I was enjoying the game well enough until the true end, but the ending itself was just awful. You spend the whole game doing all the twisted stuff Origin's trial asks of you, destroying all the other worlds and everyone in them, sacrificing Alt-Milla, even killing Julius to make the bridge, to the point where it felt like the game was just trying to be as depressing as possible... and then you head off thinking Origin's going to be the final boss because damn, after all that you need some kind of catharsis, some kind of release to make it feel like everything you did was worth it. And what do you get? You get Ludger dying too, and the characters who engineered the entire thing basically being portrayed as good guys. Bisley is the only one who seems to show any kind of resentment towards the spirits for all they've been put through, and yet he ends up being the obvious mentally unhinged big bad instead. He might have gone too far with Elle, but he was still right to be annoyed by the situation the Krusniks had been put in.
And as for the actual sacrifice part, it was hard to believe it was even the same cast. Considering how much of Xillia was spent asking 'isn't there any other way?' when faced with a terrible decision, it was amazing how not even Jude ever asked that. Not once. Everyone just accepted Ludger's decision as if it was the same level of importance as going out for a walk or something. Elle's response was the only one that felt remotely in character...just like she was the only one at all upset when Alt-Milla sacrificed herself. It was like the writer had that 'Ludger or Elle, pick one' in mind from the start, and minor details that might get in the way of that like the characters' personalities being remotely consistent was just just disregarded, and they ended up becoming magically desensitised to everything up to and including destroying entire worlds full of people over and over whenever the plot demanded it.
I'm not inherently against 'depressing' sacrifice endings if it feels it was necessary and worthwhile, like they died for something. That wasn't the case in Xillia 2; Ludger basically died to bring an end to a ridiculous game started by the three spirits, who weren't so much as criticised for their actions -- hell, Origin literally stands there saying 'Well you'll just have to keep proving yourselves to me, won't you?' as Ludger's dying, as if to rub it in a bit more, to which Jude subserviently responds 'Of course.' Ugh.
