Even though the battle system had plenty of depth to it, and the story
was pretty enjoyable, I was still left pretty empty with Xenosaga. I
spent over 40 hours with this game, and most of that was micro managing
and cutscenes. I felt like I didn't accomplish anything.
----------Battle System----------
Xenosaga is a standard turn-based RPG. There's six playable
characters in all, but at the start of the game a couple people will
"semi-join" you like Generic Solider #442, but you can edit their
status or equipment and they leave shortly after they join. You can
only have 3 people on your team at once in battle. There's only room to
move forward or back. If your character is in the back row they can't
attack at all, but they're damaged alot less. You can assign a player
behind another one, this prevents the front player from getting pushed
back, and protects the back player from getting hit to much. This is a
good position for a healer. I never had a problem of getting pushed
back until a couple boss fights.
In the battle there will be a wheel spinning once each move,
there's four marks on this wheel one does nothing, another gives you a
critical attack, another boosts your Boost Gauge, and the last boosts
your points after the battle if you kill the monster while you're on
this wheel. The wheel moves in the same way after each move, so if you
can time things right you can gain a good amount of points after
battle. The wheel also applies to the monster. When the Boost Gauge
fills up, you gain 1 "Boost Point". If you use a "Boost" it gives which
ever character that has the boost an extra attack. Monsters also have
Boosts aswell.
Every character has Action Points (AP). You start off with zero AP
at the beginning of a fight, but as your turn comes up you gain 4 AP.
Each move costs 2 AP, so you can have a 2 hit combo, or you can attack
once, then cancel your move, and have 3 hit combo (with a more powerful
move) the next move. It's smart to do that.
You also have Ether Points (EP), which is basically your
characters Magic Points. Each character has a load of personal
abilities they can learn, 99% of them are healing or status effects
though.
After each battle your current party gets experience split
equally, and your "reserve" characters you aren't using will get a
fraction of what you won. After the battle you'll also gain Tech
Points, Ether Points and Skill Points. You can use these Tech Points in
2 different ways. For one you can boost your characters stats with
them, this is pretty simple and should be done early in the game (I
didn't start until later, I would of made the game alot easier to do it
early as I learned). You can also upgrade your Tech attacks with these
points. The Tech attacks are the final attacks you perform in a combo
when you do a 3 combo hit. If you max out the speed of the Tech attack
you can make it a 2 combo hit (another thing I wish I would of figured
out early in the game). You can also upgrade the level of each attack,
but it gets pricey eventually.
The Ether points buys you Ether skills. Your Ether chart looks
something similar to a DNA chart, you'll start off with one or two
ether attacks, and then you can branch (or as they say "evolve") each
Ether skill until you can't evolve it anymore. You can also "transfer"
these skills to other players at half the cost. This makes the game
alot easier if you give everyone healing spells, but it makes
micro-managing even more agonizing.
The Skill Points are used for status effects. You learn new skills
by extracting said skill from an unequipped accessory. Each character
will have 3 Skill slots. For example, you can extract a "Prevent
Poison" and put it in one of your characters slots, then you'll never
have to worry about being poisoned. You can only equip 3, so that makes
choosing a bit difficult. You even have a "Skill Level". You gain
higher levels by extracting more and more skills. If your skill level
is at 3, then you can only extract level 3 and below skills.
On the stages all the monsters are visible. If you kill a monster
and then exit and re-enter a room, that monster will be back with the
same exact bad guys you fought before. If you get near the monster
you'll hear an alert sound, and a big "WARNING" flash will pop up. The
monster will start charging you until the battle has begun, if you run
faster than him it will eventually go back to pacing back and forth in
a generic fashion. In most cases you'll get attacked by the monster
since they're usually fast and you'll be walking down narrow hallways
or paths most of the time.
Early in the game they give you a Vaporizer Plug-in. This zapper
will destroy certain targets on the screen, such as boxes and... boxes.
When you get near a box, you'll hear a sound and a graphic will jump to
your target. When you get close enough you can zap it, most of the time
it will hide a items or money, sometimes you'll find hidden doors or
even monsters. You can also zap traps with this thing. If a monster
gets close to a trap, you can zap it and a big fireball or electric
mess will explode freezing the monster and giving you the advantage to
run past it, or fighting it with a boosted abilities.
Just like Xenogears, you'll also board a Mech machine, they call
it a "Anti-Gnosis Weapon System", or "A.G.W.S." for short. The attack
system is similar to your normal attacks, but they could cost alot more
AP to accomplish. If your character has an "A.G.W.S." then they can
board it at any time in the battle. You can upgrade your machine in a
few locations. You can boosts its HP and VIT (they attach
automatically), or buy new weapons or armor (you have to equip). I
thought this was the most boring of all the micro-managing since I
rarely used my "A.G.W.S.".
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Shoin, the young chief of Vector Industries. She is
assigned to build KOS-MOS, a cyborg type machine that's made to kill
the Gnosis of the world. The Gnosis is a universal menace, that are
almost unstoppable. If one touches you, then you can turn into a
Gnosis, so that’s why they need KOS-MOS. Your ship is eventually
attacked and the few survivors is picked up by a scavenger ship, where
you meet up with Chaos and crew. That's when the game starts to pick
up. You eventually learn more about the Gnosis, and the government and
other secret societies.
The story was great, and the characters had a ton of depth. I'm
not a sci-fi fan, so I wasn't expecting much, but ending up enjoying it
overall. Chaos was a little annoying, he's just embodiment of
effiminate Japanese RPG characters.
----------Graphics----------
All the cutscenes (and there's plenty) are made with the in-game
engine and its a joy to watch. The characters movements are very
natural and fluent. Their faces show a wide variety of emotion. The
only problem is they spent so much time on the cutscenes and not enough
time on the level design. Nothing has progressed since the PS1 era of
RPGs in this game. The levels are a bit short, you're always walking
down a narrow path and only have a few mediocre puzzles to figure out
each, just about all are unlocking doors, hitting switches or moving up
elevators. Just about every stage is saturated in a bluish grey metal
world that gets very boring in time. There was one stage where you
fight across a giant Gnosis, but it eventually leads you into another
blueish grey building with the same lame puzzles.
All the enemies come in 3 types, a Human, a Mech or a Gnosis.
There's not alot of variety with the enemies and for the most part the
enemies in each group looks about the same.
The special attacks are ok looking, but some of them drag on way
to long, and I only encountered a couple that you could speed up or
skip.
This game is no way near as colorful as Baten Kaitos, everything
is dull and looks washed out. The enemy variety is alot less
imaginative.
----------Sound----------
The voice actors in this game are great (except for Chaos, he
annoys me). The only time we'll hear these voices are in the cutscenes
or in battle. The dialog scenes you'll have to scroll through yourself.
The music is ok at best, but very forgettable.
----------World Map----------
There's only one world map within this whole game. If you're
familiar with Baten Kaitos, then it looks exactly like that. When
you're walking around the Kukai Foundation you can walk up to 3 or 4
different links within this map, and that's about it. You can travel
within stages by train or spaceship to a few limited places.
The way you travel to worlds is going to them by storylines, you
don't travel to dungeons yourself like normal. There's no "real" safe
haven in that game, because you'll fight monsters in every stage at
some point.
Since you have to backtrack to do some sidequests, and some stages
you can't revisit they make up a thing called "Environmental Simulator"
or "EVS" for short. The EVS system takes you back to levels you
previously completed, but they're not the "real" levels for storyline
purposes. Nothing is changed between the real stage and the "simulated"
ones, even treasure chests you open in the real stage stay opened when
you revisit. It's just an excuse to warp you to past levels.
The lack of actual traveling is a bit disappointing and makes this "epic" game feel less hands on and short.
----------Time to Complete Game (first run through)----------
44:07:03
You save your game after the credits, but I don't think there is a New Game+ or anything. No bonus' that I noticed.
