Word of warning for Ep. 2 and 3.
Make sure to use new game plus data (especially in 2), because the items you get you will use pretty much the entire game (they offer a speed boost).
This only really matters for the hardest battle in the game, but in Episode 2 pay attention to if your characters have a default element status on their attack (Ziggy and Chaos). The very hardest bosses in the game (post-game bosses) require some ridiculously good planning on you part. This sometimes includes adding an element status to your characters' attacks (that the boss is weak to) and creating a ridiculous chain combo of critical attacks.
This was only an issue on one post-game boss in particular (looks like a scorpion or something and he is located in the mines), who is obscenely hard if you don't know what you are doing since he only has one or two weaknesses. He's pretty much unbeatable if you don't plan out how to beat him since he will destroy you if you don't kill him before his HP drops below a certain point.
But these are the fights that made Xenosaga II so fun!!!
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
