And it actually had an original battle system.
See, I'm torn on this. I think the battle system certainly had a lot of potential, but it just wasn't executed well. I give it credit to the extent that it's probably one of the few games I've played where you pretty much need to understand it at some point and can't just brute force your way through the game like you can in a lot of other RPGs. I just feel that towards the endgame they just started dialing up the enemy HP instead of trying to think of other ways to really challenge the player, and all of a sudden the fact that you can't brute force your way through almost turns against you because now you're forced to suffer through the increasing length of battles. By contrast, in Xenosaga I you can practically break the battle system (Bravesoul + Angelic Requiem is kind of hilarious) towards the later stages of the game to compensate for a kind of similar effect that takes place there.
Really, Xenosaga III has the "simplest" battle system, in that it's basically a FFX-lite system IMO, but FFX probably has one of my favorite JRPG battle systems, so this is a positive to me.
But really, I can understand the differing opinions on this. I just personally prefer Xenosaga III's to it. Alternatively, there's a much more efficient way to play Xenosaga II than I used, which wouldn't surprise me all that much, though I like to think the system I devised was pretty good overall.
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
GotD (219/384) Melee v FFX