I don't even know if the rating I put in here is fitting for this kind or review or even matters so I am not really giving this one an official rating or whatever in the traditional sense.

Xenosaga II to III: A Missing Year is a Japanese-exclusive visual novel/game/idk how to describe this thing that takes place between the events of Episode 2 and Episode 3. It involves Shion and Jin pursuing a 100-Series Realian who has more to her that meets the eye and the story dives into some very relevant lore points and delves into the characters we all know and love so much.

I don't think the game itself is even active anymore online even in its original incarnation so the most accessible way of seeing this game is through a fan translation of the game on YouTube which I will link below and is the way I managed to access this game:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhkdGQOixb1cbR4UDX1iFT1M_ErV5dWxA

It is unfortunate because if the game had a way bigger budget than it was given, this could have been converted to a game like Tetsuya Takahashi and the devs wanted to (same with Pied Piper and other media). I still think this is worth experiencing for the writing alone and especially for the ending, it's only an hour at most so this won't take up much of anyone's time but that's all there is to it really...

Thanks to MrRPGCrazy for uploading a subtitled playthrought on this one on Youtube

Xenosaga II to III : A Missing Years is a small browser based huh... visual novel I guess ? Released in 2006 and meant to bridge the gap between Xenosaga 2 and Xenosaga 3

I was told to watch this to better understand Xenosaga 3 so I'm not sure yet how essential of an entry this is but regardless on whether or not it ends up actually being important doesn't change the fact that it is... pretty bad...

Calling this thing a visual novel would be an insult to visual novel, it's more of a powerpoint presentation with voice over and a few text dump thrown here and there which exists solely for the purpose of infodumping us a ton of info which may or may not be essential for Xenosaga 3.

The Plot centers around Shion and Jin investigating some Gnosis related terrorism, apparently a boy and a girl have been able to summon Gnosis thanks to an earlier version of the Song of Nephilim called "Lemegeton". The girl is a special 100 Series Realian (yes another one...) who has lost her memory and is trying to find a guy named Grimoire who might hold the secret to the Lemegeton. But the girl is sought after by both Vector Industry who's been hiding a few secrets from Shion and an Anti-UMN resistance group named "Scientia" formed by Ziggy's former comrade in Pied Piper.

The story itself is just kind of wtv, most of it just amounts to just explaining to us a bunch of stuff in the laziest most straightforward way possible. The presentation is pretty damn bad, the audio-mixing is equally as terrible and the central plot is just trying to manipulate us into giving a shit about some random no-name gothic lolita chick which is related to Shion in a way that just feels like she's there to add more to Shion's backstory and trauma than to be an interesting character worth crying over instead. Between the Death of her parents, her estranged relationship with her brother and the whole deal with Febronia which we have yet to be given any explanations about, this just felt tacked on and kind of unnecessary, feels like some weird fanfiction at times even (yes even more so than Xenosaga 2).

I feel like the plot about Grimoire being Nephilim's Father and trying to bring her back could've easily been better integrated in the main game and even then for what this add to Nephilim's character it's pretty damn frivolous, but I guess I'll see if they do anything with that in Xenosaga 3.

I don't really recommend this one unless you're really crazy about series completionism.