Game really tests your patience in the final dungeon to drag it out as long as possible and good god the battle system is complex but it’s still good.
Episode 2 expands significantly on ideas from Episode 1's battle system and basically make it a huge mess but that's a good thing... for a while. How the system actually works is very interesting, the 3 face buttons are essentially mapped to which "zone" of the enemy you will hit (Denoted by A, B and C). You want to figure out the enemy's weak zone, which by hitting you'll trigger a break. If an enemy is broken you can then use certain characters' O moves to air/down them and do massive damage in succession, usually by having your stocks up fully before initiating your combo. Now this is cool and all... but at some point around halfway the enemies really start to feel like they were designed just to hinder you and make utilizing this system properly very monotonous and boring. This of course all culminates at the final dungeon where your patience will be put to the ultimate test with loads of unskippable enemies in huge groups with loads of health that can tear into you very quickly.
While I believe the combat system to be an improvement over the first episode overall, the character growth was horribly butchered. All those cool systems from 1? Gone. This game doesn't even have shops, equipment or a form of currency. The only system in place is the class point and skill point system. If an active character defeats a boss, they will earn class points. By expending class points you can purchase access to a class's 4 skills which you can then buy with skill points. Some skills will be locked and you'll need secret keys to open them. Most skills are passive or spells that your character will gain permanently, but some are equippable and serve as the only real customizable aspect of the game. You can have 3 skills equipped at once, but you'll pretty much always have a slot dedicated to your character's swimsuit which boosts skill point gain tremendously. Now your choices for the other two slots... you really don't have many options that are viable. There are simply not that many good skills available and if there are any, count on them being locked behind a secret key and/or costing more points than you'll ever dream of getting. This results in there being essentially no character growth or feeling of progression whatsoever. This'll lead into the next thing I want to talk about, the character variety.
In Episode 1 I liked all the characters a lot and couldn't decide who I wanted to use, so I used a mix of everyone as I felt like it. Pretty much everyone is viable there, fun to use and cool to see their various flashy tech moves. Besides the characters barely being customizable in this game they are all tied to certain elements innately, and are completely different fundamentally when it comes to dealing damage, depending on what category they fall into. Ziggy and chaos are normal melee fighters, they can break and down enemies and dish out a ton of damage to downed enemies but they are unable to hit aired targets. KOS-MOS and Jin are basically the same deal, except they can air enemies rather than down them and also hit aired targets. MOMO and Shion are ranged fighters, they only use O moves so they cannot break, down or air enemies by themselves, they can play a part in breaking but 99% of the time they're going to fully stock and unload everything when your other characters have successfully down or aired the enemy. Jr. is an oddball, he is ranged but functions like the melee character categories in the sense that he can reliably break enemies, but he cannot down or air them, Jr. is not restricted to only using O moves and unlike chaos or Ziggy can hit enemies while they are aired.
As stated previously, each character is focused on a certain element type and more often than not this is a detriment. Characters with neutral elements like MOMO or Jr. will heavily outweigh the usefulness of characters like Shion or chaos because a lot of enemies will be resistant and their elements will make them less effective. However in the few areas where the element is beneficial they are perfect for the job. The only exception to elements making you worse is Ziggy, which is so strong that him being tied to fire elements never holds him down. The way this works will essentially lock you into set parties for each area or boss fight. Jr. and MOMO will always be in your party if you hope to clear boss fights with ease and your third member will vary but it'll likely be Ziggy or Jin/KOS-MOS (these two do the same thing entirely). Jr. is the absolute best character for dishing out damage alongside MOMO and her utility gained by having a high EP pool is unparalleled. Shion's weird electric and beam moves in her move sequence just make her a worse version of MOMO which has neutral ether. Ziggy is just stronger than chaos for every situation besides a couple segments where the enemies are weak to chaos's holy moves. So all in all, this battle system had some great concepts that were crushed by terrible execution.
I'd also like the mention the E.S. combat present in this entry. Thankfully the game is now divided into E.S. and on foot portions like Xenogears instead of having you guess when you should use your mechs like in Episode 1. The downside here is just how unpolished and little attention was given to the E.S. battle system. It's severely barebones and the systems it does have are very poorly explained. There's no break/air/down or anything here. Each E.S. has 2 basic attacks using the face buttons and they all have a handful of special moves you can make use of by charging up as well. E.S. Zebulun can cast spells, but not the other two. Pretty much every E.S. boss battle is a snore that takes way too long even if you're using the best possible strategy, which is, in every case, to spam the special move that is most effective. Now how do special moves work? The game won't tell you so I will, each E.S. has a set main pilot that you cannot change but the other 4 characters will be designated as co-pilots which you can move around as you wish and THIS is how your set of special moves is determined. You'll have to mix and match characters to eventually find the combination which gets you the boss's weakness well enough and then you can proceed to spam for the duration of very long and boring boss battles. The only one I really enjoyed was a callback to Xenogears where you fight Lieutenant Vanderkam's cannons like back in the day. It was hilarious and actually featured some varied mechanics.
Now onto more positive aspects of this game, what I really like it for is its main story, the sidequest system and the music. This game is noticeably shorter than its predecessor and its successor having about half as much cutscene length but they do manage to pack a lot of interesting things about the story and characters in this entry and really starts to move things along in contrast to 1's big setup. Episode 2 is mostly focused on Jr. and Albedo, I found these characters to be expertly written and charming and the hard-hitting scenes involving them are phenomenal. The other characters get moments as well but it was clear where the focus was put. Another great addition here is the inclusion of Shion's brother, Jin Uzuki, which gets quite the grand entrance in the beginning portions of this game and quickly became one of my favorites. The cutscenes are overall much more engaging than Episode 1 as well, there's much more action and it is better spread out throughout the game. Scenes with little action are also more interesting simply due to the subject matter being more engaging and pertaining to characters rather than political matters for the most part.
A little on the music, this game smashes Episode 1's soundtrack almost entirely. Mitsuda really didn't bring his A game for Episode 1 besides the regular battle theme (to be fair this is what you're going to hear for ~60% of the game) and the final boss theme, a lot of portions in that game do not have music at all! Episode 2 brought on a couple new composers including Yuki Kajiura which is well known for a plethora of great anime soundtracks and she really did a great job here as well. Shinji Hosoe's music contribution was even better than Kajiura's and made for the best soundtrack in the trilogy. The soundtrack made the experience as a whole a lot more enjoyable and complemented everything perfectly. Fatal Fight is one of my favorite video game songs and most of the town music remains very memorable.
The last thing I must mention are the sidequests, known in this game as GS Missions. You'll be introduced to the system early on and it feels very much like where Xenoblade Chronicles's expansive sidequest system originated (though this game did it best until Xenoblade Chronicles X). There are 36 GS Missions and they generally involve helping ordinary people out with rudimentary daily tasks, creating small side narratives to go along with them. I ended up giving up on completing all 36 and settled for 30 (32 is quite the monumental task) but it was something I really enjoyed about the game and found pretty interesting. You'll also be rewarded handsomely for taking these on most of the time. You get almost every characters' aforementioned swimsuit from doing these and you'll get the bulk of the secret keys for powerful skills as well.
At the end of the day, Xenosaga Episode 2 is littered with tons of problems that pile up and can be excruciating to play near the end but I really loved what I did enjoy about it and don't regret spending time on it.
Episode 2 expands significantly on ideas from Episode 1's battle system and basically make it a huge mess but that's a good thing... for a while. How the system actually works is very interesting, the 3 face buttons are essentially mapped to which "zone" of the enemy you will hit (Denoted by A, B and C). You want to figure out the enemy's weak zone, which by hitting you'll trigger a break. If an enemy is broken you can then use certain characters' O moves to air/down them and do massive damage in succession, usually by having your stocks up fully before initiating your combo. Now this is cool and all... but at some point around halfway the enemies really start to feel like they were designed just to hinder you and make utilizing this system properly very monotonous and boring. This of course all culminates at the final dungeon where your patience will be put to the ultimate test with loads of unskippable enemies in huge groups with loads of health that can tear into you very quickly.
While I believe the combat system to be an improvement over the first episode overall, the character growth was horribly butchered. All those cool systems from 1? Gone. This game doesn't even have shops, equipment or a form of currency. The only system in place is the class point and skill point system. If an active character defeats a boss, they will earn class points. By expending class points you can purchase access to a class's 4 skills which you can then buy with skill points. Some skills will be locked and you'll need secret keys to open them. Most skills are passive or spells that your character will gain permanently, but some are equippable and serve as the only real customizable aspect of the game. You can have 3 skills equipped at once, but you'll pretty much always have a slot dedicated to your character's swimsuit which boosts skill point gain tremendously. Now your choices for the other two slots... you really don't have many options that are viable. There are simply not that many good skills available and if there are any, count on them being locked behind a secret key and/or costing more points than you'll ever dream of getting. This results in there being essentially no character growth or feeling of progression whatsoever. This'll lead into the next thing I want to talk about, the character variety.
In Episode 1 I liked all the characters a lot and couldn't decide who I wanted to use, so I used a mix of everyone as I felt like it. Pretty much everyone is viable there, fun to use and cool to see their various flashy tech moves. Besides the characters barely being customizable in this game they are all tied to certain elements innately, and are completely different fundamentally when it comes to dealing damage, depending on what category they fall into. Ziggy and chaos are normal melee fighters, they can break and down enemies and dish out a ton of damage to downed enemies but they are unable to hit aired targets. KOS-MOS and Jin are basically the same deal, except they can air enemies rather than down them and also hit aired targets. MOMO and Shion are ranged fighters, they only use O moves so they cannot break, down or air enemies by themselves, they can play a part in breaking but 99% of the time they're going to fully stock and unload everything when your other characters have successfully down or aired the enemy. Jr. is an oddball, he is ranged but functions like the melee character categories in the sense that he can reliably break enemies, but he cannot down or air them, Jr. is not restricted to only using O moves and unlike chaos or Ziggy can hit enemies while they are aired.
As stated previously, each character is focused on a certain element type and more often than not this is a detriment. Characters with neutral elements like MOMO or Jr. will heavily outweigh the usefulness of characters like Shion or chaos because a lot of enemies will be resistant and their elements will make them less effective. However in the few areas where the element is beneficial they are perfect for the job. The only exception to elements making you worse is Ziggy, which is so strong that him being tied to fire elements never holds him down. The way this works will essentially lock you into set parties for each area or boss fight. Jr. and MOMO will always be in your party if you hope to clear boss fights with ease and your third member will vary but it'll likely be Ziggy or Jin/KOS-MOS (these two do the same thing entirely). Jr. is the absolute best character for dishing out damage alongside MOMO and her utility gained by having a high EP pool is unparalleled. Shion's weird electric and beam moves in her move sequence just make her a worse version of MOMO which has neutral ether. Ziggy is just stronger than chaos for every situation besides a couple segments where the enemies are weak to chaos's holy moves. So all in all, this battle system had some great concepts that were crushed by terrible execution.
I'd also like the mention the E.S. combat present in this entry. Thankfully the game is now divided into E.S. and on foot portions like Xenogears instead of having you guess when you should use your mechs like in Episode 1. The downside here is just how unpolished and little attention was given to the E.S. battle system. It's severely barebones and the systems it does have are very poorly explained. There's no break/air/down or anything here. Each E.S. has 2 basic attacks using the face buttons and they all have a handful of special moves you can make use of by charging up as well. E.S. Zebulun can cast spells, but not the other two. Pretty much every E.S. boss battle is a snore that takes way too long even if you're using the best possible strategy, which is, in every case, to spam the special move that is most effective. Now how do special moves work? The game won't tell you so I will, each E.S. has a set main pilot that you cannot change but the other 4 characters will be designated as co-pilots which you can move around as you wish and THIS is how your set of special moves is determined. You'll have to mix and match characters to eventually find the combination which gets you the boss's weakness well enough and then you can proceed to spam for the duration of very long and boring boss battles. The only one I really enjoyed was a callback to Xenogears where you fight Lieutenant Vanderkam's cannons like back in the day. It was hilarious and actually featured some varied mechanics.
Now onto more positive aspects of this game, what I really like it for is its main story, the sidequest system and the music. This game is noticeably shorter than its predecessor and its successor having about half as much cutscene length but they do manage to pack a lot of interesting things about the story and characters in this entry and really starts to move things along in contrast to 1's big setup. Episode 2 is mostly focused on Jr. and Albedo, I found these characters to be expertly written and charming and the hard-hitting scenes involving them are phenomenal. The other characters get moments as well but it was clear where the focus was put. Another great addition here is the inclusion of Shion's brother, Jin Uzuki, which gets quite the grand entrance in the beginning portions of this game and quickly became one of my favorites. The cutscenes are overall much more engaging than Episode 1 as well, there's much more action and it is better spread out throughout the game. Scenes with little action are also more interesting simply due to the subject matter being more engaging and pertaining to characters rather than political matters for the most part.
A little on the music, this game smashes Episode 1's soundtrack almost entirely. Mitsuda really didn't bring his A game for Episode 1 besides the regular battle theme (to be fair this is what you're going to hear for ~60% of the game) and the final boss theme, a lot of portions in that game do not have music at all! Episode 2 brought on a couple new composers including Yuki Kajiura which is well known for a plethora of great anime soundtracks and she really did a great job here as well. Shinji Hosoe's music contribution was even better than Kajiura's and made for the best soundtrack in the trilogy. The soundtrack made the experience as a whole a lot more enjoyable and complemented everything perfectly. Fatal Fight is one of my favorite video game songs and most of the town music remains very memorable.
The last thing I must mention are the sidequests, known in this game as GS Missions. You'll be introduced to the system early on and it feels very much like where Xenoblade Chronicles's expansive sidequest system originated (though this game did it best until Xenoblade Chronicles X). There are 36 GS Missions and they generally involve helping ordinary people out with rudimentary daily tasks, creating small side narratives to go along with them. I ended up giving up on completing all 36 and settled for 30 (32 is quite the monumental task) but it was something I really enjoyed about the game and found pretty interesting. You'll also be rewarded handsomely for taking these on most of the time. You get almost every characters' aforementioned swimsuit from doing these and you'll get the bulk of the secret keys for powerful skills as well.
At the end of the day, Xenosaga Episode 2 is littered with tons of problems that pile up and can be excruciating to play near the end but I really loved what I did enjoy about it and don't regret spending time on it.