Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra

"Worth The Wait"

If you have yet to play a Xenosaga title, I would highly recommend staying away from Episode 3. Although it wraps things up in a nice, very disturbing, ball at the end, you are still left wondering why.

For the most part, anyone who will read this review will have at least played Episode one and two and will most likely own them. Episode 3 leaves the warm and fuzzy feeling you got from playing the first two titles far behind. Although you are giving a huge amount of data related to the first two titles, the story explanations leave off about halfway through episode one and two, and you are left to replay both titles.

The first thing you will notice is the movies are shorter. If there is going to be a large amount of talking conveyed between the characters, you are cut from the movie screen to a screen consistent with most older RPGs. You have a box, with the characters face on it, and the text scrolling. For the most part this text is spoken by the voice actor, so you can watch what is happening during the scene and still get an idea of what is going on. I figure this step was used to cut down on the dubbing costs. If you have played the game, you will notice that in most of the scenes you never get close enough to the characters face to see their lips move. And on the ones you do see, you notice that they don't. I personally don't mind this, but I have spoken with a few people that feel this was a bad move on Monoliths part.

From the moment you start Xenosaga you will notice the graphics and characters have had a major face lift. This is a welcome sign, considering I found the graphics in episode two to be washed out. In episode three, Monolith has gone back to the graphics engine that was used for episode one and added to it. The characters now are brighter and more detail have been added to the model. This can also be said for the movie sequences too. The are much better, and for the most part you will look forward to seeing one. You wont have to wait long.

Considering the disaster, that was known ad the battle system, from Episode two has not made an appearance in Episode 3 the game now has a RPG feel to it. The battles focus more on strategy than brute force which is a nice change and the only real flaw is the E.S. Battle system. The E.S.s in the game are very week. Even if you manage to max their stats they still don't do a lot of damage. Also, they spend more time floating around the screen getting ready to attack, than actually attacking. There is a nice feature though, and it is that sometimes, if you are unable to finish off a foe, sometimes, the next ally ready to attack will do a co-op move, which is nice and usually gets the job finished.

In Episode three, the development team was not scared to kill people off. The only reason the game fits together at the end is any characters that could add to another Episode are dead. Pretty much anyone who was a main character has been killed off, and the back off the box is misleading as it said “One must die”. Well it is A LOT more than one.

Even though the game and the series as a whole ends the way it does, you are still left asking why. You still have no clue who Chaos is as he is not who everyone says he is. (Watch one of the movies toward the end, you will understand this.) They also fail to explain why they call Shion the “Maiden” and they hope you forget that by delivering the shocker of who KOS-MOS really is and who dies. Although it is the end, you are still going to be left with many questions.

Unless you were lucky enough to follow the game from the beginning and have the first two in your collection for immediate play through, I would recommend playing Episode three as a rental. I am hoping that if I play through One and Two it will add to the story a bit more. You could play Episode three on its own and still get what is going on, and it has a huge database of past and present events to get you up to speed. If you are one of the few that I have spoken to, and who have not played at least One or Two, I would strongly recommend renting them first then playing Episode three.

It would be very nice if Bandi/Namco released a collectors edition or box set with all three games, but I doubt that is going to happen, so if you are a huge fan then it is a definite buy, if you don't know, then play the first and second one then try this one.

Overall:
Buy/Rent: Buy
Canadian Retail Price: Around 58 dollars
Rating: T for Teen
Score: 8 spuds out of 10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/10/06