This review contains spoilers
The most obvious change from previous game is the stylistic shift in character designs, more realism and less weird doll anime look. Realism with ps2 hardware was no easy feat and this is not a Capcom game so unfortunately these models do not end up looking great. For some reason the characters look like they have a lower overall polycount than they did in the first game (hands with fingers are replaced by these ps1 era blocks, no teeth in mouth etc) which results in the ingame cutscenes really not being a pleasure to look at.
While the art style does hold up better in the pre-rendered cutscenes, those are few and far between and despite me not liking 1's look either, I'd say this is kind of a downgrade.
Maybe to go along with the new aesthetic, half the game's Voice Actors were recast and its also just a complete downgrade across the board, went from honestly great all around voice acting to the classic robotic English JRPG voice acting with chaos' nasal voice being probably worst offender.
The combat changes essentially boil down to 1's combat being boring and 2's being tedious, pick your poison.
The combat simply lasts too long during random encounters due to you dealing 0 damage if the enemy is an neutral state and combos requiring you to first charge for multiple turns.
It does have its moments during more drawn out boss fights but the game will still find ways to piss you off. The returning roulette wheel ends up feeling completely out of place in this game, trying to sync your multi turn combo so you land on the bonus points when you finish the enemy while also playing around the newly added random slot which can roll into reverse boost!!! giving boost to the enemy instead ends up being really annoying.
Enemies naturally have a boost gauge of their own which they seemingly use randomly so even if you get the perfect set up the boss can just boost before you knock him up (this also overrides whatever boost was already used by the player) and ruin your plan.
On the plus side, Xenosaga 2 has by far the most robust side content out of the 3, it offers an actual quest log (crazy!!) with 36 quests some of which are really fleshed out and some that are complete dogshit (4 and 32 especially) alongside 3 pretty lengthy post game dungeons.
The narrative puts a lot of focus on Jr and Albedo's relationship (to a point where Shion and KOS-MOS become background characters) but it doesn't really end up adding much to what I would consider the least interesting part of episode 1.
The pacing also feels really weird with the events of the story unfolding in this somewhat abrupt fashion. You're jumping from place to place and it all feels kind of disjointed and nothing really gets any room to breathe. This especially applies to the "main" antagonist who shows up -> speaks like 2 lines of dialogue -> fights -> dies.
Due to the focus shift, it isn't until the final cutscene where we get actual development on some of the things Episode 1 set up and this pretty much leaves Episode 3 to do all the heavy lifting.
While the art style does hold up better in the pre-rendered cutscenes, those are few and far between and despite me not liking 1's look either, I'd say this is kind of a downgrade.
Maybe to go along with the new aesthetic, half the game's Voice Actors were recast and its also just a complete downgrade across the board, went from honestly great all around voice acting to the classic robotic English JRPG voice acting with chaos' nasal voice being probably worst offender.
The combat changes essentially boil down to 1's combat being boring and 2's being tedious, pick your poison.
The combat simply lasts too long during random encounters due to you dealing 0 damage if the enemy is an neutral state and combos requiring you to first charge for multiple turns.
It does have its moments during more drawn out boss fights but the game will still find ways to piss you off. The returning roulette wheel ends up feeling completely out of place in this game, trying to sync your multi turn combo so you land on the bonus points when you finish the enemy while also playing around the newly added random slot which can roll into reverse boost!!! giving boost to the enemy instead ends up being really annoying.
Enemies naturally have a boost gauge of their own which they seemingly use randomly so even if you get the perfect set up the boss can just boost before you knock him up (this also overrides whatever boost was already used by the player) and ruin your plan.
On the plus side, Xenosaga 2 has by far the most robust side content out of the 3, it offers an actual quest log (crazy!!) with 36 quests some of which are really fleshed out and some that are complete dogshit (4 and 32 especially) alongside 3 pretty lengthy post game dungeons.
The narrative puts a lot of focus on Jr and Albedo's relationship (to a point where Shion and KOS-MOS become background characters) but it doesn't really end up adding much to what I would consider the least interesting part of episode 1.
The pacing also feels really weird with the events of the story unfolding in this somewhat abrupt fashion. You're jumping from place to place and it all feels kind of disjointed and nothing really gets any room to breathe. This especially applies to the "main" antagonist who shows up -> speaks like 2 lines of dialogue -> fights -> dies.
Due to the focus shift, it isn't until the final cutscene where we get actual development on some of the things Episode 1 set up and this pretty much leaves Episode 3 to do all the heavy lifting.