In response to a comment I left on her blog, KristyK wrote, "A resolution to behave more maturely? Here’s hoping you don’t keep it!" Actually, I wrote that to be funny - I'd made no such resolution (a girl's got to know her own limitations) but even if I had, Kristy has NOTHING to worry about. As evidence, I offer yesterday: I took the entire day off work for the sole purpose of playing video games. That's all I did; I changed from a nightgown into lounge pants and a sweatshirt, I fired up the PS2 and spent nine solid hours gaming - with a few short breaks for lunch, Diet Cokes and bathroom visits.
I finished Xenosaga II so it was a most productive day. I still have a few sidequests to complete, but I defeated the final bosses so I consider it "finished" even if I spend a couple more hours on sidequests. Overall, a decent game - I give it a B-. The storyline is complex and interesting, there is a good mix of characters and I like all the literary references (e.g., the subtitle is Jenseits von Gut und Bose - er, Beyond Good and Evil if you're not a Nietzsche fan). It was a bit short for an RPG (and two discs, at that!), plenty of spiffy sci-fi graphics but I didn't particularly care for the battle system.
Xenosaga II takes the battle system from Episode One and "tweaks" it, and every tweak makes it a little bit worse (kinda like Adrian Newey loosed upon a McLaren Mercedes). It's the standard turn-based combat, but with a twist: your characters need to attack certain "zones" of the enemy and chain their attacks to do more damage. The thing is, you have to waste an inordinate amount of turns "stocking" your characters because these chains are the only way to do any significant damage; a single attack by one character does almost nothing, 90 - 115 damage points which is nothing up against an enemy with 14,400 health who's going to regenerate twice or thrice. So you wind up using turn after turn after turn stocking, taking damage, wasting one character as a "healer" to dole out items and restorative magic, and then finally unleashing a chain attack that eventually resulted (at least for me, more often than not) in overkill by several hundred points.
My biggest complaint is that a lot of the best (most interesting, most useful, most intriguing) skills and techs take an inordinate amount of points to unlock - which seems logical and appropriate, I know, but I mean an inordinate amount of points. I didn't unlock everything, didn't unlock most things for most characters and in earning enough points to do even what little I did, wound up insanely overleveled. I don't like being so powerful that the final boss is not even a challenge, I don't even have to devise a strategy because I've got plenty of time to just pound away on him, but that's what happened. I didn't even come close to dying or having to revive a character, beating the two final bosses in the first try - which is not me trying to brag, that's me saying how overleveled I got just trying to earn sufficient Skill Points to unlock some of the cooler techs. I suppose one could get there quicker by concentrating all the Skill Points and upgrades on a single character, but I've never liked doing that because RPGs (and this one is no exception) have a nasty habit of suddenly subtracting a character or two from your party, or forcing you to use only certain characters in certain places. There are a couple of battles in Xenosaga II that require one or two specific party members, a couple of places where you're left with only one (different) character - so you'd be totally screwed if you concentrated all your upgrades on the wrong person.
Still, I can't dis it too much or I'll make myself look pathetic for spending 40+ hours playing it. I do quite like the logic puzzles sprinkled in the dungeons, I like the fact that the minigames/sidequests are short and usually quite direct, so even if you find one annoying, it's over and you can move on to the next one without much frustration. Overall, quite enjoyable, well worth picking up.
Now I'm going back to either Darkwatch, Shadow Hearts Covenant or God of War. So many video games, so little time.
I finished Xenosaga II so it was a most productive day. I still have a few sidequests to complete, but I defeated the final bosses so I consider it "finished" even if I spend a couple more hours on sidequests. Overall, a decent game - I give it a B-. The storyline is complex and interesting, there is a good mix of characters and I like all the literary references (e.g., the subtitle is Jenseits von Gut und Bose - er, Beyond Good and Evil if you're not a Nietzsche fan). It was a bit short for an RPG (and two discs, at that!), plenty of spiffy sci-fi graphics but I didn't particularly care for the battle system.
Xenosaga II takes the battle system from Episode One and "tweaks" it, and every tweak makes it a little bit worse (kinda like Adrian Newey loosed upon a McLaren Mercedes). It's the standard turn-based combat, but with a twist: your characters need to attack certain "zones" of the enemy and chain their attacks to do more damage. The thing is, you have to waste an inordinate amount of turns "stocking" your characters because these chains are the only way to do any significant damage; a single attack by one character does almost nothing, 90 - 115 damage points which is nothing up against an enemy with 14,400 health who's going to regenerate twice or thrice. So you wind up using turn after turn after turn stocking, taking damage, wasting one character as a "healer" to dole out items and restorative magic, and then finally unleashing a chain attack that eventually resulted (at least for me, more often than not) in overkill by several hundred points.
My biggest complaint is that a lot of the best (most interesting, most useful, most intriguing) skills and techs take an inordinate amount of points to unlock - which seems logical and appropriate, I know, but I mean an inordinate amount of points. I didn't unlock everything, didn't unlock most things for most characters and in earning enough points to do even what little I did, wound up insanely overleveled. I don't like being so powerful that the final boss is not even a challenge, I don't even have to devise a strategy because I've got plenty of time to just pound away on him, but that's what happened. I didn't even come close to dying or having to revive a character, beating the two final bosses in the first try - which is not me trying to brag, that's me saying how overleveled I got just trying to earn sufficient Skill Points to unlock some of the cooler techs. I suppose one could get there quicker by concentrating all the Skill Points and upgrades on a single character, but I've never liked doing that because RPGs (and this one is no exception) have a nasty habit of suddenly subtracting a character or two from your party, or forcing you to use only certain characters in certain places. There are a couple of battles in Xenosaga II that require one or two specific party members, a couple of places where you're left with only one (different) character - so you'd be totally screwed if you concentrated all your upgrades on the wrong person.
Still, I can't dis it too much or I'll make myself look pathetic for spending 40+ hours playing it. I do quite like the logic puzzles sprinkled in the dungeons, I like the fact that the minigames/sidequests are short and usually quite direct, so even if you find one annoying, it's over and you can move on to the next one without much frustration. Overall, quite enjoyable, well worth picking up.
Now I'm going back to either Darkwatch, Shadow Hearts Covenant or God of War. So many video games, so little time.
2 Comments:
And I was so excited to see my name...
LOL, I have NO CLUE what any of that was about. I have never played a video game in my life [unless you count that time I played Tetris in high school].
By
Kristal, at 8:46 AM
I've never played a video game either, although I always wanted to play Leisure Suit Larry, which is the first RPG I ever saw.
Helly, have you ever considered doing one of those online games to make money like Scott? Because why not???
By
Anonymous Me, at 9:43 AM
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