Ok, just woke up (the joys of sleeping at 9am ^^;; ) Going to try to field the questions:
Mashing wrote
Hmm, so would you say Baten Kaitos is the better of the two Monolift Soft rpgs this year?
I hope atleast one of them is good... I like EP1 and Xenogears is one of my favorite games so it pains me to hear EP2 is so horrible
Baten Kaitos is better than XS ep2 in every way. My only complaints with Baten Kaitos is that it's seems like it will be an epic great story at the beginning but eventually becomes a pretty generic 16bit era rpg story with generic characters. That might seem like a big complaint, but the battle system in BK is really really good. The environments are great and gorgeous, and the music is fantastic. It's also a good sized 50-60 hour rpg. The game is a tad easy, but otherwise if you can live with a pretty normal story (Which still has some good events) you'll have a really enjoyable rpg. To me BK was an 8.9 game and far above XSep2 IMO.
Dark10x wrote
I assume the dialog is at about the same level as Xenosaga Ep1, yes? I will be in Japan by the time the US version is released, so I'd have to import in order to play it in English. I can already handle plenty of Japanese games, but XS Episode 1 was not one of those games. However, it will obviously be a LOT cheaper to simply play the Japanese version than it would be to get the US version. Despite your impressions, I do want to play it...
It's pretty playable if you don't mind missing out on the story. The battle system doesn't have too much Japanese in it, and the puzzles are mainly trial and error. But I will say that ep1 & 2 are the most difficult Japanese story-wise I've encountered in import gaming. Lots and lots of huge kanji names and overall a high-level word choice. Though there are summaries already on the internet so you can just check them. Also I do encourage you and everyone to still buy the game and make your own opinion, especially since I want ep3 and to get that a lot of people need to by the game first even if it's not that great
I think the point of my review is just to get people to lower their expectations ALOT so they won't be as severely dissapointed when they are playing it.
Drinky Crow wrote
Um, isn't that BAD dungeon design? Pretty doesn't make a dungeon good; clever puzzles and smart critical pathing make a dungeon experience entertaining. See: Zelda TOoT and Alundra for good dungeons.
Yeah for the most part you are right. Stuff like that in the dungeon is bad design...but the dungeon does have a lot of good design. Most of the puzzles are pretty fun and require a little thinking and the actual environments you go through are huge and greatly detailed. Also they are nice and long usually with several boses which I found very satisfying. So despite the problems with them, I still had the most fun in the game when I was going through giant dungeons for several hours.
Dark10x wrote
What exactly DO you like?
I swear, it seems like you purchase RPGs with the sole intention of bashing the hell out of them.
To be fair, I met and have known Duckroll since 2002 when XS ep1 came out as we were both part of Jetfuel's Xenosaga Madness project (the 700+k FAQ at gamefaqs). He's a huge Xeno~ universe fan as were all of us on the project, and really the ones who are the biggest fans of the series are the ones who are disappointed the most due to all the steps backwards. Also besides ToS, I know Duckroll enjoyed Baten Kaitos for the most part, although the story issues disappointed him a lot more than me.
Mairu wrote
Hosoe?
Don't mean to be an ass, just wondering if it's the same person... if so, that's too bad . He has done some amazing arrangements, his track on the ESPGALUDA soundtrack is great.
It really pains me to hear the complaints about the music, Kajiura is such a fantastic composer
Sorry, I wrote the review at ~8am after no sleep so I got a lot of things like names spelled wrong
Anyhow I'm sure Hosoe can write music, but his style really really does not fit in this game and just is not the sound you want for "rpg town/dungeon".
Dark10x wrote
Well, based on the samples, Xenosaga Ep.2 should be her BEST game soundtrack. The other three games which she has composed for all had soundtracks ranging from bland to almost decent.
I love most of her work, but she doesn't seem to be geared for game music composing. That being said, the music in the trailers was fantastic and the 1 minute clips on her site were also very good. I don't think I'll be TOO disappointed in her work...
I don't think I can fairly judge Kajiura's works until I get the soundtrack and listen for a few days. Just like how Mitsuda music was handled badly in ep1, Kajiura's is handled even worse in ep2. Basically the music is really quiet in the background and you don't even notice it and then every once and a while it'll come up into the foreground but those times are quite rare
Charles wrote
Not much chance that they'll completly rework the game for the US release is there?
Nope, but who knows maybe they do an ep2 directors cut where they rework the battle and skill system, add in a bunch of character development scenes, and speed up the ES mechs and oh include a UMN database.
Speaking of which I forgot two things in my review that I should mention:
--UMN Database is gone. This sucks because like ep1 the game is full of terms left and right, and having a comprehensive database of all of them in ep1 was very helpful and an enjoyable read through. If I had to make a guess, I think they will release an expansion type disc with a database, kinda like how Xenofreaks had a database for ep1. (Btw, the Xenofreaks comic story and the Xenosaga Outer File audio dramas connect to ep2 slightly which is a good thing IMO since I spend $90 on those damn audio dramas
)
--The way the game handles status effects. You know how in most rpgs you if your character is poisened they have a poisen drop or something to indicate that they are poisened? A sleep indicator/paralyze ect... Anyhow in ep2 they game just puts a white ball above a character with a bad stat effect, or a red ball if it's a majorly bad stat effect. There is no way visually to tell if the white ball over guy B's head means they are poisened or have physical attack down. To do that you must go into the menu and specifically point a item/spell at that character just to figure out what ailment they have. Pretty clumsy design IMO.
