Board 8 > Rate this RPG (Day 12) - Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra

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Axl_Rose_85
07/05/11 8:39:00 PM
#1:


Previous Results
(Day 001) - Dragon Quest - 6.0 (15 users)
(Day 002) - Suikoden II - 9.7 (8 users)
(Day 003) - Xenogears - 9.1 (8 users)
(Day 004) - Chrono Cross - 7.5 (22 users)
(Day 005) - Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals - 7.8 (8 users)
(Day 006) - The Secret of Monkey Island - 8.6 (7 users) *Declared not an RPG by board 8
(Day 007) - Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars - 9.2 (10 users)
(Day 008) - Breath of Fire III - 7.9 (7 users)
(Day 009) - Final Fantasy VII - 8.8 (27 users)
(Day 010) - Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht - 7.6 (5 users)
(Day 011) - Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose - 8.5 (5 users)

My Score
8.9

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Jeff Zero
07/05/11 8:50:00 PM
#2:


Wow, Episode II bests Episode I. Some folks are going to miss several beats of the ol' heart over that one.

For my money, these are my trilogy rankings since I missed those:

Xenosaga Episode I: 6.8/10
Xenosaga Episode II: 6.0/10
Xenosaga Episode III: 6.8/10

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xp1337
07/05/11 9:01:00 PM
#3:


10/10. My favorite game of all time. I suppose I could get really technical and point out some flaws in it, but I could do that for any game I've played really, so...

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The Real Truth
07/05/11 9:06:00 PM
#4:


Still gotta play 3

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MartinFF7
07/05/11 9:11:00 PM
#5:


10/10

How the hell did Ep 2 get 8.5, there is so much wrong and unsatisfying with that game which Ep 3 pretty much all clears up. Other than the rushed ending, it's pretty great throughout!

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Axl_Rose_85
07/05/11 9:13:00 PM
#6:


Wow, Episode II bests Episode I. Some folks are going to miss several beats of the ol' heart over that one.

Episode II was definitely the weakest of the three for me as well. Episode III was just plain amazing

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Jeff Zero
07/05/11 9:15:00 PM
#7:


I'm going to say it now, so everyone feel free to throw proverbial sticks and stones at me, I'm used to it for these kinds of opinions. The whored-out attire in Episode III, vastly over-the-top compared to the previous two installments, is actually the reason Episode III rests in so comfortably mediocre a position as the other two in my ranking.

Shion, zip up your pants. Shion's new boss, Jesus Mercy, where do I begin. T-ELOS, you and KOS-MOS are now the ultimate Sexbot duo. This is all so incredulous and it's distracting me from taking you people seriously. In the words of MOMO,

"Why are you doing this?"

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xp1337
07/05/11 9:18:00 PM
#8:


I'd agree that Episode II was the weakest, but almost entirely because of Disc 2. Before that it's not too far from Xenosaga I, if only because Xenosaga I might suffer from the reverse problem, where the beginning is probably the weakest part. If you toss in Xenogears's various issues, that might make Xenosaga III the only Xeno-game to not run into this kind of problem for me. Although I suppose you could argue it starts running into it during the final chapter, but I can never quite tell if it's just because I'm comparing it to Chapters 7 and 8, which IMO, are probably the best stretch of any game.

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Axl_Rose_85
07/05/11 9:19:00 PM
#9:


^ As far as I'm concerned KOS-MOS will always be a sexbot for me. Be it episode 1, 2 or 3

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Jeff Zero
07/05/11 9:20:00 PM
#10:


Axl_Rose_85 posted...
^ As far as I'm concerned KOS-MOS will always be a sexbot for me. Be it episode 1, 2 or 3

That's fair. I still genuinely like her character overall though, regardless of Kevin's and Shion's choice in... armor.

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Jeff Zero
07/05/11 9:21:00 PM
#11:


I'd agree that Episode II was the weakest, but almost entirely because of Disc 2. Before that it's not too far from Xenosaga I,

It's been a long time, but wasn't the second disc like 75% of Episode II?

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XenoDeity
07/05/11 9:28:00 PM
#12:


10/10

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_stingers_
07/05/11 9:28:00 PM
#13:


10

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xp1337
07/05/11 9:28:00 PM
#14:


It's been a long time, but wasn't the second disc like 75% of Episode II?

Eh, tough to say. If you divide it up by dungeon count, I think it really is about halfway, or maybe just before it. However, if you go by gameplay time, 75% might seem kind of accurate. ...Which is the point I was getting at. My main issue with Xenosaga II is what I consider to be the increasing length of encounters (which I personally attribute to the HP of enemies going way too high, though it's been a while for me too, so maybe this isn't quite right), which doesn't really start cropping up until maybe the end of Disc 1/mostly in Disc 2.

Really, I view Xenosaga II's quality of actual gameplay as decreasing throughout the game, finally reaching the depths around the final dungeon, whereas the quality of the plot seems to steadily increase as the game goes on. Something I almost became thankful for because it provided me some extra incentive to continue on even as encounters started becoming increasingly tedious.

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_stingers_
07/05/11 9:29:00 PM
#15:


can jeff zero's votes just be ignored

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Jeff Zero
07/05/11 9:29:00 PM
#16:


_stingers_ posted...
can jeff zero's votes just be ignored

A 6.8 =/= 1/10, Jesus Mercy.

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Jeff Zero
07/05/11 9:30:00 PM
#17:


Good to know, by the by. I could have sworn disc one was only a few hours long though. Maybe I just haven't played it in too long.

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xp1337
07/05/11 9:36:00 PM
#18:


I could have sworn disc one was only a few hours long though.

If you know what you're doing, it very well could be. For practically all of Disc 1, you can get through it without understanding the battle system, and if you do understand the battle system you can crush everything in your path with almost no effort. By Disc 2 though, this same style of play becomes a lot harder to maintain, and even if you do understand the battle system - at least in my experience, it eventually becomes an almost mindless repetition of the same basic strategy (which, IIRC, is basically "Stock and Boost up, apply elemental weaknesses, air/down the enemy and unleash everything you have on it), however, as the game goes on, you find you have to repeat it multiple times in a single encounter. To the point where I basically had the same strategy for every encounter, and it made encounters in the final dungeon "harder" than the final boss, because I was pretty much doing the same thing in both battles, only you can have more enemies in normal encounters.

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Jeff Zero
07/05/11 9:37:00 PM
#19:


Interesting stuff. Maybe I'll bust out the trilogy at some point. I wish there was a way to go with Japanese VAs sans importing, though. They were all mostly the same throughout, weren't they? It really bugs me when they switch things around a lot in such a short period of time like they did with Xenosaga.

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NeoElfboy
07/05/11 9:55:00 PM
#20:


0/10. Simply awful at everything. Okay, that's a lie, I liked some of the disc 1 plot (Virgil stuff mostly) but the disc 2 plot ruins -everything-. And the battle system sucked too.

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Jeff Zero
07/05/11 9:56:00 PM
#21:


NeoElfboy posted...
0/10. Simply awful at everything. Okay, that's a lie, I liked some of the disc 1 plot (Virgil stuff mostly) but the disc 2 plot ruins -everything-. And the battle system sucked too.

And stingers is trying to sting me!

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NeoElfboy
07/05/11 9:59:00 PM
#22:


I am strongly in the "XS2 is the only good game in that series" camp. I mean the plot isn't great but there's some decent stuff mixed in there at least and its ending at least has -some- closure (removing two major villains) unlike 1's. And it actually had an original battle system.

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Jeff Zero
07/05/11 10:03:00 PM
#23:


NeoElfboy posted...
I am strongly in the "XS2 is the only good game in that series" camp. I mean the plot isn't great but there's some decent stuff mixed in there at least and its ending at least has -some- closure (removing two major villains) unlike 1's. And it actually had an original battle system.

It's pretty amazing how divisive XS2 is. There seem to be two viewpoints on it: "The first and third episodes of this trilogy are great but that shall not be spoken of!" and "The first and third episodes of this trilogy are so bad but at least they produced this, I guess!"

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xp1337
07/05/11 10:07:00 PM
#24:


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
07/05/11 10:10:00 PM
#25:


It's pretty amazing how divisive XS2 is. There seem to be two viewpoints on it: "The first and third episodes of this trilogy are great but that shall not be spoken of!" and "The first and third episodes of this trilogy are so bad but at least they produced this, I guess!"

Yeah, it's kind of amusing, really. I'm probably closer to the first viewpoint, but in reality, I'm more like, "Xenosaga I is a pretty good RPG, but nothing to go too crazy over, Xenosaga II had a lot of potential, but kind of squandered it fairly badly, but Xenosaga III? Greatest of all time."

Which I think is probably a bit "out there" for Xenosaga opinions. It probably gets even worse if we throw in my Xenogears views.

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Achromatic
07/05/11 10:33:00 PM
#26:


Hey host can I give back scores I forget if that's allowed.

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Axl_Rose_85
07/05/11 11:04:00 PM
#27:


^ Not exactly sure what you mean by that. You mean to say can you rate games which are previously done? If so no. If you meant can you take back your score and re-rate the game then sure why not.

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Jeff Zero
07/06/11 1:10:00 AM
#28:


I gave it some thought and decided my current scores for the trilogy are too low. I'd like to fix that.

I also realized I ranked Episode I already and I'm happy with what I gave it. For some reason I thought I missed both.

Xenosaga Episode I: 7.4
Xenosaga Episode II: 6.5
Xenosaga Episode III: 7.8

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Liberal Degenerate
07/06/11 1:25:00 AM
#29:


10/10. Best. Game. Ever.

Jeff Zero posted...
Interesting stuff. Maybe I'll bust out the trilogy at some point. I wish there was a way to go with Japanese VAs sans importing, though. They were all mostly the same throughout, weren't they? It really bugs me when they switch things around a lot in such a short period of time like they did with Xenosaga.

All three episodes have readily available undubs. And yes the Japanese voice actors are the same throughout, while the English ones do tend to change around a little too much. Some characters have a different voice in every one of the three games.

xp1337 posted...
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.

The battle system is very derivative of FFX's, yes, but I don't see how it can be called a lite version of it. If anything it's FFX-improved. Boost and Break systems totally increase the strategy value and make the battles even more enjoyable than FFX's imho.

Either way, those two games have my favourite turn-based battle systems in any RPG. Some people might criticise Xenosaga III's for being a little too derivative of FFX's perhaps, but hey, if you're gonna steal then you might as well steal from the best there is.

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Jeff Zero
07/06/11 1:26:00 AM
#30:



All three episodes have readily available undubs.


Good to know.

And yes the Japanese voice actors are the same throughout, while the English ones do tend to change around a little too much. Some characters have a different voice in every one of the three games.

Oh god, which characters were so brutally victimized? I gotta wonder why Namco let that kind of thing happen.

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Liberal Degenerate
07/06/11 2:56:00 AM
#31:


Well, in retrospect I might've been exaggerating there with the word "some", seeing as the only noteworthy character I can recall that was in all three games and had a different voice in each was Helmer.

But still, the vast majority of the cast had two different voices throughout the series. The only characters that were in all three episodes and had the same voice in each were the URTVs, Ziggy, Allen and Margulis. Everyone else changed at least once. Hell, the two most important characters, Shion and KOS-MOS, got different VAs for Episode II, only to change back to their original ones for Episode III. >_>

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xp1337
07/06/11 3:02:00 AM
#32:


The battle system is very derivative of FFX's, yes, but I don't see how it can be called a lite version of it. If anything it's FFX-improved. Boost and Break systems totally increase the strategy value and make the battles even more enjoyable than FFX's imho.

I was thinking more along the lines of Skill Line and Sphere Grid when I said that, I kind of consider those involved in the battle system as well, if only because I'm not sure how else to classify them. If we stick purely to what occurs in actual battles, you're right about it having more options than FFX, IMO. Either way, they're some of my favorite battle systems in any RPG, so I don't mind!

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