I regret this saga

Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose takes everything episode I did except the opposite.

Ep2 starts off with one of my favorite game openings of all time. chaos, with a new voice actor, takes a realion named Cannon and gets into a super-powerful giant robot and jumps out of a plane into an active battleground. On their way down, they destroy several unmanned giant robots including five with one (laser) bullet which is super cool and anime! The tutorial dungeon involves chaos and Cannon, in ES Asher, as they walk through Miltia which, as I skimmed last time, was locked away from conventional space fourteen years ago, meaning this is a flashback. They walk through the streets showing off all the new giant robot mechanics which, are a good thing even if I didn’t fully explore them. They walk until their ubermech gets damaged and they’re saved by super anime samurai guy Jin Usuki, or Shion’s brother who only makes a small cameo in the last game. As a teenage weeb, I loved me some Jin. Jin and chaos (but not, actively, Cannon) walk, on foot, through more streets and tutorial the new character mechanics. They’re kinda iffy.

While the near and far attacks are still there, they are now accompanied by “zones”. Each attack hits a zone. Ether seems to hit zone C, physics go to B, and MOMO, Shion, and certain special attacks hit A. These zones inflict certain statuses to characters, both ally and enemy (which is fair): break and air. These statuses allow the attack to inflict massive damage on defenders. Players can also defend (up to thrice) to stock up on special attack...attacks. In the average fight, I think this works. Most mobs need one break to be defeated so the mechanics are used all game, but in boss battles, it becomes unbearably tedious. Every boss turns in to learning their break combo, stocking up on special attack options, and then unleashing everything...multiple times. If bosses had less health, I think it would be fine, but fights drag on forever and ever and ever. Tedium isn’t good game mechanics.

Back to the plot: Jin and chaos walk until they meet the guy Ziggy fought to free MOMO on the asteroid prison, but he doesn’t have a face scar. At least until Jin gives him his face scar in one of my favorite cutscenes in video game history. Two men; one samurai and one dark knight, on a ruined battlefield, on top of a building, in a heavy storm at the end of the world swinging swords and using magic. It’s so freakin’ rad!!!

And then a black abyss envelopes them and we wake up learning that was all a memory of Cannon getting his check engine light looked at. We then cut to Shion and co as The Elsa lands at a spaceport and they go their separate ways. Shion and Kossy go the Vector while jr. and the others go with MOMO to get her check engine light looked at and the camera stays with them. Which is good because they get attacked on-route by two ubermechs. They run through the non-ruined city until the get into a fight and win which makes the ubermechs seem pretty weak. Losing to four on-foot combatants. At the end, Asher from the tutorial shows up indicating jr. had the the mech the whole time but never used it? Why?

Eventually, MOMO goes under the hood, and Albedo shows sup to steal her personality. This unities the whole party to dive into MOMO’s subconscious like they did with Kossy last time to learn her origin story. She was modeled after the real daughter of her creator, Joachim who died on Miltia. We stay there for the totality of disk 1 until we beat up Albedo and get MOMO’s memories back which he used to open to the gate to Miltia and to see Shion naked...for what I’m sure is a reason.

On disk 2, they plan to go to Militia, undercover, and they include Jin for what I’m sure are reasons. Everyone except for Shion. Shion has to work until she quits and steals classified tech for Kossy which goes over, actually pretty well. Next they get attacked by a bunch of filthy space migrants. Their ships are planet-sized, but we only meet three people here; those ubermechs our characters fought on foot and their direct superior. We drive them off and head to Miltia. This is a wonderful part of the game as our ubermechs (named after the lost tribes of Israel) walk through the wasteland at sunrise. How they got all of these ubermechs is never explained but whatevs. We walk past a few places we recognize from the tutorial until we get to our destination: Labrinthos, a giant tower secretly owned by U-Tic, Ziggy and Jin’s sworn enemy. We get off our cool robots and go on foot and then the game falls apart.

This dungeon is not only long but also kinda hard. Which makes it tedious. All the enemies are mini-bosses so battles take five minutes and there's a lot of them. This lasts until you have another fight with Margulus (the sworn enemy) who in charge of both the filthy migrants and U—Tic; they’re the same shadow organization and also a religious sect with origins to Earth 2000 years ago. It was at this point, I gave up. This boss is everything I hated about the game. Long, tedious, boring, difficult. I was getting sick of playing the game long before I got here and, since I wanted to get on to game 3, I just stopped and watched the rest of the cutscenes on Youtube. I know, it's a shameful copout I should have manned up, but, look. I pre-ordered this game (and got a movie of episode 1 as a bonus) so I can stop playing whenever I want.

To sum the next hour of movies up, Miltia turns into a giant robot and the party goes after it, kills the Pope, and we meet mysterious teleporting cloaked power rangers which causes Ziggy to finally get character growth as he gets mad at the Black one. There’s a joke about police brutality there, but I’m not gonna make it.

Finally, jr. goes on a quest to recombine with Albedo, who we learned was his conjoined twin during the MOMO dive.

To finish this, the music is terrible. Matsuda did not return and it shows. The voice acting has taken a dump as everyone, but jr., has a new voice. There are so many unanswered questions in this game and it’s...it’s just bad. Early Xenosaga got a bit of developmental Hell for a bit and I’m guessing a lot of things got cut. While the graphics were greatly updated and feel less “anime”, I think other, more important things, were cut and it’s a shame. I’ve also read episodes 1 and 2 were supposed to be one game so, it all kinda checks out. These games need a remaster. Sometimes innovation isn't a good thing. I hate thinking this game killed the franchise, but it might have.

An hour and a half. Almost made it. Let’s see how I feel about the exciting, and well worth conclusion.