Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht

"The saga's beginning hits a wall, but keeps going"

If you've played Xenogears and liked it and were hoping for more of the same, you'll be both satisfied and disappointed. Xenosaga is a good game, but for me, Xenogears was light-years better

Xenosaga promised to be part 1 of a six part series, with Xenogears being part 5, and for the most part, it does feel like a part 1. There are a ton of story elements that are introduced but not fully explained, leaving anxious gamers in either breathless anticipation or kitten-stomping anger

At roughly 60-80 hours(I beat it in 80), its a long game, but much of that length comes from watching cutscenes that seem to happen every few minutes. It is here that Xenosaga shines. The story, even being an incomplete one, is very well told. You'll find yourself very curious about whats going to happen next because the game just throws so much at you that you can barely process it, but underlying it all you can see a bigger, more detailed plot that is saturated with mystery. Above all that is the Zohar, a device that, as it says in the instruction booklet, ''supposedly has existed since the dawn of time''. In fact, the whole Xenosaga series will somehow involve this device. Unfortunately, the Zohar and many other things wont be explained in part 1, they are there only as teasers

The characters are all voiced by experienced voice actors who have worked on many different animes and their skill shows through. You'll feel emotion in their voices and the top-notch graphics lets you see it on their faces and in their body language. In terms of developement, if you ignore the fact that this is only part 1, all of the main characters go through some rather defining moments. Most of the None Player Characters that you meet are either shrouded in mystery or help the main characters find themselves in some way. Some of them you can plainly tell will appear in future episodes and will have a big part, which either adds to the maddening wait for episode 2. The graphics are spectacular. A game like this could not have been made 5 years ago. The detailed polygons make and the CG graphics in the cutscenes give this game movie-quality visuals

Like many great games, this game is very linear. However, this game goes above that and becomes too linear. That may not be a problem to you, but its a problem to me. In all, you'll go through less than a dozen main areas, including ''towns'' and ''dungeons''. Of course, some of the towns serve dual functions as dungeons, but since the game takes place in space, there is no ''overworld'' where you get to run around and stuff. You are pretty much always on one spacecraft or another, and you can either proceed with the story, or replay old locations via something called the Environmental Simulator. However, the EVS isnt for the visiting of towns and stuff, its strictly for battling and leveling up, which you'll do a lot of in this game. This game can get hard, and you'll find yourself running back and forth in some EVS level fighting and leveling up for hours. Unless you're like me and enjoy that stuff, it'll really get on your nerves. Another detriment to the constant leveling up is the fact that pretty much only human enemies drop money and there are only a few levels in the game where they appear, so you will constantly find yourself going back there to fight them because there really isnt a constant flow of change in the game, I was pretty mad about that. I mean, it seems like a good concept, but in some levels, you'll fight for 2 hours and reach the end, and then when you're back amongst the shops, you'll find that you cant buy anything cause none of the none-human enemies dropped any money for you

The 80 hours isnt like Xenogears, which was all story and all game. There are 4 mini-games in Xenosaga and I must admit that I spent maybe 12 hours on them; just the card game was played for maybe 8-10 hours. Its sort of a Magic: The Gathering kind thing, but simplified. There are about 150 cards that you can use to make up your deck, so theres a lot of variety. Theres a Drill game, which is decent for getting a few rare items, and the Casino features poker, slots, and high & low. You can also exchange the special Casino Coins for items and concept drawings of various Xenosaga people and places. The last minigame is a Battle game which is played from the 3rd person behind view, but theres only 4 levels and you'll always fight the same 4 opponents and you get nothing for winning except a good feeling. Really, I dont know why they didnt include some items you could win, it would make it seem less pointless. Like the card game, this is game is fun, but you get almost nothing out of it, so I feel a bit ripped off

One thing you'll notice that differs tremendously from Xenogears is the lack of music in the game. Thats right, this game, 80 hours, lacks very much music. I would estimate that 95% of the music occurs during the cutscenes. Practically all the levels where you fight, you hear nothing save for the monotonous drone of background noise. This angered me tremoundously. Xenogears had almost ear-splittingly fantastic music, yet this game has comparably nothing. To me, except for 4 tracks, 2 of them being the end vocal song and one of them being the damn Game Over music, this game has nothing in terms of great music. Even the battle music is repetitive. There is exactly 1 battle music for 99% of the game. You only hear a different battle music for the very last boss. There isnt even a regular boss battle music! I dont know what the Yasunori Mitsuda was thinking, but Xenogears' music was incredible, Xenosaga's is not

Like Xenogears, Xenosaga's menu is nothing like Final Fantasy's in terms of ease of use. In Xenogears, sometimes you'd get items and all you really know about them is the name. You dont know if its a useable item, a piece of equipment for your characters, or for your Gears. Sadly, in Xenosaga, the trend continues. Sure the names of the items have been changed to reflect the difference between people and AGWS which are the robots you ride in. However, for some things, its still a pain to figure out they are. To complicate things even further, there are like 8 menus(although to be fair, you really dont even need to look in 3 or 4 of them)! So you may get something from battle, then you'd have to search through your menus to find out what it is and what it does. They could have at least put an icon next to it or something, but they didnt

That said, the equipment for your AGWS is oddly designed. It seems like they tried to make it so different from other games that they just got caught up in it, making it different for the sake of being different instead of making it different but good. You'll get AGWS weapons with names like LX10AG or LX70VX or GLG45VX and you'll just be scratching your head trying to make sense of them all. Add to that, I still havent figured out why Beam weapons do not have their attack power show up on the shop's menu screen. You'll have to actually buy the thing to see how powerful it is and with the lack of a good source of money in the game, you'll find yourself saving and reloading a lot

However, the worst part of the AGWS is that unlike Xenogears, they are not reliably integrated within the story or the battles. In fact, even though they are billed as ''Anti-Gnosis Weapon Systems'', you do not use them in battle against regular Gnosis, its too much of a pain to transfer into and out of them. Besides, your characters do enough damage anyways. This is way different from Xenogears in which certain battles are nearly impossible if you're not inside your Gear. Even I was waiting for some kind of signal to get into them during battle, so that for like more than half the game, I played through without ever using the AGWS in battle! And even when I did remember, it was only for one battle, and I didnt have to use it again until about 5 hours later. You can go through pretty much the entire game without ever bothering with the AGWS and that, I think, was very poorly done. They feel more like the tools they are instead of critical story-elements. Instead of developing some kind of connection with your AGWS, you will feel almost detached and indifferent

There are a couple of side-quests, basically item hunting expeditions, to occupy your time as you proceed through the game. There are no secret dungeons though, all your item hunting will be done in the course of the game. It makes the game's replayability take a nose dive. Why bother playing through it again if you found everything the first time through?

However, despite all the negatives, Xenosaga's story shines above all else. You can ignore the stupid menus, they wont be too much of a bother. The AGWS dont help, but they dont get in the way much either. The money's a problem, but if you level up enough, you wont really have to buy much new equipment. All this takes a backstage to the writing, which is why I give this game an 8 out of 10. Its not spectacular, but its far from average and a good beginning to what promises to be a very compelling series. And if you dont mind the feeling of incompleteness that you get, then you should buy it, if only to experience it and eventually all the subsequent episodes

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/30/03, Updated 03/30/03