At last an RPG series worth playing...
User Rating: 8.7 | Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose PS2
I just finished XS2, and all i can say is "Wow!". The story keeps getting very interesting and the battles are long and fun, specially boss figths....hell, the boss before the last one took me about 40 mins or so to defeat it. You have to think and act accordingly, beacause, believe me, is very frustrating to get anihilated after 30 mins or so in a fight. Also all the aditions to the battle system is entertaining, though, i personaly rarely used the combos, ether blending, and rarely "breaked" the enemies. Only thing i did use were the supportive ether combos, specialy "double medica 2" on boss fights. The E.S.'s are cool and more fun than the AGWS since you can level them same way you level your regular characters. Also, XS2 has indeed more gameplay compared to Ep1. At first the game starts slow and with lots of cinematics, but when you get around the 11 hrs or so, the cinematics and gameplay gets pretty balanced. XS2 is almost perfect...almost...Why?...well...your chars doesnt shut up at every start and ending of every single battle, and each char has at most 3 lines...so that means you will be hearing the same old chatter over and over and over...and gets pretty anoying. I had to get breaks every now and then beacause there were times i wanted to throw the controller at the tv screen. But lucky me, later you get to use the E.S. more often, and once you are on those your chars doesnt say a word. I hope Namco adds an option to shut your chars during battles on future episodes. The other thing that bothered me from time to time, was the voice / char lip sync...T.T...now that is awful...i personaly believe its even worse than on episode 1. Its kind of sad to hear a good voice acting and at the same time watch the chars either continue "speaking" while there is silence or no lip movement on the chars but you are hearing the voices. Aside of these flaws, which to some wont mean nothing, the game is superb. Anyone who likes rpgs cant miss the the Xeno series. This game as everything: great story, memorable characters, cool bosses, and something that its rarely found on todays games: good voice acting.
