Story is easily the best part of the game — it’s fun, it’s dark, it’s frightening at times. However it does spend a lot of its runtime setting up plot points that will only be elaborated upon in the sequels, which can lead to this game sometimes feeling like the exposition game. Still tons of memorable scenes and an incredibly likable, thoroughly fleshed out cast of characters.
Gameplay is generally good here. I think the combat system is fun, but as the game went on, I realized just how slow it actually is. It gets especially bad when you start unlocking really powerful moves to include in your normal combos. By the last two dungeons, I was fast forwarding every encounter, and I found the combat to be much more enjoyable that way. I have no doubt that my experience wouldn’t have been as enjoyable if I was playing on real hardware. Also, there are more than a few times where a side character would wander off and I was forced to go find a them in the world. Sometimes they’d be close by, other times they’d be in some pretty stupid spots, and each time it took way too long and killed the pacing. Without going into spoilers, there’s one segment where I have to find over a dozen people in one area and that was easily the worst part of the game.
The points system is also something of which I am both fond and critical. I found it both satisfying and rewarding whenever I took the time to spend my points on new skills and upgrades and shit. On top of EXP, are three different types of points you are rewarded with upon finishing a battle and four different upgrade systems to spend them on. This wouldn’t be that bad if weren’t for the menus being really slow and kind of a pain to navigate through. In most JRPGs, when looking at stats and gear and shit for each character, you can use L and R to switch to a different character’s menu — that’s a pretty common QOL feature that Xenosaga lacks, and sometimes led to me spending 5 to 10 minutes in the menus anytime I wanted to level up my party.
Also there’s barely any fucking music in this game! There are TWO battle themes in this game. One is for the final boss, the other is for every other encounter. By the end of the game I never wanted to hear the main battle theme ever again. It’s not even that good. This game is composed entirely by the legendary Yasunori Mitsuda, who I has contributed to some of the best video game OSTs ever (Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Shadow Hearts, Xenoblade, etc.) and I fully expected him to kill it here, but it’s not his best work. Aside from some amazing standouts, it’s some nice but forgettable RPG music. Also, most areas in the game don’t actually have any music, only ambience. I’m sure this was a deliberate creative decision, and it’s one that I think paid off in some areas. It contributes to the game world’s cold, synthetic nature, but there was more than a handful of times in the game where I think it would’ve benefited from having background music without killing the game’s atmosphere (episodes II and III are testament to that). When the music is good, it’s great — the cutscenes are filled with awesome tracks — but most of the game’s music it’s just serviceable.
I think this is a very strong first chapter in this series, but it’s probably going to end up as my least favorite. I’m still going to give this an 8 out of 10 because the experience overall was great and I couldn’t stop playing it, though that’s almost entirely due to the story and mostly quick pace. As rough as it is around the edges, it’s still a great time and I don’t think anyone should skip this. I hear Episode III is a masterpiece and I can’t wait to get to that but this is a necessary first step. I’ve heard some people say that you should just watch the game’s cutscenes on YouTube and get the story so you can skip to Episode III, and I think that’s pretty ridiculous. You’re not getting the full experience that way, plus a good chunk of the story and world building takes place in dialogue boxes outside of cutscenes, so you’d be completely missing the context of these great cutscenes. Also the game itself is actually pretty good.
Gameplay is generally good here. I think the combat system is fun, but as the game went on, I realized just how slow it actually is. It gets especially bad when you start unlocking really powerful moves to include in your normal combos. By the last two dungeons, I was fast forwarding every encounter, and I found the combat to be much more enjoyable that way. I have no doubt that my experience wouldn’t have been as enjoyable if I was playing on real hardware. Also, there are more than a few times where a side character would wander off and I was forced to go find a them in the world. Sometimes they’d be close by, other times they’d be in some pretty stupid spots, and each time it took way too long and killed the pacing. Without going into spoilers, there’s one segment where I have to find over a dozen people in one area and that was easily the worst part of the game.
The points system is also something of which I am both fond and critical. I found it both satisfying and rewarding whenever I took the time to spend my points on new skills and upgrades and shit. On top of EXP, are three different types of points you are rewarded with upon finishing a battle and four different upgrade systems to spend them on. This wouldn’t be that bad if weren’t for the menus being really slow and kind of a pain to navigate through. In most JRPGs, when looking at stats and gear and shit for each character, you can use L and R to switch to a different character’s menu — that’s a pretty common QOL feature that Xenosaga lacks, and sometimes led to me spending 5 to 10 minutes in the menus anytime I wanted to level up my party.
Also there’s barely any fucking music in this game! There are TWO battle themes in this game. One is for the final boss, the other is for every other encounter. By the end of the game I never wanted to hear the main battle theme ever again. It’s not even that good. This game is composed entirely by the legendary Yasunori Mitsuda, who I has contributed to some of the best video game OSTs ever (Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Shadow Hearts, Xenoblade, etc.) and I fully expected him to kill it here, but it’s not his best work. Aside from some amazing standouts, it’s some nice but forgettable RPG music. Also, most areas in the game don’t actually have any music, only ambience. I’m sure this was a deliberate creative decision, and it’s one that I think paid off in some areas. It contributes to the game world’s cold, synthetic nature, but there was more than a handful of times in the game where I think it would’ve benefited from having background music without killing the game’s atmosphere (episodes II and III are testament to that). When the music is good, it’s great — the cutscenes are filled with awesome tracks — but most of the game’s music it’s just serviceable.
I think this is a very strong first chapter in this series, but it’s probably going to end up as my least favorite. I’m still going to give this an 8 out of 10 because the experience overall was great and I couldn’t stop playing it, though that’s almost entirely due to the story and mostly quick pace. As rough as it is around the edges, it’s still a great time and I don’t think anyone should skip this. I hear Episode III is a masterpiece and I can’t wait to get to that but this is a necessary first step. I’ve heard some people say that you should just watch the game’s cutscenes on YouTube and get the story so you can skip to Episode III, and I think that’s pretty ridiculous. You’re not getting the full experience that way, plus a good chunk of the story and world building takes place in dialogue boxes outside of cutscenes, so you’d be completely missing the context of these great cutscenes. Also the game itself is actually pretty good.