[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.