Xenosaga Episode II Impressions
So, Xenosaga Episode II early impressions. I've played about 2 hours and 40 minutes... or rather, that's the game time; I'm not sure if half of that time was in interactive sequences. When I said recently that 3 Xenosagas worth of cutscenes would equal the entirety of the Zelda series'? Maybe just one would be needed.
Battles have changed, but it will take some more getting used to to see whether it's for the better. Before, you could attack with Triangle and Square (different attacks on each) twice each turn, or just once each turn to save up an extra attack (or for a special attack type) in a later round. Now there's still the two types of attacks, but there's no using one at a time. You must input both before either can be used; if you want to store up some you must not attack at all, and instead choose Stock. Seems less flexible now. However, instead of just naturally noticing which attacks work better, there's now a letter system of attack heights, and by telling which attacks cause a bold letter you can try tricks such as getting enough bolds in a row to knock them down; something I haven't quite got the hang of yet. Earning special ether abilities seems completely different now; I'm not sure there's any difference between the characters as to what "spells" you can have them learn, other than that it might be a waste to turn a guy with high physical strength into a devoted healer. Somehow between the end of the last game and the beginning of this one, Momo stopped using rods and started using a bow. *shrug*
Speaking of discontinuity, there sure is a lot more than I was expecting from a game that seems to begin right where the previous game left off. The biggie is the change in character designs, which isn't universal. Some characters look almost just like they did in the first game, while others have been made decidedly less standard-anime in appearance. I prefer them as they were. It doesn't help matters that it seems the voice cast is slightly different, too. It feels like in the minutes between the two games, someone kidnapped some of the characters and replaced them with talented cosplayers. I want to compare it to the scene in Spaceballs where they capture the stunt doubles, but it's not QUITE that bad.
Really, so far Episode II seems like more of the same. However, I must say that this first few hours has been more action-packed than the early bits of Episode I, which tended to break up the cutscenes with exciting walking around a ship action.
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WOW. I played another hour last night, and... well, OK, I played for about 20 minutes, walking around a city checking stuff out. The other 40 minutes was story. Some people think the PlayStation Final Fantasy games are too movie-like, but Xenosaga is on a whole other level. In terms of how much time is spent on gameplay, Xenosaga makes Final Fantasy VII look like Pong.
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OK, I really don't believe it. I played another hour and a half tonight... still no more battles. My timer isn't quite at 6 hours, and it's been half that length since the last time I actually had a battle. Now, as I said when just starting the first Xenosaga, as a fan of both interactive and noninteractive media I don't mind a blurring of the lines... I just wasn't expecting it to be so tilted. It's a bit of a shame, as I was starting to figure out how the system for gaining skills worked, and I want to put some of them to use in battle.
There will probably be some point later in the game when I'm in some longass dungeon and wish for a story sequence to break things up; it happened a time or two in the first game. If only they could get a proper flow going on without overwhelming one aspect at a time.
There is something else I miss from the first game. At any time you could use your portable computer device (name escapes me) to call up information on a long list of names and topics. Really useful for keeping track of things or seeing further detail not presented elsewhere. Gone. It would be especially helpful in a sequel, too, to remind one of various things that are no longer fresh in the mind.
Tangentially, the concept of Xenosaga being split up into episodes makes me think that Xenogears would've worked better in two parts. It's been so long since I played it that I'm not sure exactly where the split should occur, but by fleshing out the horribly rushed contents of Disc 2 and combining it with some of Disc 1, they could easily have had two 50 hour games.