Has anyone ever played the other Xeno games?

[Ronnie]

I only ever played Xenoblade Chronicles X and I really like that game. I know Chronicles 1 is the most popular along with Xenogears.

I'm curious if anyone ever played Xenosaga and if it's any good? I want to beef up my PS2 RPG collection that doesn't already have a PS3/4 HD version.

[Ronnie]

I only ever played Xenoblade Chronicles X and I really like that game. I know Chronicles 1 is the most popular along with Xenogears.

I'm curious if anyone ever played Xenosaga and if it's any good? I want to beef up my PS2 RPG collection that doesn't already have a PS3/4 HD version.

[Slumber]

I'm a huge fan of Xenogears. Xenosaga's a series of games that tried to do too much with way too little, and it can be a rough time. I'm not a big fan of the Saga games.

I'm also not a fan of Xenoblade Chronicles(I flat out hated my experience with it, but that was punctuated by one really shitty thing happen when I was right at the end), either. Never bothered with X because I didn't have a Wii U, and the name "Xenoblade" turned me off.

[LucarioGamer812]

I've only played Xenoblade 1 so my experience is pretty limited. I do want to get into Xenosaga though as I really like KOS-MOS in her various appearances in crossover games over the past few generations.

[Ertrick36]

I played Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenosaga 2.  Didn't complete any of them for various reasons, though none were because I thought they were even remotely bad.  I'm just typically bad about completing long RPGs.

Xenogears contains probably one of my favorite soundtracks in all of gaming.  And the first time I played Morrowind, I pretty much made Fei Fong Wong because I always love making punching builds in any TES games that I can.

[Interdimensional Observer]

I've played Xenogears. The game is one of the biggest flawed masterpieces in gaming. The first disc is long and good, the second is clearly rushed to hell and back. The plot also does a lot of things and the poor translation quality of the PS1 era doesn't help. The gameplay is simple, easy and weak, while the visuals aren't good, and the music- well some love it, I didn't, but it does have some good tracks I admit. On the character side of things, nobody is incredible, some PCs are filler, others get a little time, but not that much. The hero Fei is special, but pathetic and honestly I'm not sure of my opinion of him; the heroine Elly is cliched, but not too bad. Citan I like though, and on the NPC side, Sigurd is cool too. 

As for the plot- well that's its shining grace. I love the big villain trio the game sets up, and Fei's psychology is very well executed overall. Some of the religious/psychological allusions are clearly forced (the crucifixion scene), but others are handled more carefully. The second disc ratchets things up and brings everything to resolution, but the way it does it is still bad. You'll need to look things up online when you're done to fully understand things.

[saisymbolic]

I've played Xenosaga. Own all of them actually. The story is pretty convoluted, and even now, I still don't quite understand all the details. This is as someone who made it a point to play through all three games, watch all the cutscenes, read all the glossaries and talk to all NPCs where available. But, I did find the gameplay to be pretty fun. Particularly Xenosaga 2, which is probably the least liked one. Xenosaga 3 refined the battle system.

[Armagon]

So far, i've only played Xenoblade Chronicles, which i really enjoyed. I want to play X but i don't have a Wii U. As for the other Xeno games, i really want to play them, i just don't have the resources to do so. I could try emulating them but i don't know how well Playstation emulators work and i doubt my laptop would be powerful enough to run them. Them there's the lack of a proper controller as well (though i could sync up my Joy-Cons and see how that goes).

2 hours ago, Slumber said:

I'm also not a fan of Xenoblade Chronicles(I flat out hated my experience with it, but that was punctuated by one really shitty thing happen when I was right at the end),

If i may ask, what was that thing that happened to you at the end?

[Slumber]

7 minutes ago, Armagon said:

If i may ask, what was that thing that happened to you at the end?

By the time I was getting near the end, I was getting pretty burnt out by the game. My party composition for Lorithia just couldn't handle the fight feasibly without grinding(I was still running Shulk, Reyn, Sharla, with Reyn continuously just running into the damage areas, effectively making him worthless), so I took a break from the game. Like, a week or so later, my Wii bricked, losing ALL of my 70 hours of progress in the game.

It was a bad experience that had made some negative feelings I was developing for the game even worse. Every time I've tried to go back, I think about how I didn't really enjoy getting to that point, and I quit.

Edited September 4, 2017 by Slumber

[Interdimensional Observer]

14 minutes ago, Slumber said:

By the time I was getting near the end, I was getting pretty burnt out by the game. My party composition for Lorithia just couldn't handle the fight feasibly without grinding(I was still running Shulk, Reyn, Sharla, with Reyn continuously just running into the damage areas, effectively making him worthless), so I took a break from the game. Like, a week or so later, my Wii bricked, losing ALL of my 70 hours of progress in the game.

It was a bad experience that had made some negative feelings I was developing for the game even worse. Every time I've tried to go back, I think about how I didn't really enjoy getting to that point, and I quit.

Ah, the low and terribly slow DPS of the classic team of Shulk Reyn Sharla- don't we all go through that learning phase?

While I enjoyed Xenoblade, if your critique is in gameplay as it being just mashing arts, I can understand it. Fetch quests, level-craziness, and weak characters are all valid criticisms too (all of which I have).

[Slumber]

Just now, Interdimensional Observer said:

While I enjoyed Xenoblade, if your critique is in gameplay as it being just mashing arts, I can understand it. Fetch quests, level-craziness, and weak characters are all valid criticisms too (all of which I have).

Those were all what were burning me out. The story was keeping me going, but one huge plot point completely turned me off of the plot

IE Fiora coming back. Reading that she becomes full human again bothered me to no end.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Spoiler

1 minute ago, Slumber said:

IE Fiora coming back. Reading that she becomes full human again bothered me to no end.

Totally understandable. It cheapens things. But Melia I thought was a good character, and Dunban was badass at least.

And since you skipped XCX- I'll just say if you didn't like the first, that you skipped X is a good move. The world is better built, and some minor characters are decent, but the plot is trash except at the very beginning and very end, and PC quality is very very mixed. Skell combat is arts mashing, mechless combat requires learning Overdrive to master, but after that it's all arts.

 

[kingddd]

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

  Hide contents

Totally understandable. It cheapens things. But Melia I thought was a good character, and Dunban was badass at least.

And since you skipped XCX- I'll just say if you didn't like the first, that you skipped X is a good move. The world is better built, and some minor characters are decent, but the plot is trash except at the very beginning and very end, and PC quality is very very mixed. Skell combat is arts mashing, mechless combat requires learning Overdrive to master, but after that it's all arts.

 

 

Strangely enough that I feel the opposite.  I much prefer X's plot, world setting, the sidequests and I love the characters in X 5 times more than the original.  I always felt the original Xenoblade was put into the pedestal too high and I can't enjoy any of the characters. I only enjoyed Dunban and that was it.  The plot so many people kept telling me was so good and the supposedly twist like "seven" was kind of just ok?  Like was this something that I was supposedely to be emotionally unexpected because honestly it was a very cliche plot.  The gameplay I felt could have been a lot better too as it's more level dependant to the point where 1 level up later you're demolishing the entire game and if you didn't level up beforehand, they intentionally punish you for it by making everyone dodge you immediately.

The thing I love about X is that it fixes a lot of that combat issue I had with the original as I love being able to build my own set of arts, weaponry and customize the system to the point where I can feel a lot of big differences from one combat style to another.  It's jsut so much more fun and faster paced that I love every moment of it.

In terms of the story I think what most people were judging the game's story too harshly and only look at the main game itself but never look at what the main focus of the game is and that's the sidequests.  The sidequest of X is what makes Xenoblade X and it encompasses 80% of the game.  The original Xenoblade Sidequests were kind of just there or had no relevance to the world at all but X's sidequest actually builds the actual world around mira to the point where each sidequest offers something unique to the point where you learn something about how the world works in Mira.  There are a lot of memoriable ones including, the Water Plant, the Orphean's Ovah crisis, the Xeno's relationships with each other, the Nopon Election, the Back to the Future episode with Professor B. etc.  It creates a living breathing world something that I really love and appreciate.

There is also the Party Member's Affinity Mission where in X if you build their affinity enough, you get to do a sidequests that is related to that specific character and you learn more about each of their backstory and life before they came to mira and reassess their goals and redemption.  Something I really feel a lot of people overlook in terms of the character's story in X because most people never access them and they're pretty great sidequests too.  The plot in X is all about the little episodes it's never about the OMG EPIC ADVENTURE KILL GOD AGAIN TYPE SCENARIO!! It's all about the adult life and getting by the small things everyday.  I do find that it seems like the older mature audience in X community learned to appreciate this more whereas the people who want grand adventures didn't enjoy this aspect as much.

I always felt it has a Majoras Mask syndrome since X is more about the sidequests whereas Xenoblade was more like OOT where it's more main story bulk adventure but after you beat the main story there isn't really much to do outside of that and replaying the game, you don't really have much choices in the decisions you make.

It's why I enjoy X more because you create your own adventure instead of being forced into a plot driven game where if you can't enjoy the characters or the plot, then it's easy to not enjoy the setting.

Edited September 4, 2017 by kingddd

[Azure Sen]

I've played and beat Xenoblade Chronicles, I've played but not beat X and have played and beat all three Xenosaga episodes.

I have very mixed feelings on Xenosaga as a whole since I revisited the series recently, and this is a bit of a tangent so apologies in advance. It explored a lot of interesting themes, there are several characters I still love, the overall plot has a genuine air of suspense and mystery, and the gameplay is usually fun. On the other hand, the theological, philosophical and psychological references are dense and sometimes entirely meaningless, a lot of stuff in the series is vague or outright completely unexplained in general, the amount of important information put into side games or buried in in-game encyclopedias can render the plot difficult to understand at times, the series ends on a less than satisfactory note, both because of the problems with the resolution and because of Namco being meddling idiots, and series protagonist Shion Uzuki is an annoying asshole. Should you play them? I can't say I regret playing them (except II, which is a steaming pile of rancid excrement), but I don't feel the urge to replay them either. I'd say try Episode I and see if you like it.

As for Xenoblade Chronicles, I'll admit I unabashedly love the game aside from a few minor gripes, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea. X meanwhile is a game I just don't enjoy on any level aside from the exploration and graphics.

Edited September 4, 2017 by AzureSen

[Reality]

I played Xenogears on the ps1. I was kind of disappointed by the combat mechanics and low difficulty. I played through it because I liked the setting and I can't resist giant mechs. I don't understand the sentiment between the visuals being weak. They put some love into the setpieces that can be seen past the ps1-ness of the everyday/minor models. I enjoyed the story of course, but I'm not blown away by it's use of Freud as much as the  way say, the Italian filmmaker Fellini used him. 

Have no interest in the other games, since like the first one, they were they were made after the paradigm shift that demanded that all content should be see-able by the average player. 

[Interdimensional Observer]

8 hours ago, kingddd said:

Strangely enough that I feel the opposite.  I much prefer X's plot, world setting, the sidequests and I love the characters in X 5 times more than the original.  I always felt the original Xenoblade was put into the pedestal too high and I can't enjoy any of the characters. I only enjoyed Dunban and that was it.  The plot so many people kept telling me was so good and the supposedly twist like "seven" was kind of just ok?  Like was this something that I was supposedely to be emotionally unexpected because honestly it was a very cliche plot.  The gameplay I felt could have been a lot better too as it's more level dependant to the point where 1 level up later you're demolishing the entire game and if you didn't level up beforehand, they intentionally punish you for it by making everyone dodge you immediately.

The thing I love about X is that it fixes a lot of that combat issue I had with the original as I love being able to build my own set of arts, weaponry and customize the system to the point where I can feel a lot of big differences from one combat style to another.  It's jsut so much more fun and faster paced that I love every moment of it.

In terms of the story I think what most people were judging the game's story too harshly and only look at the main game itself but never look at what the main focus of the game is and that's the sidequests.  The sidequest of X is what makes Xenoblade X and it encompasses 80% of the game.  The original Xenoblade Sidequests were kind of just there or had no relevance to the world at all but X's sidequest actually builds the actual world around mira to the point where each sidequest offers something unique to the point where you learn something about how the world works in Mira.  There are a lot of memoriable ones including, the Water Plant, the Orphean's Ovah crisis, the Xeno's relationships with each other, the Nopon Election, the Back to the Future episode with Professor B. etc.  It creates a living breathing world something that I really love and appreciate.

There is also the Party Member's Affinity Mission where in X if you build their affinity enough, you get to do a sidequests that is related to that specific character and you learn more about each of their backstory and life before they came to mira and reassess their goals and redemption.  Something I really feel a lot of people overlook in terms of the character's story in X because most people never access them and they're pretty great sidequests too.  The plot in X is all about the little episodes it's never about the -snipped to edit out Xenoblade spoilers-. It's all about the adult life and getting by the small things everyday.  I do find that it seems like the older mature audience in X community learned to appreciate this more whereas the people who want grand adventures didn't enjoy this aspect as much.

I always felt it has a Majoras Mask syndrome since X is more about the sidequests whereas Xenoblade was more like OOT where it's more main story bulk adventure but after you beat the main story there isn't really much to do outside of that and replaying the game, you don't really have much choices in the decisions you make.

It's why I enjoy X more because you create your own adventure instead of being forced into a plot driven game where if you can't enjoy the characters or the plot, then it's easy to not enjoy the setting.

I didn't mention X's sidequests, but they are very good and the world is overall built quite well. The combat is good too once you get the hang of it, it's just not for the uninitiated, and the customization aspect is strong.

I did a gauntlet run through most of the non-mandatory Affinity Missions, and the quality is highly variable. Boze's 3rd has a completely random Definian involved (misuse of an interesting idea) and is bad beyond that. Murderess's 3rd is a little illogical in the situation at the beginning, but ends well. Irina's 2nd is awful, and L's duo do nothing for him- though the second does have a point.

As for the cast of the original Xenoblade- Shulk is a typical softer JRPG male protag, Reyn's a bro, Riki is an irrelevant mascot (but he fights well), Sharla is cleavage and a medic, but otherwise does little else post Colony 6, Seven should possibly not exist, Dunban is a badass, and Melia is the one real standout for me. The plot is Xenogears-lite, Takahashi purposefully held back on his grandiose urges to do more to focus on the world and gameplay. That level curve is something I loathe as much as anyone else by the way- it really ruins things at times (if they'd set it to 10 levels difference instead of 5, it wouldn't be so bad).

[kingddd]

15 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I didn't mention X's sidequests, but they are very good and the world is overall built quite well. The combat is good too once you get the hang of it, it's just not for the uninitiated, and the customization aspect is strong.

I did a gauntlet run through most of the non-mandatory Affinity Missions, and the quality is highly variable. Boze's 3rd has a completely random Definian involved (misuse of an interesting idea) and is bad beyond that. Murderess's 3rd is a little illogical in the situation at the beginning, but ends well. Irina's 2nd is awful, and L's duo do nothing for him- though the second does have a point.

As for the cast of the original Xenoblade- Shulk is a typical softer JRPG male protag, Reyn's a bro, Riki is an irrelevant mascot (but he fights well), Sharla is cleavage and a medic, but otherwise does little else post Colony 6, Seven should possibly not exist, Dunban is a badass, and Melia is the one real standout for me. The plot is Xenogears-lite, Takahashi purposefully held back on his grandiose urges to do more to focus on the world and gameplay. That level curve is something I loathe as much as anyone else by the way- it really ruins things at times (if they'd set it to 10 levels difference instead of 5, it wouldn't be so bad).

Boze's AM has the most changing outcomes out of all the AMs because if you didn't do the right choice in the beginning of his recuirtment, then he'll never resolve his conflict and will remain the xenophobic person he will be.  The consequences made it so that the Definian tricks you into their trap and makes him hate xenos even further.  Wheras if you had saved the ma-non in the beginning, then the item that he gives to boze will see past the definian's traps and theoretically, the Ma-non saves Boze.  Thus making him rethink about what he's done over the course of the game and redeem himself and apologize for what he's done.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Just now, kingddd said:

Boze's AM has the most changing outcomes out of all the AMs because if you didn't do the right choice in the beginning of his recuirtment, then he'll never resolve his conflict and will remain the xenophobic person he will be.  The consequences made it so that the Definian tricks you into their trap and makes him hate xenos even further.  Wheras if you had saved the ma-non in the beginning, then the item that he gives to boze will see past the definian's traps and theoretically, the Ma-non saves Boze.  Thus making him rethink about what he's done over the course of the game and redeem himself and apologize for what he's done.

Wasn't aware of that- quite interesting! This said, the use of a Definian is still bad here. They're supposed to be rarefied elite soldiers who do important stuff, just standing around waiting for a passing human to trick seems beneath their status. If they had gotten rid of the Definian and used a different scenario to get Boze to change, maybe it wouldn't have come off as so bad (note that I had rather recently finished Definian Downfall when I did Boze's 3rd, so I was kinda saturated with them).

[kingddd]

16 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Wasn't aware of that- quite interesting! This said, the use of a Definian is still bad here. They're supposed to be rarefied elite soldiers who do important stuff, just standing around waiting for a passing human to trick seems beneath their status. If they had gotten rid of the Definian and used a different scenario to get Boze to change, maybe it wouldn't have come off as so bad (note that I had rather recently finished Definian Downfall when I did Boze's 3rd, so I was kinda saturated with them).

Yeah a lot of people misjudge his characters.  The Japanese community actually has a soft spot for him in general whereas the The NA and EU community loathes him for all the wrong reasons.  If anything Boze has the most biggest outcome results depending on the choices you have made in the game and I do wished more AMs did this.  It's the most unique out of all of them in terms of character development by the choice of the player.  Most people harshly judged his AMs and call it off as bad when most people selected the lazy choice and to no surprise they suffered the consequences of that.  

X is all about choices in this game.  So a lot of people pick the choices and miss out on many of the details of the characters and judge them harshly for it.

For example, Irina's First AM has you either siding with her or hanging back.  Most people would pick siding with Irina immediately but little did they know that the hang back option makes Elma actually go in and gets involved a streetfight something that most people would say she's not the type to get into fights.  Another examples are the h2h where they go more deeper into their backstories and characters like how Frye was B- student that was overshadowed by Phog, Gwin has a creepy fedom fetish and licks his guns on his free time, Celica homeworld having animals and pets similiar to the human world and L's mira mistranslation game that goes further into Mira's strange word translation.  There is a lot of depth to these that a lot of people miss out on mostly because they never bothered doing these quests and just labelled them as bad without ever going further into them.  X is designed to reward you with information for doing quests and tell you the story by small episodes and by leisure instead of just letting a game do it for you which is what I would call a movie syndrome.

Because lets face it in real life, very few people will tell you about their life stories unless you were extremely close to one or the other.  Most people will tell you about their life and choices they made in small segments and episodes instead of outright telling you 100% of the time.

Edited September 4, 2017 by kingddd

[Slumber]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I didn't mention X's sidequests, but they are very good and the world is overall built quite well. The combat is good too once you get the hang of it, it's just not for the uninitiated, and the customization aspect is strong.

I did a gauntlet run through most of the non-mandatory Affinity Missions, and the quality is highly variable. Boze's 3rd has a completely random Definian involved (misuse of an interesting idea) and is bad beyond that. Murderess's 3rd is a little illogical in the situation at the beginning, but ends well. Irina's 2nd is awful, and L's duo do nothing for him- though the second does have a point.

As for the cast of the original Xenoblade- Shulk is a typical softer JRPG male protag, Reyn's a bro, Riki is an irrelevant mascot (but he fights well), Sharla is cleavage and a medic, but otherwise does little else post Colony 6, Seven should possibly not exist, Dunban is a badass, and Melia is the one real standout for me. The plot is Xenogears-lite, Takahashi purposefully held back on his grandiose urges to do more to focus on the world and gameplay. That level curve is something I loathe as much as anyone else by the way- it really ruins things at times (if they'd set it to 10 levels difference instead of 5, it wouldn't be so bad).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the game nerf you at more like 3 or 4 levels difference? That was one thing that put me off more than probably anything else. Like, the general combat and Monado use worked for people, even if they bothered me. But the way they dealt with keeping you from fighting stronger monsters was just one of the worst things I've ever seen in a JRPG. Part of the fun of JRPGs, for me, is trying to fight strong enemies as you come across them, potentially getting some nice rewards earlier than intended for your efforts. But XC flat-out stops you from doing that(I'm aware that there are some monsters you can beat even with the gap, but it doesn't excuse the rest).

Edited September 4, 2017 by Slumber

[kingddd]

12 minutes ago, Slumber said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the game nerf you at more like 3 or 4 levels difference? That was one thing that put me off more than probably anything else. Like, the general combat and Monado use worked for people, even if they bothered me. But the way they dealt with keeping you from fighting stronger monsters was just one of the worst things I've ever seen in a JRPG. Part of the fun of JRPGs, for me, is trying to fight strong enemies as you come across them, potentially getting some nice rewards earlier than intended for your efforts. But XC flat-out stops you from doing that(I'm aware that there are some monsters you can beat even with the gap, but it doesn't excuse the rest).

Each negative level differences intentionally nerfs your dodge rate.  About 5 level differences is where you outright will never hit anyone unless you're using an ether based attack.  The original game is very level dependant to the point where after one level up, you outright slaughter the entire enemy.

Xenoblade X removes this so that it's all about your stats and not your levels.  You can still lose to a level 35 enemy even if you're level 40ish or more if you didn't properly setup your builds.  If anything you can kill one of the level 50 monsters very early in game if you set up the right builds.

Edited September 4, 2017 by kingddd

[Armagon]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

That level curve is something I loathe as much as anyone else by the way- it really ruins things at times (if they'd set it to 10 levels difference instead of 5, it wouldn't be so bad).

5 minutes ago, kingddd said:

Each negative level differences intentionally nerfs your dodge rate.  About 5 level differences is where you outright will never hit anyone unless you're using an ether based attack.  The original game is very level dependant to the point where after one level up, you outright slaughter the entire enemy.

This is one of my top 3 hated things regarding the original Xenoblade (the other two being sidequests not showing you where to find the person you need to talk to complete it and the fight against Lorithia). I'm hoping this doesn't return in Xenoblade 2, which, i don't think it will from what i've seen from the gameplay. I've never tried it but that level curve is what makes the fight against the Avalanche Abassy hard, isn't it (disregarding the fact that it has insta-kill spike damage. You know what, i hate spike damage with a passion and hope it never returns.)

 

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 hours ago, Armagon said:

I've never tried it but that level curve is what makes the fight against the Avalanche Abassy hard, isn't it (disregarding the fact that it has insta-kill spike damage. You know what, i hate spike damage with a passion and hope it never returns.)

 

Well for the 100+ superbosses, one should have a maxed Agility (since Agility boosts hit) gem on everyone probably. In addition, you should fight them all at night for the massively helpful accuracy boost from Night Vision gems (Ancient Daedala, one of the superbosses, is the only source of Rank VI Night Vision materials, so you'll have to settle with Rank V gems until you can farm him). 

For Daedala and Blizzard Bezelgas, both pack Spike Damage, so equip a Spike Defense VI plus Melia's Spike Damage reduction skill for a near total mitigation of spike damage (or two maxed Spike Defense VIs or one plus Dunban's(?) Spike Damage reduction skill will block it all). For Abassy, all you need is one maxed Debuff Resist VI on everyone, and I think the materials are dropped from Deinos Sauros- those T-Rex knockoffs in Makna Forest, which should be easy to get. Don't know what you'd need for the superboss Bunnit, but Final Marcus should be a joke.

All in all, this is probably less setup than taking down X's legions of superbosses. Farming for the Ares 90 and proper Augments (the cheap way to kill most superbosses) takes a good deal of effort to make- more than gem crafting in Xenoblade.

 

[The Geek]

I've only played Xenoblade myself, but I've watched a friend play through Xenosaga, Xenogears, and XenoX.

Xenogears has aged very poorly in terms of gameplay, with the combat depending entirely on spamming hidden combos that deal massive damage.

Xenosaga is fairly cluttered with a pretty convoluted story and mixed quality of gameplay (Episode 1 is considered just "okay", Episode 2 is bad, and Episode 3 is good).

XenoX has really good sidequests and characters but a mediocre main story.  Its gameplay is also very tedious outside of the very high level play (with things such as the Infinite Overdrive technique) and battles take way too long (the final boss takes about an hour to take down).

[kingddd]

1 hour ago, The Geek said:

XenoX has really good sidequests and characters but a mediocre main story.  Its gameplay is also very tedious outside of the very high level play (with things such as the Infinite Overdrive technique) and battles take way too long (the final boss takes about an hour to take down).

What? Most battles are very short most of them lasting mins or even seconds.  The final chapter lasts an hour because of the amount of cutscenes.  The actual final boss only takes about 5-8 mins on average if you don't know some of the exploits.  If you know how to exploit the game, the final boss takes like 10 seconds.

If you're saying most battles takes too long then you're doing something VERY VERY Wrong.

Edited September 5, 2017 by kingddd