Xenosaga is so far up its own ass that it has formed a perfect circle. This is a 40 hour long game in which almost nothing happens. At the game's end the plot has barely moved from the starting line despite having seven hours of cutscenes. Combat is tedious, character progression is unremarkable, and there's really nothing to see here except the story, which you can maybe start to appreciate after playing two more games, studying the intricacies of Jungian psychology, and becoming a doctor of Judeo-christian theology. What? You haven't read the Kabbalah? What are you some kind of idiot?

Three answers is a lot of them to have for a question that you've only been asked once or twice.

In the elusive scenario wherein someone actually asks me which among the Final Fantasy games is my favorite, my first answer might be Final Fantasy VII, as it was my first and it's the one I've played the most. I have read several terrible novels and played numerous bad spinoff games to 100% completion because of my love for Final Fantasy VII. I might then correct myself to my most practiced answer: Final Fantasy X. It is my firm and solemn belief, after all, that Final Fantasy X is The Best One for a litany of well-considered reasons, and I find myself with a ravenous hunger for it at least once per year.

Ask me on my most honest days, however... in my tender darkness, when the mind is powerless to stop my heart, and I will tell you that my favorite is Final Fantasy IX.

Final Fantasy IX is the only one in which the ATB system Gets In The Way, and while I can dock a point for it, I will never be able to make myself care. Drag as they might, no battle in Final Fantasy IX can dampen my love. No, not even you end up queuing commands too far ahead and the battlefield changes in frustrating ways before your attack goes off. If it really bothers you so much, play on PC where there are mods to get around it. I truly do not think that it is enough to get in the way of having an incredible time with Final Fantasy IX.

I don't even want to talk about the story. If I have to explain to you why the story of Final Fantasy IX is good then you're not going to appreciate it anyway. Yes, it would be nice if Freya has one or two more spotlight scenes and Amarant wasn't such a transparently tropey Zidane foil, and it would be nice if trance were better integrated in ALL respects, but look... Final Fantasy IX is so good that it made me immune to Persona 3. It is the only game whose ending consistently forces me to cry.

If you like anything about anything Hironobu Sakaguchi has ever done and you haven't played FFIX, please just do it. He deserves that much.

Playing this has been... fascinating. As most people will tell you, it's worth checking out for the art direction alone, and overall I had a good time with it, but wow is there ever room for improvement. In so many ways Okami is the inverse of Twilight Princess. You control a wolf for the entire game, whereas Wolf Link felt like an afterthought. Dungeons which are the highlight of Twilight Princess feel as though they barely exist here. Conversely the overworld, which is probably the worst part of Twilight Princess is done much better in Okami.

The choice of source material makes for a unique experience and the characters are full of personality which is a plus, but it's a shame that most of the dialogue in the game goes to its worst character. Issun is nearly as bad as Fi in Skyward Sword when it comes to incessant pace-breaking chatter, and the text speed in any scene that doesn't let you skip dialogue absolutely does not help. The game has a horrible habit of injecting tiny and unnecessary cutscenes with outrageous frequency, and most of it is accompanied with some inane comment from Issun. His personality also does him no favors. Issun's constant lechery toward nearly every female NPC in the game doesn't just get old, it was born old. I have no doubt that some of my distaste for the character's single "joke" comes from playing the game as an American in 2020 where such bullshit stopped being endearing many years ago. Other recurring characters are solid, with a few surprisingly effective emotional scenes created with them here and there despite very little screen time.

Combat is serviceable, but nothing noteworthy. The fact that it is always confined to a special arena is somewhat disappointing, as is the difficulty. Exploration rewards the player with piles and piles of consumable items to restore health, do more damage, etc, but they feel completely unnecessary. It's unfortunate when the rewards that any game gives you don't actually feel rewarding. For the vast majority of the game I had bountiful piles of money and nothing worthwhile to spend it on since my stores of consumables were already overflowing and I didn't see myself using them any time soon.

I enjoyed my visit well enough, but I don't expect to be back.