The Saga games were the first two games I got when I bought my PS2 last year. I'm currently going through the Heaven's Garden area since I've already beaten Ep II. My biggest complaints with Ep II were the changes in character designs as well as voices for pretty much every character (Suddenly MOMO has a compound bow??!!) in the party and the changed fighting system (and, to a smaller degree, the depowerent of Erde Kaiser Fury; since most of the bosses you fight by the time you come across it have like 20k HP it seems less of a magic bullet usable against anyone but the game's final boss[the first game experience]). I'm waiting eagerly for the third and final Episode, even though most of the original staff is gone and they snagged Yuki Kajiura for the music.

Another note on the voice casting. I absolutely loved that they scored Crispin Freeman to do Nigredo/Albedo's voices.

Regarding the 2nd disc of Gears, I liked the change in pace.

From the Wikipedia entry:
"...the speculation that the production [Xenogears] was cut short for various reasons, such as lack of funds, inability to move deadlines, etc., has accrued considerable credence, despite the lack of a reliable source. The main cause of this speculation is Xenogears' second disc of play, on which the plot seems to degenerate into repeated instances in which a few major characters narrate the events of the story rather than fully experience them. This issue polarizes the Xenogears fanbase to this day; there are those who love the game but feel that the second disc depreciated the overall experience, whereas there are others who feel that, since the storyline was the most compelling aspect of Xenogears, the switch in narrative style was appreciated. Some people have speculated that Square began to lose interest and confidence in the profitability of Xenogears. These people cite the formation of Monolith Soft, a subdivision of Namco that was composed primarily of ex-Square employees who had worked on the Xenogears project, as evidence. Monolith Soft created the Xenosaga series under Takahashi's direction, although Square still owns the rights to Xenogears."

One last note: The DS is getting Episodes 1 and 2 in one game. The DS episode II will be using the fighting system from Ep 1 and take place from Shion's POV instead of Jr's.

If you ever wanna chat more in-depth about this, feel free to IM me on YIM with this name.

It's chaos. No capital C. But both of his voice actors are recognizable. You've got Grand Kai/Koenma for Episode 1, and Joshua Seth (known for his work as Tai on Digimon) for Episode 2.

Yeah yeah, no need to tell anyone else about that though. I liked their take on names. For one, you have two characters with all caps in their name, another with all lower case, one who's an abbreviation, and another going by a humanization of a serial number. In short, the only playable characters with normal names are Shion, Jin, and once Also Sprach Zarathustra (aka Episode III) comes out, Allen Ridgely (he uses some kind of crossbow).

Btw, when I first read XSE II, my first thought was of Xavier's Security Enforcers from Marvel Comics heh.