Xenosaga

[Dracos]

Xenosaga Review

Greetings friends and welcome to another of Dracos' reviews.  Today, we have for you a game with more expectations leveled on it than any other game to pass through my system ever.  The game in question is the prequel to the superb game Xenogears, owned by Square.  Produced by Monolith and published by Namco, Xenosaga is a game that has swept American shores with abandon.  I must preface this review by acknowledging my bias here.  I loved Xenogears and have logged more hours playing it than any other video game ever.  There are people who don't ever play as many hours of video games as I played of that game.  I believed it to be a near penultimate example of what a console RPG ought be.  Containing of one of the best music sound tracks ever produced for a game, graphics that were at the cutting edge for the day, a storyline that one could play through fifty times and STILL find references and literary allusions that you didn't pick up on before, and a battle system that was nothing less than stellar.  Xenogears left what some, myself included, would say was an unfollowable legacy.  No game could live up to the expectations that would be left by that game.  Worse, with the years of passage after that game the legacy only grew further into legend in the minds of hardcore fans like myself.  To say that I was going to give Xenosaga a fair roll of the dice would be a lie.  In all fairness, I didn't expect it to have a chance.  I was looking forward to a good game, but I expected to be disappointed by the game related to the legendary Xenogears.  I am extremely pleased to say, I was not.  If there is a fitting game to bear the name of Xeno, this is it.  It has driven me to ponder the symbolism in some of it's scenes for days on end.  We are looking at a powerful and evokative masterpiece in this game.  Despite the extreme expectations placed upon it, it has provided a successful entertainment experience completely beyond all expectations.  Tetsuya Takahashi and his squad created a game that yet again, will go into legend as one of the great RPGs of the era.

Let's move on to the artwork.  It should be known that I am not a fan of three dimensional art.  Worse I find is computer animated three dimensional art.  I tend to find them cold, unfeeling and just not nearly as powerful as a good two dimensional anime scene such as the types found in the cutscenes of Xenogears or the battles of Dragon Warrior 7.  That said, if I had to play a game with 3-d computer graphics, this is it.  They did a stellar job on the artwork and 3-d modeling here.  It is superb from start to finish.  Smoothly flowing and realistic while containing powerful artistic symbols.  This game leaps to 3-d like it was born for it.  Unlike most 3-d games where the motions often seem twitchy and crude, the motion of the models in this game was excellent, the only noticable twitching seeming more intentional motions to indicate the feelings of madness or nervousness in the characters.  I have to give the art squad props here, they did a phenomenial job with a system that these days is regularly bashed for being out of date in it's art capabilities.  This is proof positive that the playstation 2 is more than capable of hosting masterpieces in gaming graphics.  If you are a whore for graphics, this game will seize you from start to finish with it's artwork.

The music is composed by Yasunori Mitsuda and, as may be expected from him, is high quality symphonic pieces throughout the entirety of the game.  An excellent listening experience for pretty much all of them, though the implementation was poor in this category.  The lack of variety among the tracks, especially not including more than two battle themes (regular and final boss), really hurt the game.  Overall, this was probably the second weakest point of this game due to the lack of variety.

The battle system of this game is pretty darn good.  I won't say it was better than the original Xenogears battle system, because I don't think it was.  The mecha influence in battles was unfortunately far smaller than it should have been.  Too much effort being taken to make it fluidly run between non-mecha combat and mecha combat drained a lot of the importance from using mechas at all.  The special artilary that could be carried by some characters was sadly underplayed, tending to not hold it's own against the 'deathblow' techniques that could be launched more regularly.  The AP system, while still there, was far less customizable than the xenogears version and wasn't built around longer and more complex series of attacks.  And even the deathblow system itself had it's flaws, notably the separation of high and low speed deathblows removed any usage of low speed deathblows after a certain point in the game.  No matter what the deathblow was, it simply couldn't compete until it was made high speed and that robbed the game of an element of strategy that probably should have been there.  That said, it was still a very enjoyable system.  The combination of three forms of experience, one for skills, one for techniques, and one for spells, while complex, came across very smoothly.  The battles often had a fair bit of strategy in them, though not as much as some Xenogears battles, they entertained and provided a good battling experience.  My advice is simple for the game: Ignore the damn stupid bots and just pretend you are going mano e mano with everyone.  It'll take a bit to get your characters able to do this, but it's more fun.  Anyhow, it's a good system, not great, but nothing deserving of true recrimination beyond the sad weakness of the mechas.

Taking a step to the side, I have to comment on some things that were expected of the game and how they turned out.  First off, the mechas.  In the previous game we had the Gears.  Large, massive, and with more mecha-coolness flowing out of them than I could shake a fist at.  In this game we have the AGWS.  I'm not going to try and remember out what that acronym means at the moment, but it's pretty damn unpronouncible.  Whoever came up with it needs to be whacked one in the head.  The AGWS are well designed overall, look pretty spiffy, move smoothly both in combat and in cutscenes but generally tend to lack the flare that Gears did both in combat and out.  They simply aren't cool enough in this game to make the play.  With the sole exception of one of them, which had style coming out of it in spades and was a pleasure to see and even that one seemed awkward in the combat representation of it.  I'm glad they didn't totally abandon the styles of the previous game in the mecha of this one.  Balancing the decrease in mecha though, is the new element of the android Kos-mos.  I'd have to say, she pretty much makes up for the lack of cool mecha almost by herself.  A very nifty female battle android, complete with spocklike depth and more cool moves then any one character deserves.  The exploration of this android and what she represents is a major part of the game, and a very nice addition to see.

Another thing that was expected from this game was good minigames.  In Xenogears we had the Battle Arena, gear versus gear in a three-dimensional street fighter like game.  It wasn't perfect and I often found it too easy myself, but as far as minigames went it was great.  Here we have a handful of minigames, and I have to say they range from the quite ingenius to the highly mediocre.  First off we have the Driller minigame.  In this game the player finds himself in control of a drill, which he must guide to destroy a few boxes on the ground for prizes.  Now, right off the bat, it's obviously a lame concept.  An easy one to implement sure, but a lame concept.  It also isn't implemented well in the game, as a game 'limit' of times you can play it in a row makes it remarkably tedious to attempt to get the prizes.  Next off, we have the casino.  Not a bad attempt, it's hard to go wrong with such a classic minigame.  But it's been done better, much better, by other games in the past.  The casino comes across as ungodly easy to win at, generally being able to accumulate as much as 1000-2000x profit margin on the hour for a very good player.  It's notably one of the easier ways to accumulate money in the game.  Then there was the E-mail minigame.  Not particularly hard or entertaining, but it could be rather difficult to find those email spots without outside aid.  As a minigame tied in with getting some of the best weapons in the game though, I will say it's at least not terribly frustrating.  While it can be hard to master the first time through, once you know where to go and how to play it, it's pretty easy.  There is a mecha minigame, but I can't say I ever gave it a try.  The lack of any associated 'in game purpose' with it, alongside it's obscurity ruined me even giving it a chance.  Finally, we have their card game.  And this is where they really shone.  I am not a big player of card games of the Magic: The Gathering type at all.  I expected to find the game obtuse and unwieldy to an inexperienced hand.  I can happily say it was not.  With a wide range of backgrounds, nifty cards, an excellent help engine, and fun playing options, I found it rather enjoyable and a bit addictive to play.  Most delightfully, this game is absolutely tangental to the main game itself.  It's something you can do if you want to only for enjoyment.  It's always nice to see a good entertaining side game.

Now to get to where the game really shines: the storyline.  This game is almost entirely about the storyline.  If you are a geek/philosopher/otaku/language buff, you'll find a ton of nifty stuff.  They definitely did their research when constructing the game, utilizing a vast host of contemporary and historic culture in the game.  I have to say my jaw dropped several times when I recognized references to various contemporary anime and sci-fi pop culture so skillfully interwoven within the game.  Truly entertaining up through to the ending.  I must say, I was disappointed by the ending of this game.  A poor usage of what they had in the field and a fairly meandering and unclimatic end.  It felt far more like the game was ending in the middle.  They just dropped the ball at the end.  Excellent build up, good first climax and superb secondary climax (one of the best I've seen in ages), but horrible final climax and resolution that left me both disappointed on the execution and wrap up of it.  Notably, they leave swarms of plotlines unresolved at the end, which is part of the disappointment, but that was expected due to this being one of a multipart series.

Good and bad considered, I recommend this game for anyone who loves a good story.

Fearless Leader
yeah, a bit late, oh well

[kpjam]

I have to say I pretty much agree, especially with the ending.  God... what a lmae last boss, and the second to last boss should have been tougher.  I can only imagine how easy it would have been if I had equipted Shion's 'Erde Kaiser'.   I don't understand giving a ether that can destroy instantly all but two creatures in the game.

Although, I did love the final boss battle music, shame it was only there.

And as I mentioned to you over IRC, the EVS system was great.  a relatively easy way to get back to old dungeons and pick up stuff you might have missed.

[Dracos]

I'll note I didn't get Erde Kaiser either.  It would've made it more absurdly easy beating the last boss.

Fearless Leader

[Olvelsper]

I may as well throw in my two cents in.

*drops them in a hat nearby*

Remember that Erde Kaiser was a ether that you (the player) went after yourself, with all the parts being in far flung places throughout the game.

Given that, I can see how the developers/programmers would want to reward you with such a monstrous thing.

[Dracos]

I'm not so much complaining at the strength of Erde Kaiser as much as the fact that the last couple of bosses and the hidden bosses should've been tougher.

^_^;  But then, that would've required people to do more exploring, power up more, etc.

Which is what the vast population of gamefaqs would've hated.  Oh no!  More gameplay!

Fearless Leader

[Olvelsper]

Speak not of the Stupid.

It's bad for your help.

*waves around some Stupid Farm links threateningly*

[Dracos]

*Pulls out *UNSPEAKABLE GAME**

Dares you not!  I have more evil in my gaming directory than you can even imagine o_O:;

Fearless Leader

[Olvelsper]

Evil...perhaps.

Stupid...doubtful.

o.o

[Dracos]

NEVER DOUBT! O_O

Fearless Leader