Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht

"Althought it may be "unrelated to Xenogears" according to Namco, it's almost as good."

In 1998, we experienced one of the greatest RPG’s of all time, Xenogears. With probably the best storyline I’ve ever seen in a videogame, it ranks up on one of the highest slots in the best games I’ve ever played. Now, 5 years later, are we getting another Xenogears? Xenosaga, developed by the majority of the same crew that did Xenogears when they were at square, does indeed deliver another top-notch role playing game for the Playstation 2. However can it compare to Xenogears or any other role playing game in its class (such as FFX and the .hack// series)?

Gameplay: 10/10
Most every RPG has its gimmick. FFX had the sphere grid and the overdrive, Xenogears had the deathblow, and Xenosaga brings one of the most entertaining game engines to the scene. Xenosaga features somewhat of a turn-based combat as opposed to active, but it uses one of the most innovative gameplay mechanics I’ve ever seen: Boost. This allows one character (whoever has built up enough boost meter from attacking to get a boost) to go directly after the person that is attacking/healing/whatever. This allows for a great deal of extra strategy that I have never seen before in an RPG. Boost can be used in so many ingenious ways, for example, as in Xenogears there is an equippable item that allows you to do more damage as your HP decreases (it’s called the bravesoul in XS), which can be used with an item that brings your health down to a very low level. Using Xenosaga’s battle system you can have one character use the health lowering item on the character who has equipped the bravesoul, and then have that character boost, do the damage, and then boost with the first character to get the health back. Good use of boost can be used to prevent bosses from healing at the last second (they can’t heal if they can’t attack, right?.

The Xenosaga battle system reminds me a lot of the Xenogears battle system, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Every turn you gain 4 AP, which can be used to attack, guard, use ether (magic), items, or switch into your A.G.W.S. (anti-gnosis weapons system, we’ll get to that later). Each option has a varying amount of AP usage, each time you attack it takes two AP, ether costs four AP, and takes two and ends your turn (you can only choose to do one of these things per turn, such as attack a certain amount of times, or ether once, or guard). If you do decide to guard, you will still have to AP left over, which carries on to the next turn giving you six (maximum AP). This can be used to attack more times, gaining more boosts and doing more damage.

The other quirky thing about the battle system is the way they bring in AGWS, aka gears/mecha. You start off every battle on foot, and can then choose to go into your AGWS or to stay on foot. Your AGWS will attack slower, but will probably do more damage and have more health, yet cannot heal themselves (until you get a certain item and equip them all with it). AGWS also deal with AP, each attack takes 4 AP, and guarding takes two. If you gain 6 AP because you guarded, and you have two of the same weapon equipped (hand shoulder/etc.), you can use them in unison, dealing massive damage (well, until a certain part of the game where your characters will probably be of more use than their AGWS. AWGS have their own sets of items to make them more powerful and if you don’t like one of your people in AWGS you can switch pilots from the in-game menu and also just choose not to put them in it (unlike Xenogears, where it was, either you’re all on foot, or you’re all in gears).

Xenosaga also takes a queue from recent RPG’s such as FFX by deviating from the experience system. You still gain experience with every victory but you also gain tech, skill, and ether points. Tech points can be invested to make you have more vitality (HP), strength (damage), and ether points (kind of like mana). Skill points allow you to extract stats/abilities from items (speed shoes yield speed 25 etc.). Ether points allow you to evolve your basic skills to learn better skills, and transfer your skills to other characters. For example, Shion starts with the skill medica, which heals a single party member for a small amount of health. However, when she gets enough ether points she can use ether points to learn medica all, which will heal all of the members of the party for a medium amount of health. You can usually evolve to more than one spell from each individual spell, which allows each characters tree to branch off so you can have an extreme amount of control about how to play with each character. Transferring also allows you to have even more control over your characters than other games. Let’s assume that you don’t like Shion, and therefore don’t ever put her in your party of three, and are significantly lacking a healer. Give Kos-Mos or another character medica all and there you have an instant healer.

In addition to all of this there is even more, in the form of minigames. There are four “exhilarating” mini games. You have your typical poker and slots. Wait did I say typical, NO NO NO. Well, slots may be normal, but poker is far from it. If you ever watched Card Sharks, which currently airs on the game show network, you’d have an extreme respect for Xenosaga’s poker. If you succeed in getting a pair or better in the casino, you can play hi/low, which can get you up to 16x the amount of coins that you would have normally won from poker. This works just like Card Sharks, where you have to guess whether or not the next card will be higher or lower than the current card. One of the other minigames is the ever-addicting Xenocard, which is very entertaining after you learn how to play it.

Control: 10/10
Okay, I hated on Xenogears because of this category, I’ll admit it. An RPG should not be a platformer, and that’s where Xenogears went wrong. Xenosaga knows its limits. If you read the gameplay section above, you’d see that there is little to no bad comments abut the gameplay, and that is mostly because of control. An RPG should have easy to learn controls, because you should be thinking about strategy and what you should do, not what button to press to do something. Xenosaga’s control is what is expected in an RPG. A confirm and cancel button, a menu pop up button, and responsive movement (remember platform jumping Xenogears fans? There’s none of that in Xenosaga). That’s how deep the control in an RPG should be unless its some sort of insanely amazing RPG that hasn’t been made yet, so I’ll stop.

Graphics: 10/10
*droooool* Yep, that’s right. I just drooled. A game that is so cut-scene heavy, such as Xenosaga, HAS to have good graphics. However, this wouldn’t be a problem if this game was mostly text such as psx RPGs. Watch a trailer, or one of the many music videos for this game on the web, or look at a screenshot. Everything in this game looks perfect, and really helps to enhance the storyline and keep your interest in it. Every explosion and gunshot is right there in your face.

Sound: 8.5/10
One of my few complaints from this game is the sound. Can we please have boss fight music? Thanks. How about some variety in the cut scene music? No? darn. Okay. Xenosaga does get a lot of points back from the voice acting. Everyone sounds just like they should. Ziggurat 8, a sort of human-cyborg sounds just like I would think someone torn between being completely robotic or remaining human would sound. MOMO sounds as annoying as a little girl should, Shion sounds nerdy, as she should, Allen sounds like a loser the whole game (Did I mention yet, that he gets HATED on by EVERYONE the entire game?), and Kos-mos definitely sounds like a omni-cool robotic woman. I haven’t even started to go into the bad characters yet, which I wont, but you can imagine how conniving and evil they sound. The only complaint I have on voice acting, is the voice of chaos. I don’t think that anyone in a videogame, who is supposed to be a good character, should have a voice that makes me cringe and want to beat him into oblivion.

Overall: 9/10. ( I want to give this like a 9.4 but the gamefaqs rating system won’t let me :’(

Many have criticized this game for being too much cut scene and too little gameplay. I say to them, “have you played Xenogears, (and if they say no obviously, this game is not for them as Xenogears is a very storyline intense game and basically uses gameplay to enhance storyline)??” or “Why are you playing an RPG, if you want to be in the action 24/7? Go play doom!”. Xenosaga has a LOT of storyline, and a lot of gameplay, but this game promises 80 hours of gameplay on the back of the box. I think that is more than enough gameplay needed(however, I think 80 hours of gameplay is only if you decide to enter every battle (Xenosaga uses a chrono trigger-esque style of entering battles)), where you decide which ones you go into, instead of just walking around and randomly being attacked *cough final fantasy cough*.

This game is simply amazing, and definitely challenges the throne that Xenogears has been holding for a long time. Although it comes very close at times, I don’t think it surpasses Xenogears. This is definitely worth the pick up for any fan of Xenogears, or any one that has ever had an interest in RPG. Even though it’s no longer under the square label, Xenosaga is a high quality game that will probably suffer the same fate as Xenogears: One of the best games ever made, but hidden by the shadow of more mainstream RPG’s like the final fantasy series.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/22/03, Updated 06/22/03