Xenosaga Episode I is not often talked about, and I suspect I've finally cracked the reason why there's so little discussion around Monolith Soft's 2002 debut: it's really god damn boring. Oh my god it's so boring.

I'm sure someone can write a tome about Xenosaga's Jungian themes and heavily Judeo-Christian influenced narrative, but I just don't care. Not only do I lack the intelligence or wit to accomplish such a task, but any amount that I may have has now been thoroughly sucked from my head after enduring 30 hours of this game. At least I think it's been 30 hours. Two hours in and the game's clock jumped to eight hours, which is about how many it felt like I was playing for, and then late in the game the timer jumped down to 17 hours, so I really have no idea how much time I've spent playing Xenosaga, which is a nightmare unto itself. In any case, had you walked in on me in the last two weeks you would've found me slumped over in my chair, eyes glassy and mouth agape as characters drone on and on about how robots don't have human rights. It got so bad I played Jet Force Gemini to revitalize myself. Weatherby's been having a bad time, man!

I played Xenosaga way back in 2002, and only a few bits and pieces have lingered in my memory. I recall the initial attack by the Gnosis, protagonist Shion, Ziggy, MOMO, all the incredibly uncomfortable panty shots MOMO gets, and of course, KOS-MOS. More vaguely, I recalled Xenosaga failing to truly capture me and being kind of a pain in the ass to play, but presenting some pretty out there ideas that may be worth checking in on, especially now that the (Xeno)saga is complete. Or at least as complete as it will ever be. While it's probably common knowledge, I'd be remiss not to mention creator Tetsuya Takahashi's original vision for a pentalogy. After pitching this idea to Square - who was evidently as uninterested as I am - Takahashi founded Monolith Soft and has been chasing after his grand JRPG space opera ever since. I'm glad he's finally succeeded with Xenoblade, but with Xenosaga concluding two games shy with Episode III, it's hard not to look on it as being in some way compromised. In fact, this was partly the impetus behind checking it out again. Something something "auteur theory." I was confident that regardless of Xenosaga's failures, it would at least be interesting. It was not. I am a ham sandwich piloting the body of a man.

Opening your epic space drama on two hours of flatly written characters going about their day jobs is a bold choice. Some might say this is all meticulously paced, but generally you want to get your audience to care about someone or something within the opening minutes of your story. There's nothing to grab onto here.

After a brief tutorial and a long stretch of cutscenes, your ship, The Woglinde, is attacked by an alien species known as the Gnosis. Finally, some action. Right?

No! Wrong! Shion has no weapons and KOS-MOS is on the other side of the ship, meaning the first real gameplay sequence is instead spent actively avoiding combat. When you do link up with KOS-MOS and gain the ability to fight the Gnosis, you spend maybe 15 minutes fending off their attack before getting hit with another forty-minute cutscene. You're then given control of Ziggy, a cyborg who really just wants to die, making him the most relatable member of the cast. Ziggy is very powerful and his strength and ferocity in battle is made a point of by several characters, but when the game finally hands you the keys, you're explicitly told to avoid combat and sneak around enemies. It takes like, six hours before Xenosaga allows you to play it like a proper JRPG, and for the first half of the game the rhythm is this back-and-forth of excessively long cinematics bookended by brief gameplay sequences. I've never played a JRPG so adamant about having me not engage with it.

Combat is also extremely easy despite an over-indulgence for systems. It may initially seem complex, but I promise you that you can beat half this game by brainlessly tapping the triangle button, and I know this because I finished at least one dungeon with my phone in front of my face doing exactly that. I eventually hit a boss that started giving me some trouble, the first real roadblock of the game, and a learning moment that clued me in to the fact that I had been ignoring an entire system the whole time. Probably not a great sign if the player can beat half your game without buying any spells or banking skill points into attributes. Again, the game could help the player internalize what it taught in the first hour had it not spent several more forcing you to not interact with those very same mechanics. The lack of incentivization is compounded by arbitrary difficulty spikes in the later half of the game, but hey, this does result in a handful of bosses that actually require you to think, and at that point any amount of stimulation is appreciated.

Likewise, the story does eventually find some interesting directions to push itself in, and characters start to become more relatable, but by this point the plot is bringing up things that have totally left my mind due to being so uninvested for such a long time. Everyone is just saying "ooh-dooo" now like that's supposed to mean something, but the first ten hours of the plot caused me to experience brain death, so it's just nothing to me. The most exciting parts of the story were whenever some crazy set piece was popping off (which does begin to occur more regularly) or when a character experiences a very personal and human moment that requires little plot investment to find captivating.

The best example I can give is the main antagonist, Albedo, ripping his whole entire head off and just casually growing another one. That's exciting, that's cool as hell, and the game explains why he's able to do this but I don't care at all about that. KOS-MOS' mysterious origins are elaborated on in fits and bursts, yet still kept intentionally vague to the point that it's hard to commit any beat to memory, yet when she risks her life at the end of the game to save the rest of the party, Shion's distress at losing her creation is palpable. That it takes this long for the game to make me feel anything and for it to still lack enough of my interest to fully understand what is happening isn't great and makes me feel like I mostly wasted my time. I feel similar things about Metal Gear Solid 4. All the droning exposition drags the experience to a crawl, and then suddenly there's a monkey in a diaper smashing an entire can of coke, and it's like someone stuck smelling salts under my nose.

The strong emphasis on cutscenes is also hampered by some of the pitfalls of early 2000s graphical rendering. Similar to Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, Xenosaga exists within this era where anime-style characters were being rendered in this pseudo-realistic fashion, giving everyone this distinctly doll-like quality. The way characters smack their rigid, outstretched fingers against keyboards to pantomime typing, the lack of proper lip syncing, and the wooden line delivery of the English cast makes much of Xenosaga's cutscenes play out like a low-energy marionette show.

This is the sort of JRPG that has the potential to taint someone on the entire genre. I've sure we all met someone at one point or another who swears all JRPGs are too slow and too long and too convoluted, and Xenosaga Episode I is the exact kind of game capable of giving that impression. It does not bode well that Episode II is considered "the worst one," and to be honest, I don't think even I have the constitution to stick through it just to see Space Jesus. I'm going to try, but it's a flimsy promise.

I didn't intend to write a literal essay on everything I don't like about this game. I swear I'm trying not to do that anymore, I've been making an honest attempt to keep things within about three paragraphs, but I spent 30 or 40 hours putting up with this game. Am I not entitled to a rant and a stiff drink?

Reviewed on May 24, 2023


13 Comments


10 months ago

God yes this game is so dull. I would rather drag my testicles through broken glass than play this again.

What makes it worse is I love sci-fi and the bits I saw look great so I imported a US PS2 and Xenosaga as it didn't release here and wouldn't work otherwise only to hate most the cast, story and law in it.

It actually takes skill to make me care so little, about everyone.

10 months ago

@FallenGrace KOS-MOS is a literal uncaring robot and yet everyone else somehow manages to be just as human as her.

10 months ago

Also, I can't imagine going through such lengths just to play this of all things, that's god damn tragic.

10 months ago

I can't believe you actually put yourself through this lmao.

10 months ago

@appreciations Nobody hurts me like I hurt me.

10 months ago

@Weatherby bring it back, bring it back x 4

10 months ago

I was going to make that same KOS MOS joke lmao.

Worst part is, it's the only game I played on it though I imported a few others. Never touched them as it reminded me of Xenosaga. The only part they released in the UK was the second one which as you said is meant to be the worst of the three games...

10 months ago

@FallenGrace Looking at the PS2 with disdain because it's "the Xenosaga machine" is very funny to me, but also kinda sucksc assume you probably missed out on some good stuff.

Hate region locking so much, though. Part of why I can't play Akira Psycho Ball on my console, and there's been PS1 Japan-only games I've looked at from time to time that just won't play.

10 months ago

actually video games should be slow, long and convoluted

9 months ago

The third game is the best one in large part BECAUSE it was forcibly the last one. That meant that they had to make sure any possible event they could make happen happened, thus making characters more active as a result and going off on their craziest ideas that might've been saved for theoretical Game 6. Also, by the third game you had people like Yuri Lowenthal, Steve Blum and DC Douglas in the dub cast so the voice acting quality got a bit better there. Shion and KOS-MOS have worse voices in the second game due to an unknown recast.

As for this game, following the actual lore via flowcharting was probably the highlight; it made me pretty curious about the story and the customizability in spite of how the grinding makes it take a while to get there. It being high on itself so much made it stand out from a lot of other more standard fantasy fare. The difficulty spikes are apparent; each game makes the mecha more useful with a distinct combat system but they're a massive sunk cost here. 2 and 3 have more music, if that helps things.

7 months ago

As brutal of a review as this is, I appreciate it. Xenosaga Episode I is such a drag and it's a damn shame since, like you said, it really does pop off towards the end. It doesn't help that Episode II also sucks and III, while very good, feels like an obligation to finish the trilogy out. It does sadden me to think about how Xenosaga was as ambitious as it was. I did like the trilogy... at least most of it. Episode III is worthwhile, but you have to trudge through two games with the first being a "Your mileage may vary" title.

In terms of other PS2 RPGs with religious themes, Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 are personal favorites, having just completed them recently. These games are where Xenosaga should've taken note, as the pacing of 1 has that slow buildup, but does its job a lot better than the complete slog that is 1's story. Now, I love Episode 1, even the dub, but it's hard to deny it's incredibly slow when compared to contemporaries.

At least Tetsuya Takahashi learned his lesson of not creating sprawling stories that could take multiple games. Xenosaga may not have been great, but III is easily worth all the payoff of two rather sluggish entries.

7 months ago

@DasAntihero I appreciate the appreciation. I was pretty hard on this one but I haven't removed 2 or 3 from my backlog because I do still want to give it a shot. If anything, I've become increasingly curious about 2 knowing it's commonly agreed to be bad.

The Digital Devil Saga games are good, though I had some issues with the way part 2 was structured (mostly pertaining to how it cycles party members.) Definitely better at pacing their stories, plus they have King Frost. Xenosaga doesn't have King Frost. Inferior game.

7 months ago

@Weatherby Can't even be siked out of being a Hee Homeboy, literally unplayable.