Game review - Xenosaga

by Keayn Dunya

Many RPG games will be throwing around the title epic. More often than not that means giving up 50 plus hours of your life in the pursuit of that all-too elusive final cinema. Xenosaga: Episode I (of 6) is one of those games. Kiss the significant other goodbye, get a catheter and set the speed dial to the fast food place of your choice. Love it or hate it, once you start you're in for the long haul.

On the surface Xenosaga: Episode I suffers an identity crisis. It's a beautifully game with graphics that rival some of the best done for the Play Station. It's also a beautiful anime with graphics that rival some of the best out there. Xenosaga: Episode I tells the bulk of its story through cinemas and cut scenes that can be long winded at times. (Upwards of thirty five minutes in one spot) The plot had a lot of depth and is engrossing but it also suffers from trying to create too much tension. It creates so many loose ends that not all of them are wrapped up in a satisfactory fashion. Even with those flaws, Xenosaga: Episode I has one of the best plots in an RPG.

Xenosaga: Episode I takes place in the distant future, in the year 4767. Earth has been lost and is now known as Lost Jerusalem. Technology has advanced to the point when almost anything is possible and most resembles magic. Some humans have supernatural abilities either through ancestry or through alterations. Others exist under the control of the corporations that revived and retrofitted them with cyborg parts after their deaths. Humans have even gone so far as to create new life in the form of Realians, a type of Blade Runner-esque replicant. There also exist the Gnosis, spectral, multi-dimensional beings whose touch brings death or worse. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There is also the Zohars, various religious aspects, and the occasional question of what defines sentience.

Game play itself is straightforward and the learning curve is slight. Most of the game consists of battles with the Gnosis, various other creatures, robots and mecha. Battles are handled in a turn based system. Each character gets a certain amount of action points per turn. Of course, actions use a certain amount of these points or they can be saved in order to do higher actions next turn. Of your party you can only have three active combatants at any time. Character can use close range attacks, long range attacks, ether skills or jump behind the wheel of an A.G.W.S (Anti Gnosis Weapon System). Characters can execute combinations of moves in order to bring the enemy low. Some battles can just be slugfests while others do require a bit of strategy. Characters in Xenosaga gain experience points and level up by fighting, just like in any RPG. The complicated part is that they also earn ether points, tech points, and skill points, which you need to actively spend in order to improve your characters' stats, special attacks, abilities, and spells. It gets to be an annoying process of keeping track of who needs to upgrade and at certain levels it seems that it needs to be done after every battle, which can be quite a bit. The camera is fixed so there can be some tricky angles but most enemies can be seen before they see you. Also certain parts of the landscape are destructible with your M.W.S. weapon, a type of sonic gun. Xenosaga Volume I also has four distinct mini games: a trading card game, a casino, a virtual AGWS battle, and a drilling game. The characters can also re-visit any level that has been cleared in order to clear any secret doors or gather any missed items.

All in all, while Xenosaga Volume I may have it's failings it is engrossing. The game takes a lot of risks, and its considerable emphasis on cut scenes does undermine its pacing to some extent, often making it feel disjointed, like half of it's a movie and half of it's an RPG. Either one may have been great separately, but together it is oddly unbalanced. Despite all this, Xenosaga Volume I has some solid game play. It maybe a flawed existence but with even a little work, it is worth the time you put in. In some ways it is your typical RPG as it suffers from the B&E (breaking and entering in order to get items), and the Chip syndrome (everyone you meet has a chip on their shoulder and is spoiling for a fight) but it also gives back a solid performance, a small lesson in tactics, and a few metaphysical question to chew on. When it comes down to the bottom line, you may have just given up a good portion of your life for a videogame, make sure it's worth every minute before you buy it.