Post by benwayshouse on Jan 22, 2007 1:20:23 GMT -5
Hey everyone! Does anybody else here play any RPG series outside of the regular Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest or whatnot? If no, are you curious to see what other franchises are out there? If you are, I've got just the game, and it's the first in a trilogy of games! What's the name? Look at the title! : D
-General Info
Xenosaga definitely is quite an RPG. Released in 2003, the game and its preceding sequels are all spiritual prequels to Xenogears, a PlayStation gem released in 1998 that was, sadly, overshadowed by Final Fantasy VII, and plagued by budget cuts because of Final Fantasy VIII. Monolith, as a company, was actually just a bunch of Squaresoft dudes who, after Xenogears and Chrono Cross, left to form this company. Some of these employees also had ties to Chrono Trigger. I believe this is their first game under the Monolith name.
-Story
This game's got a good story, no doubt. No, not good. Great. It opens up with a bang (I think the opening cutscene was 30 minutes!) and closes with one too. You are Shion Uzuki, the young, nerdy chief of Vector Industries' First R&D Division, and head of the KOS-MOS project. As it opens, you are plunged into a virtual reality setup in order to test KOS-MOS to obtain field data for your commander. An hour or two later into the game, Gnosis (the main force that stands in your way throughout the game) invade your ship and put you at risk. Fortunately for you, KOS-MOS wakes up against her programming to save Shion, KOS-MOS being equipped to defend you against them (KOS-MOS is an anti-Gnosis weapon, with a mechanism called the 'Hilbert Effect' which materializes Gnosis who are otherwise impervious to any attacks). All is well, but your ship is still screwed, so you manage to escape and land on the Elsa, a cargo ship headed for nowhere, but now to Second Miltia (You'll find out why it's 'Second' Miltia when you play) because that's where you need to drop KOS-MOS off now that your testing is complete. Along the way you'll meet other party members like MOMO, chaos, Ziggy and Jr., and ultimately cooler (and freakier) villains, too! It's awesome, but don't take my word for it!
Also, a good chunk of the game is actually cutscenes if you didn't know. They're very stunning, quality-wise, if the game were a movie, it'd be on par with some of our old favorite space movies. Truly one of the high points of the game.
-Gameplay
Let me set something straight for Xenosaga: it's short. Well, sort of.. The back of the box advertises an 80 hour game. How long is it really? It might have been 80 hours if you bothered to max out your characters AND complete a majority of the sidequests, but I didn't exactly do that. All in all, if you play the game just to finish and not bother about some of the sidequests, it'll end up being around 30-35 hours, maybe more if you trained longer 'n I did.
Regular exploration is generic: Just a bland environment you run around in, fighting enemies, picking up items, the like. It's not terrible, and nobody downgrades a game for exploration, but don't expect to be amazed by it. The real gem here is the combat, and the character customization bits.
First, the combat. It's more streamlined than the competiton, opting for a 'push this button do this attack' system instead of selecting actions from a menu. Personally I think this works very well, it's creative and it keeps the pace moving quite a bit! I'd love to see more games try new systems. As for battles, you get about enough total, and it's a blast to play.
Then for the customization.. also new, to me, is this mechanic about other types of EXP. When you win battles, you get traditional EXP and level up as you would in any ordinary RPG, but alongside these you also get E. Pts, T. Pts and S. Pts. Each one serves a different purpose, and each set of points (but substantially lesser in importance in regards to the third set) is very important to recognize if you want to have the best experience with the game.
I'll break it down like this: You don't learn new magic or skills by leveling up; this is why you have E. Pts (E for Ether, Xenosaga's term for magic) and S. Pts (S for Skill), so you can teach yourself skills. Then there are T. Pts (T for Tech). You DO learn new special attacks when leveling up, and T. Pts are there to increas e these attacks' abilities. You can make them more powerful or set them up at the end of a button chain, whatever floats your boat. However, these T. Pts also serve a dual purpose: character upgrades. Yes, you can upgrade certain characters' skills without waiting to level up! It's amazing! Well, not really when you consider you can only do so much with what T. Pts you have at any given time, but it's really nifty when you have the points with a big gap in between levels.
So ultimately you have a very solid experience with the game, it's very playable, and very enjoyable. I loved it. Just wish the cutscenes could've been shorter so I could play more.. >_>
-Graphics
Graphics are, in a word, wonderful. Cinematics are very crisp without a jaggy character model in sight, and the models are very detailed and colorful, with their anime charms. Outside of cinematics, the CGs are beautiful and the environments, while boring overall, do hold up. Cinematics really do help the game though, and it should, because those are what the game is all about. You can't hate this, seriously.
-Sound
So many great things about the soundtrack. Composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross fame, he pairs with the London Philharmonic Orchestra to create a score that is not only fitting, but also epic, beautiful, sad, all kinds of words. It's very fabulous, I doubt it could've been this good without the orchestra in place. Big ups to them!
What else is there? Oh yes, voice acting. It's simply fantastic. The characters are fitted well with the English cast, and there's hardly a bad performance ever, if at all. Only issue: they didn't lip-synch in the BEST way, it's not that bad though. Still loved it, with or without properly moving mouths.
-Extras
Er.. it's sort of empty in this respect. The game itself is short, and the bulk of the sidequests are just fetching Segment Addresses, which, if you obtain the right ones, can unlock a mondo-powerful summon to use at any time, and deals 9999 damage no matter what the weakness. Other than that, there are side bosses, and there's the chance to max out your characters, but do you really want to do that? I didn't bother, you don't need to be that strong to beat the game.
-Conclusion
In the end, I had a blast with the game. It's very cinematic, but when it's not trying to be a very awesome movie (and succeeding, oh yes it does very well at what it tries to do!!!), it's also a fun, fresh RPG series when you don't want to play the latest Final Fantasy or the like. It's a breath of fresh air, setting some goals and definitely achieving them. Only problem is, it's short. But hey, there are two more games that come after it, so why worry? For ten dollars, you can't go wrong with Xenosaga. I think I'll rate it a 9.0.
-General Info
- Publisher: Namco
- Developer: Monolith Soft
- Platform: PlayStation 2
- Release: February 2003
Xenosaga definitely is quite an RPG. Released in 2003, the game and its preceding sequels are all spiritual prequels to Xenogears, a PlayStation gem released in 1998 that was, sadly, overshadowed by Final Fantasy VII, and plagued by budget cuts because of Final Fantasy VIII. Monolith, as a company, was actually just a bunch of Squaresoft dudes who, after Xenogears and Chrono Cross, left to form this company. Some of these employees also had ties to Chrono Trigger. I believe this is their first game under the Monolith name.
-Story
This game's got a good story, no doubt. No, not good. Great. It opens up with a bang (I think the opening cutscene was 30 minutes!) and closes with one too. You are Shion Uzuki, the young, nerdy chief of Vector Industries' First R&D Division, and head of the KOS-MOS project. As it opens, you are plunged into a virtual reality setup in order to test KOS-MOS to obtain field data for your commander. An hour or two later into the game, Gnosis (the main force that stands in your way throughout the game) invade your ship and put you at risk. Fortunately for you, KOS-MOS wakes up against her programming to save Shion, KOS-MOS being equipped to defend you against them (KOS-MOS is an anti-Gnosis weapon, with a mechanism called the 'Hilbert Effect' which materializes Gnosis who are otherwise impervious to any attacks). All is well, but your ship is still screwed, so you manage to escape and land on the Elsa, a cargo ship headed for nowhere, but now to Second Miltia (You'll find out why it's 'Second' Miltia when you play) because that's where you need to drop KOS-MOS off now that your testing is complete. Along the way you'll meet other party members like MOMO, chaos, Ziggy and Jr., and ultimately cooler (and freakier) villains, too! It's awesome, but don't take my word for it!
Also, a good chunk of the game is actually cutscenes if you didn't know. They're very stunning, quality-wise, if the game were a movie, it'd be on par with some of our old favorite space movies. Truly one of the high points of the game.
-Gameplay
Let me set something straight for Xenosaga: it's short. Well, sort of.. The back of the box advertises an 80 hour game. How long is it really? It might have been 80 hours if you bothered to max out your characters AND complete a majority of the sidequests, but I didn't exactly do that. All in all, if you play the game just to finish and not bother about some of the sidequests, it'll end up being around 30-35 hours, maybe more if you trained longer 'n I did.
Regular exploration is generic: Just a bland environment you run around in, fighting enemies, picking up items, the like. It's not terrible, and nobody downgrades a game for exploration, but don't expect to be amazed by it. The real gem here is the combat, and the character customization bits.
First, the combat. It's more streamlined than the competiton, opting for a 'push this button do this attack' system instead of selecting actions from a menu. Personally I think this works very well, it's creative and it keeps the pace moving quite a bit! I'd love to see more games try new systems. As for battles, you get about enough total, and it's a blast to play.
Then for the customization.. also new, to me, is this mechanic about other types of EXP. When you win battles, you get traditional EXP and level up as you would in any ordinary RPG, but alongside these you also get E. Pts, T. Pts and S. Pts. Each one serves a different purpose, and each set of points (but substantially lesser in importance in regards to the third set) is very important to recognize if you want to have the best experience with the game.
I'll break it down like this: You don't learn new magic or skills by leveling up; this is why you have E. Pts (E for Ether, Xenosaga's term for magic) and S. Pts (S for Skill), so you can teach yourself skills. Then there are T. Pts (T for Tech). You DO learn new special attacks when leveling up, and T. Pts are there to increas e these attacks' abilities. You can make them more powerful or set them up at the end of a button chain, whatever floats your boat. However, these T. Pts also serve a dual purpose: character upgrades. Yes, you can upgrade certain characters' skills without waiting to level up! It's amazing! Well, not really when you consider you can only do so much with what T. Pts you have at any given time, but it's really nifty when you have the points with a big gap in between levels.
So ultimately you have a very solid experience with the game, it's very playable, and very enjoyable. I loved it. Just wish the cutscenes could've been shorter so I could play more.. >_>
-Graphics
Graphics are, in a word, wonderful. Cinematics are very crisp without a jaggy character model in sight, and the models are very detailed and colorful, with their anime charms. Outside of cinematics, the CGs are beautiful and the environments, while boring overall, do hold up. Cinematics really do help the game though, and it should, because those are what the game is all about. You can't hate this, seriously.
-Sound
So many great things about the soundtrack. Composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross fame, he pairs with the London Philharmonic Orchestra to create a score that is not only fitting, but also epic, beautiful, sad, all kinds of words. It's very fabulous, I doubt it could've been this good without the orchestra in place. Big ups to them!
What else is there? Oh yes, voice acting. It's simply fantastic. The characters are fitted well with the English cast, and there's hardly a bad performance ever, if at all. Only issue: they didn't lip-synch in the BEST way, it's not that bad though. Still loved it, with or without properly moving mouths.
-Extras
Er.. it's sort of empty in this respect. The game itself is short, and the bulk of the sidequests are just fetching Segment Addresses, which, if you obtain the right ones, can unlock a mondo-powerful summon to use at any time, and deals 9999 damage no matter what the weakness. Other than that, there are side bosses, and there's the chance to max out your characters, but do you really want to do that? I didn't bother, you don't need to be that strong to beat the game.
-Conclusion
In the end, I had a blast with the game. It's very cinematic, but when it's not trying to be a very awesome movie (and succeeding, oh yes it does very well at what it tries to do!!!), it's also a fun, fresh RPG series when you don't want to play the latest Final Fantasy or the like. It's a breath of fresh air, setting some goals and definitely achieving them. Only problem is, it's short. But hey, there are two more games that come after it, so why worry? For ten dollars, you can't go wrong with Xenosaga. I think I'll rate it a 9.0.
Damn my backlog to hell. Hopefully this summer
