Xenosaga 2: Jenseits von Gut und Bose looks and feels like a 3 year old game and does nothing interesting and original.
User Rating: 4.5 | Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose PS2
Introduction: In 2003 Namco released Xenosaga 1 and it was a very bizzare RPG from Japan that recieved success in the US as well. But Xenosaga had these certain problems that kept it from appealing to a wider audience. These problems are back in the recent sequal and are unfortunatly even worse this time around. Fans of the original game will look past most of my problems and only care about the story but all parts of the game made equal Xenosaga 2 is really quite bad and if you must play it I recommend renting it first. Graphics: 4/10 This game would have looked at home on the PlayStation 1 and no lies there they are really quite bad. The cinematics are the only thing stopping this category from recieving a 1 but even they are nothing to get excited about because they just look ok. In gameplay the graphics are horrible they just really don't look right the effects are off. The lip-synking in the cutscenes are bad. The menus are painful to look at. The presentation is awful. I just didn't like the graphics at all. Sound: 4/10 The sound is not much better then the graphics to tell the truth. There is some pretty bad voice acting in the game and the effects are pretty bland and uninteresting although they do get the job done. Not much else to the sound except the reason it didn't get a 1. The soundtrack in the game is actually quite good and all the original songs on it are quite well done but that isn't really enough to save what is otherwise a rather bad audio presentation and combine with the graphics to make a rather uninteresting world to explore. Gameplay: 5/10 During the exploration segments of the game the camera angles almost never show you what you want to see and you will sometimes find yourself running into walls because of them. The combat system in the game is abysmall. The bad presentation and bad button layout make this game more painful and confusing then it had to be. Such as opting to either melee a foe or fire away from a distance with the square and triangle buttons. Why couldn't they have put these actions in the menu that you get to by pressing X. The game really does do a bad job of explaining things in a satisfying manor so you are kind of left to figure things out for yourself. You have to press the R1 button to boost but they are really again bad at telling you what this does for you and when you are supposed to press the button. Now enemies (specifically bosses) have zones where they are weak or you can zone break allowing you to do extra damage to them and various enemies have specific weaknesses that you have to figure out and exploit. Neither of these features are actually original they've been done in a ton of other games and there is really a lack of originality here. The game is also pretty easy all you really need to do is get past the rather steep learning curve to learn the features and stuff but after that there is not much reason to use them as in most cases (except bosses) bashing on the square button will work just fine. Story and Value: 5/10 The story, providing you can understand it, is actually quite interesting most of the way through and is no doubt the middle chapter in something more to come in the future. That being said the story is rather short, about 20 hours one time through, and there isn't much to do after that but since a lot of people will get bored before the end of the 20 hour story none of that stuff matters. If you like to rush through your RPG's take about 5 hours away from that 20 hours and bump up the difficulty a little bit but not much. Another thing that needs to be said why is this game on 2 discs. If the gamecube can hold True Crime, 300 sq miles, and Metroid Prime, 40-50 hours one time through, on those tiny discs surely a PS2 disc can hold this game on 1 disc. Tilt: 4/10 Probably wouldn't be this low if it weren't for the bad presentation which makes the game harder then it should. All the times I died in this game it was because I didn't know how to do what I wanted to do and that shouldn't be. Overall: 4.5/10 I want to start by saying that I thought the original was ok not great but not bad either. But I have to say all this game does is rips off concepts from other Role-Playing games and strips away all the depth. All this game really has going for it is the rather decent story line. Other then that this is a game that should be avoided except by the die hards. If you must play this game rent it. If you have an Xbox get KOTOR 2. If you have a GameCube get either Tales of Symphonia or Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. If you only have a PS2 either play Final Fantasy X again or get Lord of the Rings the 3rd Age. All are better games. Xenosaga 2 looks and feels like a 4 year old game and even graphically it is more of an insult to games like halo or agent under fire rather then on par with them. Avoid at all costs.
