Ok, so I liked Xenosaga when I first played it two years ago. And now that the price of Ep 2 has gone down, I’m thinking about picking it up as well. So, what I want to know is how good is it, how long is it, and were there any changes to the game’s battle system?
A) Not awesome, but not absolutely terrible. It’s not as good as the first one, but if you’re interested in some backstory you’ll like it for one playthrough, at least.
B) About 40 hours if you do all the sidequests. Closer to 25 if you skip them, but you’ll have a harder time.
C) Yes, quite a few changes. You can see a full review here:
http://www.rpgclassics.com/reviews/cidolfas/xenosaga2.shtml
I told you about XS2 before. Your response was to not get it.
I think Cid is being a bit too kind.
The game is basically just the U.R.T.V.'s backstory and a tiny but relevant bit on Ziggy (he DOES have his own game after all). Shion and her brother Jin have a few dialogues that seem important but don’t resolve anything, MOMO is just hanging there and KOS-MOS, chaos and Nephilim are thrown almost completely into background. The Gnosis are even just scarcely mentioned once or twice.
The only real improvement in my opinion are the E.S.
To be fair, it’s a middle episode on a Trilogy, and for some reason those have been known to be a bit lackluster compared to part 1 and part 3. This doesn’t really excuse its faults, but I’m just sayin’… 
My own opinion is that if you liked the first one you should play through the second at least once. I bought it as soon as EB got it in where I live, and I don’t really regret how much it cost compared to what it would cost now, but I am a shameless XS Fanboy. Looking at the game objectively, it has its faults. I rather liked what they did to the battle system, but the pre-battle lag was just ridiculous in some places. The game finally got standard BGMs in pretty much every area, as opposed to the first episode’s reliance on ambiance, but a lot of people disliked the in-game BGM. Me, I liked it, mostly because Dragon God exposed me to Shinji Hosoe before I played the game.
One way or another I’d play it if you plan on playing Episode III this fall. I think November is the estimated NA release date.
The ES are easy mode fights. the rest of the fights are either long , tedious and difficult or extremely easy if the proper exploits are used. I personally despise Hosoe and felt the music was totally out of sync with the series. On the other hand, at least the score was used unlike how it was wasted in 1.
Thats when I thought that XS:DS was coming out here 
Since its not, I’m thinking about picking up Ep 2… yeah, I might get it off eBay for cheap. Thanks for the info guys.
What he said, unless you go into the bonus areas and get your butt whooped even in the E.S. On the topic of music, the in-game BMG is frankly horrible. That’s why there are two separate soundtracks: The usual BGM by Hosoe and the Movie Scene Soundtrack (The stuff used in cutscenes) by Yuki Kajiura.
I love Kajiura, and Cro will probably recognise her from .hack//SIGN and //LIMINALITY. I’ll admit, it’s not as awesome as those two, but there are still some very good tunes (Communication Breakdown is my favourite). Not surprisingly, the MSS was the only soundtrack released ¬_¬
Big fucking nay. It’s a 40 hour fetch quest with the most retarded and needlessly complicated battle system in RPG history.