Xenosaga is an epic multi episode RPG that takes place in space. It has many hours of cut scenes to build up the anime styled plot. The obvious enemy in Xenosaga are the Gnosis; mysterious aliens thought to be from a different dimension. If spending more time watching a game rather than playing it don’t appeal to you, then don't even read the review.

The graphics in Xenosaga are almost always top notch, with only a few buggy parts that stand out in my mind. The characters and background are superbly rendered and look excellent. The cinematic scenes are usually blended well with the game screen, leaving it all feel very fluid. However, there are black screens when entering a cinematic scene in some cases, disturbing the flow of the game and they can become quite annoying.

The story in the game is very fleshed out and well told for a video game. It doesn’t leave anything like acronyms unexplained and has a very well done dictionary in case you don’t know what they mean. The characters are all likable and have distinct personalities and backgrounds, even if you don’t know all of the details. The game does have a nasty habit of taking things at quite a slow pace with most of the game taking part on two or three ships but it isn’t too much of a drawback.

The music, or absence of, is quite effective in conveying the attitude of the game. You barely notice it because you are taking in the whole specter of the game, but what you do hear is very nicely done. The voice acting is also top notch, which is especially important in a game such as this. The voices always fit their characters and convey emotion very convincingly. Even the lesser characters have fitting voices. One gripe I have with the sound is that the noise you hear when blowing boxes up is always the same. There is absolutely no variety in it; every time you blow anything up, a car a box, whatever, it has the same sound. It will get very tiresome; you blow millions of boxes up.

Unfortunately, gameplay is where Xenosaga falls flat on its face. The battle system is mind numbing to the extreme. You will end up doing the same exact attack sequence over and over and over. The powerful attacks you set to circle might look nice the first time, but after several hours of watching Shion perform Spell Ray you get tired of it. There characters are customizable to an extent; you are allowed to spend points in certain areas like hit points, and upgrade tech attacks and buy skills. All of your characters will have similar skills as the game has a level system that makes you buy almost all of the lower level skills to get to a higher level. You can upgrade your tech attacks so that they can be used ever turn, are more powerful, etc. A big plus to this is the fact that most of the tech attacks are different enough that you can use the early ones throughout the game, which means that upgrading them isn’t too much of a waste. The final customizable part is the skill tree for your ether spells which can help the gameplay immensely. You can decide on the order you learn them and they can be copied to another character. This means you can make someone with all of the healing spells and have a healer or other combinations. Xenosaga boasts of having four mini games which Namco calls “exhilarating”. To bad three of the games are almost as boring as the battle system. The drill game’s only point is to get the valuable items that are unlocked with the drill keys you get. The Mech Battling game would be somewhat decent if it gave prizes when you won, and if the controls weren’t horrible. To jump, you have to move both joysticks towards each other, and the controls get worse from there. The card game isn’t bad at all. Most of it revolves around making a balanced deck and it has an array of rules a la magic the gathering. The casino has mostly useless prizes and the only reason you play is to make money, which is sorely lacking in the game. Speaking of money, the lack of it is the biggest flaw in the game. Unless you look at a FAQ you will miss an e-mail which gives you a ton of money later on. The enemies almost never drop money, which means you will waste hours of your life playing poker.

XenoSaga has excellent graphics, sound, and story, but its gameplay is lackluster. No matter how well a game looks, gameplay is still what matters most in any game. It still gets a decent score based soly on the fact that you spend so much time immersed in the story, not playing the game.

© 1998-2003 RPGRealm. All Rights Reserved. RPGRealm is not affiliated with any company or product mentioned herein unless explicitly stated. The RPG Realm is owned by Greg Davis and Alex Wreschnig.