Xenosaga

[Plug 4]

can somebody please tell me when the game is gonna come out??? shit i cant wait for that game...i like xenogear damn much and i really want to play this one..is it out in japan???

[Reid]

I'm pretty sure that it's out in Japan which means it's probably pretty close to being ready for release here (hoping at least).

I'm working through Xenogears right now and it's pretty incredible so far, so i'm looking forward to the next one very much.

[Sword 4 Hire]

I too am looking forward to it but I wouldn't expect this game to be as good as Gear...its gonna some pretty mixed reviews in Japan I hear...

[kupoartist]

alledgedly, Xenogears is "XenoSaga 5", and will be remade at sometime to iron out it's a "million and one flaws"... not that i've played it, as It was never even considered for release here.... and Xenogears is alledgedly square's 7th best game ever....

[Crono]

Seeing as how XS was developed by Namco, don't expect it to be as good as Square's RPGs...

[Suzuki_Fanboy]

Xenosaga is going to be a beast. PS2's first 2-Disc game. Whoa.

I hear there are a lot more anime sequences (thank goodness...the ones in Xenogears are beautiful, but there aren't enough), and since it's 2-discs I would assume its hella-long.

[Sword 4 Hire]

7th best?! I'd imagine that it'd be higher up on the list...

[kupoartist]

Originally posted by Sword 4 Hire

7th best?! I'd imagine that it'd be higher up on the list...
the list reads:
25. Threads Of Fate
24. Bushido Blade
23. SaGa Frontier 2
22. Parasite Eve 2
21. Front Mission 3
20. FF III [the NES one]
19. Legend Of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 4)
18. Parasite Eve
17. The Bouncer
16. Seiken Densetsu 3
15. FF I
14. Super Mario RPG
13. Secret Of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 3)
12. FF V
11. Vagrant Story
10. FF X
9. Chrono Cross
8. FF Tactics
7. Xenogears
6. FF IV

of course they're still lacking the next 5 though I predict FF IX, FF VIII Chrono Trigger FF VII and FF VI are still to come.

so why Xenogears in eighth? the list reads a bit like a list of the best known Squaresoft games. Chrono Cross, FF Tactics and Xenogears loose a considerable slice due to no European release. [Edit: Though FFIII and SD3 were never even released in America, and are in reasonable places, so perhaps it didn't make so much difference.]
Also, an FF site is bound to be biased towards FF games... But its still quite a good representation (even if Kingdom Hearts has since been released) of what are the most popular games that squaresoft made. Though not definitive, FFOnline is probably only slightly less suitable than a massive board such as Gamefaqs (or more suitable, as some of the people on GameFAQs are notoriously annoying)

Just for the record, the Xenogears' entry can be read at : http://www.ffonline.com/news/news.php?article=2002-12-03&page=2 - just don't mail to much hate to the guy who wrote it (he doesn't exactly love it :laugh: )

[Daedaelus]

Originally posted by Crono

Seeing as how XS was developed by Namco, don't expect it to be as good as Square's RPGs...

Sure does look good.

[Ninja]

xenosaga looks awesome here r some links to sweet videos
http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage.jsp?media_id=1466730&object_id=16268&channel_id=70&page_title=Xenosaga+Hands-On&adString=network%3Dign%26site%3Dps2%26pagetype%3Dv ideo&return_url=http%3A%2F%2Fps2.ign.com%2Fobjects%2F01 6%2F016268.html



http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage.jsp?media_id=1466736&object_id=16268&channel_id=70&page_title=Xenosaga+Hands-On&adString=network%3Dign%26site%3Dps2%26pagetype%3Dv ideo&return_url=http%3A%2F%2Fps2.ign.com%2Fobjects%2F01 6%2F016268.html

cool movies

[Plug 4]

if u guys want to read sometihing i got to another forum from someone that got it from someone else.....etc...

December 13, 2002 - "Geez, this mother[expletive] is so [expletive] long..."
-- Dave Rabbit

Xenosaga is the source of a somewhat illustrative running joke between some friends and I. When the import version was released, and instantly became famous for the length and frequency of its cinematic sequences, we debated amongst ourselves whether this was really such a problem. "After all," one of my associates observed, "Who cares how long the cutscenes are? I could stare at that cute girl with the glasses all day." We agreed, at the time, that this was likely so -- when you have Junya Ishigaki's superb character designs to entertain you, is gameplay even necessary?

This conclusion has held up for a while, but after playing the opening movements of the American version, it may be time to cast aside the jokes and take a hard look at what Monolith Soft has made here. I have not, in recent years, had much objection to the trend towards a heavier cinematic emphasis in RPGs. Final Fantasy X didn't bother me much at all, though its lengthy beginning and linear progression turned off more particular gamers. Xenosaga, however, takes that cinematic emphasis even further, and has a few other issues to complicate matters as well.

Welcome Back

Xenosaga's beginning is likely familiar territory for most of you, but there may be a few newcomers reading. It is, to set the record straight one more time, not the sequel or prequel or otherwise directly attached to Square's cult favorite Xenogears, but those who have played that game will find many themes and symbols in Xenosaga more than hauntingly familiar. To be precise, Xenogears was the fifth part of a conceived six-part epic, while Xenosaga is the first part of another, different conceived six-part epic. Yes. I have never had the chance to meet the chief creator of these games, writer/director Tetsuya Takahashi, but I would like to, because he must be a terribly interesting person.

Rather than taking place in the variegated science-fantasy world of Xenogears, Xenosaga is a little more specifically focused. It's a space opera, set a couple of millennia into the future, where humanity has spread through interstellar travel and the construction of both orbiting and planetside space colonies. Humanity is governed by a Galactic Federation, which operates the Unus Mundus Network, the system employed for travel and communication between the stars. Perhaps almost equally as powerful, however, is the Vector Corporation, a conglomerate with all kinds of interests along the cutting edge of technology.

Properly, the game begins in the 21st century, where an archaeological expedition in Africa uncovers a massive artifact. This is the Zohar, a glowing monolith marked with the Hebrew letter Aleph. Its appearance is the link that keeps the game's jump forward in time consistent, because thousands of years later, the same artifact is being recovered by explorers on board the starship Woglinde, jointly developed and run by Vector and the Federation.

The recovery of the Zohar is one of many projects taking place on the Woglinde. Elsewhere, we meet our heroine, Shion Uzuki. As a researcher in Vector's First Division, her current project is the development of KOS-MOS, a new type of humanoid weapon capable of dealing with the newest threat to humanity. That is the Gnosis, an unknown race of aliens seemingly not quite of this world -- they shift in and out of real space, making them impervious to normal attacks. KOS-MOS is designed to counter that defense, but when the story begins, there are still a few bugs in her system...

In The Beginning...

The first few hours of Xenosaga, which are all that's presently playable in English, are primarily introductions, premonitions, and foreshadowing. Like Xenogears, this game does a wonderful job of setting its mysteries up in advance -- at present count, we have one mysterious alien race, one mysterious apparition, one hinted-at trauma in a main character's past, two hidden agendas guiding other main characters' actions, two or three significant events alluded to, at least four completely mysterious characters, and the Zohar towering over it all with no clue as to its meaning. There is more than enough to keep the player pushing ahead through the story. Of course, these creators did have a little trouble paying off the setup in Xenogears, but I'll keep an open mind regarding this effort until later on.

What's a little more troubling is the balance between cinematics and gameplay, at least in what I've played so far. It's common for RPGs to start slow nowadays -- the Final Fantasy series in particular -- but Xenosaga trumps them all with its massive cinema sequences. Set aside a good couple of hours for your first session with this game, and some snacks couldn't hurt as well. After an introductory tutorial dungeon and some brief spells of running around the Woglinde, the movies keep coming for a substantial stretch of time.
To be sure, the many mysteries raised are intriguing, and as I said before, Shion is cute as all heck, but I'd be lying if I didn't want to put my hands back on the controller at several points. There's only so much chit-chat one can take before one yearns for the "game" that's supposed to accompany the "role-playing." The game's voice acting is also a bit of a problem, because I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed it as much as what I heard in Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts.

Tastes on this score differ, I know. Mine differ with the changes of my mood -- I think I went back and forth on the voices in Valkyrie Profile three or four times (final conclusion, for the record: I don't like 'em). But with Square putting such strong production values behind its more recent efforts, and Metal Gear sounding very impressive as well, the bar for console videogame voice acting has been substantially raised in the last couple of years. In comparison, Xenosaga can't help but sound a little bland. The text translation gives the actors lines that are often a little too long to deliver effectively -- that's a particular problem during the Star Trek-like technobabble passages -- and the actors themselves don't seem to have quite enough genuine feeling. It sounds, for lack of a more precise term, like American dubbing. Not a very useful description, but perhaps those who've seen enough dubbed cartoons and movies will understand.

Should the game have been left in the original Japanese? Well, if I were in charge of the world, it would be -- in part because I'm a rabid geek, but mostly because I know that the followers of this game are also rabid geeks, and would in the main prefer the Japanese voices. Yes, that preference is basically irrational, because there's no way for me (or the vast majority of American fans) to properly judge the quality of Japanese acting. For all I know, the original voice acting in the Japanese version is terrible, and it's merely ignorance that makes me like it more than the American voices. But as it is, synthesizing emotional content from Japanese voices with factual content from English subtitles would still -- from my admittedly irrational perspective, at least -- result in a more satisfying experience than getting it all together from lackluster English voices.

Just about everyone reading this has likely dismissed me as a mystical crank at this point, so I'll conclude by noting that the quality of the acting can be expected to improve as the game moves on and the actors slip into their roles more completely. Once we have the complete game to play and survey, expect a more thorough assessment, or at least a less conflicted one.

[Plug 4]

Yes, There Is A Game Here...

During the brief respites from watching the story unfold, Xenosaga features a combat system considerably streamlined in comparison to Xenogears. It has similar options for selecting and executing attacks, but it requires a little less memorization of button combinations, and boss battles are less tedious thanks to a modification of its attack storage system. And since everyone loves giant robots, there are still giant robots -- under a different name, but giant robots all the same.

Dungeon encounters, thankfully, are visible on the field map in the Chrono style, which also offers some idea of what sort of monster is to be encountered. When a monster notices the party, a little "Warning" signal flashes as it makes a beeline for the good guys, offering that extra impetus to hightail it if you're not in the mood for a fight. Avoiding encounters is entirely possible and even required in some of the early dungeon sequences -- the game has some neatly-designed areas where the player has to figure out a way around invincible opponents.

Each character has two or three different basic attacks, mapped to different face buttons. These are the starters to separate trees of combination attacks, so pressing square and then triangle might result in an entirely different pair of attacks than pressing triangle before square. Different attacks have different attributes -- ethereal, physical, ranged, melee, and so on -- so learning how each works is important for dealing with the multitude of enemies. Flying enemies are immune to melee attacks, for example, while some bosses have the power to absorb ethereal attacks.

In addition to basic attacks and Ether skills (for which you can easily read "magic"), each character has a selection of special attacks that can be triggered with enough Action Points. As in Xenogears, a character can opt to spend fewer than the maximum amount of points during a given turn, and instead save them up for future turns. Those are stored in an AP gauge, which increases in level with every six AP stored. Save up a few stocks in that gauge and they can be spent on special attacks, triggered with the circle button, which do extra damage with a little extra visual flair. AP stocks can also be spent on "Boost," which lets a character jump ahead in the initiative ladder and attack earlier than they would normally.

This all applies when the characters are on foot, of course. Combat using the game's giant robots, or AGWS ("Anti-Gnosis-Weapon-System," pronounced something like "eggs"), seems simpler than fighting on foot, or the Gear battles in Xenogears. Strategy in Xenosaga's mecha combat is affected more by preparation beforehand, customizing the AGWS' different weapons and supplementary equipment, rather than tactics used during battles. The fuel management elements present in Xenogears are gone now -- the only supplies to keep an eye on are ammunition levels for weapons that expend ammo.
Mech battles are still plenty of fun, though. Towering over your puny foes never gets old, after all. Xenosaga offers far more new options for customizing robots, too, including a larger variety of weapons and the potential for dual weapons. Though I miss some of the more fanciful designs from Xenogears -- I'm not sure why Billy's Gear had a cape, but it certainly looked cool -- Xenosaga's slicker style of mecha design certainly suits the far-future theme appropriately.

She's Got The Look

That's not a bad adjective to apply to this entire game's visual style, actually. What the characters remind me of most, though, is another attempt to render the Japanese style of animation in 3D. They look like garage kits, those preposterously expensive models that grace the bookshelves of wealthy geeks. The same smooth surfaces, perfectly sculpted lines, and occasionally stiff poses all give them a distinctly resin-y appearance.

Xenosaga looks extremely crisp, particularly if you like this style of character design, and it uses some very nifty transparency and depth-of-field effects when creating the backgrounds that the characters inhabit. The models are also very well-lit, which is crucial in giving life to such smooth surfaces and relatively flat colors. But they move rather stiffly nevertheless, especially when it comes to facial expression. It's hard to see emotion coming from those big, glassy eyes when it's only the characters' mouths that are moving.

In Japanese animation, of course, artists have no compunctions about stretching and contorting characters' faces in all kinds of ways in order to express the appropriate emotion for a scene. In a two-dimensional medium, it's easy to get away with that. 3D is another matter, though, and the effectiveness of the characters' acting suffers somewhat as a consequence -- physical and verbal, since the two are inextricably linked.

When the scene shifts to combat, it's easier to be impressed by what Monolith's artists have created. The character animations in combat are, again, a little stiff, but the special effects are a treat and a half. Even when a deathblow attack isn't necessary to take out an opponent, it may be worth watching just to check out the show -- flashing lights, all kinds of particles, screen-filling explosions, Kabbalistic mumbo-jumbo, the whole bit. Each character has a distinctive style to their attack animations, too. I confess a certain fondness for Momo's, if only because I'm a long-time fan of her namesake, but every character gets a chance to show off in their own way.

And So On...

To be honest, my outlook on Xenosaga hasn't changed a great deal, even after this playtest. I never quite got past "guarded optimism" when looking forward to this project, although I'm a big fan of all its creators' individual efforts (Yasunori Mitsuda in particular, who delivers some stirring compositions in the first few sequences of the opening).

It's with that same guarded optimism that I look forward to the American version. It has a thoroughly intriguing story, and decent gameplay so far -- it just needs more of the latter than the former as it moves forward out of its opening sequences. It won't be long before we get a chance to do just that, and I'll do my best to make peace with the English voice acting in that time.

And, well, if all else fails, there's always the cute girl with the glasses.