Re: Xenosaga II

In article <95aI8gA7DUiEFweb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, {$spamtrap$}@fathippy.net says...
In message <MPG.1ef32b49afc2b5ad989724@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Paul Tomlin
<kerochan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
In article <SwrTusL+fPiEFwqw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, {$spamtrap$}@fathippy.net says...
In message <4p79lPAa6OiEFwek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mike Williams
<nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

Haven't had a mech battle yet, but I have found the combat system quite
confusing for the character battles.

Errr, maybe they've changed it for the UK version, but surely the game
opens to chaos and Canan desceding onto Militia in their ES? Aren't the
first few battles, therefore, in a mech?

Well, a very brief one at the start, where you wander down a road and
shoot a few things, but it's more a basic tutorial than anything else.

[snip]

Because of the lack of shops in the game, EVERY character NEEDS healing
skills.

This is good news, because my indisciminate point spending, means all
mine have got them. :-)

The difficult regular battles means you'll need to be using your
ethers a lot between save points to heal your characters.

Yes, already finding this. Some sections of the game don't seem to have
respawn points either, which can make going backwards and forwards in
order to level up, very tricky.

Yeah, thats kind of annoying. When I played through the US version I was
lucky enough to know from the Jp version that there is a very easy
levelling spot at the start of the second disk you can't get back to
later, and took my party way beyond what I needed to finish the Japanese
version of that game. Saying that, that was in raw terms of level - only
one character really reaped the rewards in terms of skill points - and
skills make a far bigger difference than you'd think.

For those who find XSII confusing, they've heavily simplified the combat
for XSIII.

I don't know that it needs simplifying. It just needs explaining
properly.

I don't think they ever do really explain the zoning system properly. I
didn't think it was too bad (hell, I managed to finish the game in
Japanese!), but I guess it comes from playing more. You just really need
to figure out the break combo as quickly as possible, stock as many
boosts are possible then throw in a big combo - break them, boost up
Jin/KOS-MOS/chaos/Ziggy whilst doing so in order to Air or Ground them
(BIG damage increase) with their circle attack, then just keep boosting
up characters to attack until you run out of boosts (baring in mind that
Ziggy and chaos can't attack Aired characters IIRC). Thats pretty much
all there is to it other than bosses who tend to have 3 or 4 move break
combos, where you have to continue your combo after the first characters
two attacks by boosting up a second.

I have found that you need to be careful to remember to swap characters
in/out of battle too, so that you can ensure your 'reserve' characters
are getting levelled up properly. It's all too easy in the heat of
battle to forget who your active party is and to forget to swap one out.

You can't really have a single "active party" in XSII anyway, or at
least not if you want to make reasonable progress. You'll find that most
opponents have a very blatant weakness against the attritubes of certain
characters attacks, so you'll be repeated switching characters mid-
battle to take advantage of it.

Yes, I'm using 'Analyze' far more often than I would its equivalent in
Final Fantasy style RPG's.

Wow, analyze. When you progress a bit its normally pretty easy to
actually guess what characters you need to use based on what kind of
opponent they are - Shion utterly destroys any kind of robot, for
example.
.

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