit of guesswork since you get multiple possible targets and need to choose the correct one. Sequences and decoders make a return from the first game – as before you need to find the decoder in order to unlock the special sequence doors (which you also have to find) – behind each door is a valuable treasure item. Also making a return is the Erde Kaiser – the super powerful robot summons which only Shion can call upon. Even if you obtained it during the first game, you have to build a brand new robot called Erde Kaiser Fury. Collecting components of the robot and taking them to the Professor will let you call upon lesser summons – these are pretty pathetically weak though. Once you actually assemble the new robot you have to select what mode of damage it will do. This bit is really annoying since you are given three options – mode A, B and C but aren’t told which mode does what kind of damage. The Erde Kaiser is also part of a quest in which a “Dark” Professor has created a Dark Erde Kaiser which you can fight. This bit almost classifies as hidden content as it only becomes available if you load the save game that is made after you clear the game. There’s nothing in the game I could see that tells you that reloading will open more things up. Other GS quests are also like this since you can’t access them until you reload your game cleared save data.
Status affects are handled somewhat differently than from other games. In other games you have all sorts of effects like poison, paralysis etc. and each effect has one or more counters. In Xenosaga 2 there are two groups of status effects – L and H. Each group has several effects falling under it including things like poisoning and being weaker against certain attack types. To counter these effects there are two spells you can learn which remove the L or H effect respectively. The odd of these succeeding depends on the ether strength of the caster. H type effects are rare and generally nastier to have on you. These effects will wear off eventually though. You can also use items instead of spells – items always work.
The first Xenosaga introduced A.G.W.S units which were large mechs that you could board during combat. The A.G.W.S doesn’t return as such, instead you have A.M.W.S which are much more advanced than A.G.W.S. For one thing, as well as a pilot seat they also have a co-pilot seat which you can allocate a party member to. In combat terms this changes the special moves available – these moves differ depending on the pilot and co-pilot. Special moves require a certain amount of charge to perform – you get a small amount of charge every time you attack or you can stock for much more charge on your turn. There are only three A.M.W.S units and they are piloted by Junior, KOS-MOS and Momo. In combat you can only have two on the battlefield at any time – you can swap out though much like combat on foot. Momo’s A.M.W.S unit is slightly more advanced than the others; it will actually let her cast ether skills during battle. She can cast healing and support ethers to repair damage to the A.M.W.S or cast spells on the enemy. Unlike the first game, you can’t jump into the mechs during any fight. The game forces you to use A.M.W.S at certain points and be on foot at other times. The A.M.W.S units can be equipped with special items that you can find/steal during the course of the game. A.M.W.S combat is a lot better than A.G.W.S combat – the mechs are actually quite useful this time.
Encephalon dives make a return in Xenosaga 2. You can return to previously visited locations to fight enemies or get items you missed. In some locations where you had to be in A.M.W.S during your first visit, you can sometimes return via the encephalon and go on foot to get items that couldn’t be reached in the A.M.W.S unit. A number of the GS campaign quests require you to perform encephalon dives.
I’d rate Xenosaga 2 as being a bit better than the original. The combat and skill systems are a little bit complex but are easier to work out than those in the first game. The first game never saw a PAL release but apparently Xenosaga 2 will be released in PAL format – it will include a DVD which is basically a recap movie of the events of the first game. I’ve no idea why they don’t simply release the first game or bundle it in with the second. Either way, this is a good investment for RPG fans.
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