Yeah, the second disk did just fall apart. Difficulty spikes were all over the map, you'd play dungeons that weren't really story relavent to turn around and be told about battles you wish you fought. Character archs were completely dropped, and all that resulted in some obviously terrible pacing issues. They even knew you would have to grind so they put heal and shop gears at the start of the dungeons. Oh, and I hope you didn't want to do much exploring cause the world map is inaccessible most of the time.

Xenoblade Chronicles is by far the better game.

Darnit double post

Yep, but having read the article, all of that is better than the alternative -- the game ends on a cliffhanger at the end of the first disc and we don't get any resolution until a possible perfect works. 

Yeah, I've heard a lot of issues about the second disc of the game. I don't have the game myself, so I can't say my thoughts on it, but it'd be interesting comparing the two discs if I ever did get it and play it.

Played it in 2011. Perhaps it is indeed the stupendous ran-enc rate that makes it worse than it is - I don't mind older turn-based games at all, but Xenogears had me truly annoyed at some points (Aveh sewers, some Shevat battles, etc). My memory of specifics is rather murky though.

Agreed, this is Tetsuya Takahashi's masterpiece, and to this date the most interesting RPG I have ever come across.

The second disk was jarring on my first playthrough, but worked fine on subsequent playthroughs, as wrapping up the story was the main thing, and there were a LOT of fascinating events that occurred on the second disk. It was kind of like a science fiction documentary with gameplay elements.

I would love it if Nintendo and Monolithsoft could acquire the license for Xenogears from Square and give the game a proper dev cycle. Although it would be a gigantic undertaking given how much more massive Xenogears is than any of the full 3D games Takahashi has worked on. There are large obstacles, but also achievements that Monolithsoft has had recently that show that a proper Xenogears remake could be a reality some day.

First off, towns: Xenogears has more of them, and they're bigger than those of the 3D games. Bledavik and Nortune would both be NLA scale cities; while Entrenank would be significantly larger. Then there's also other large cities like Dazil, Nisan, and Aphel Aura. 

One issue I have noticed in Xenoblade is that they seem to have issues going inside buildings. XCX was less problematic than XC, but there were still a lot of buildings I wanted to go inside, but couldn't. This would have to change for a Xenogears remake, city design needs to be more intricate: allowing for characters to go inside houses, interact with things in the houses, and feel like something more than a backdrop.

XC2 will show if they can properly do an Airship in full 3D, because the Yggdrasil is a very important part of Xenogears, it's kind of your mobile base.

Seeing NLA and locations like the vast desert landscape of Oblivia in XCX showed the promise. As it was a big location, but there was quite a lot to do in it. The Aveh desert was portrayed as having a lot of archaelogical stuff to find, but a lot of it was described in text, while Oblivia actually showed it, even if collectable items were tiny glowing blue things.

While a properly done full 3D remake of Xenogears would be a substantially larger project than anything Monolithsoft has worked on, if they were allowed the time and budget, it would undoubtedly be the best game ever made.

If any publisher in the world would ever let Monolithsoft work on it is quite another story.

LOL.

I have not played Xenogears in years. Why do I know exactly what your talking about? There is a few platforming sections that irk the shit outta me.