XENOSAGA: DUR WILLE ZUR MACHT REVIEW

A little over a week ago my pre-ordered copy of Xenosaga finally arrived. Essentially Xenosaga is a prequel to a somewhat lesser known Squaresoft RPG that released in the shadow of Final Fantasy VII. That game was Xenogears. I received Xenogears for Christmas in 1997, and I have to say that once I played the game, I couldn't believe how amazing the story in that game was. I many ways I feel that Xenogears had the best plot, character development, setting, and storyline of any RPG from the 32-bit era and before. When I encounter gamers, even fans of Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, or X, they usually provide a distant look when I mention Xenogears. There are some that played it, and you mostly only find them online, and anyone who was old enough to enjoy the depth of the story will agree that it's truly an incredible piece of fiction let alone a video game. At the end of the game, during the credits it shows that Xenogears is actually Episode 5 in a series. Episode 5? I had always wondered about that. I had later found out that Xenogears was part of some written novel in Japan and that in fact the events of Xenogears were essentially the fifth Episode in the series. There were a lot of indications of this throughout the game, considering how many levels of civilization were occupying the planet where the Eldridge crashed thousands of years prior to the events in Xenogears during the manifestation of the reincarnate Fei. Some have compared Xenogears to Neon Genesis Evangelion, and I will digress that there are a few similarities, but in many ways Xenogears was a very unique and thought-provoking game, and in some instances created a controversy about the way it related to religion, not to mention the stuff about Billy being raped by an Ethos priest. I had always hoped that maybe I could read or maybe play another game based on the Xenogears story, and when I heard about Xenosaga I was greatly overjoyed, and I waited for this one, mind you I might have been in a minority of gamers. And when it released, I was expecting to rekindle that feeling of involvement with the characters and storyline as well as the mental stimulation that Xenogears created.

Graphics were not Xenogears point of excellence. The graphics in Xenogears weren't horrible, but the characters were aninmated in cel-shaded sprites that had a somewhat poor resolution especially up close. However, with the abilities of the Playstation 2, I expected much more, and Xenosaga delivered more than I expected and surpassed by far the visual shortfalls of Xenogears. Much of the story of Xenosaga is told through cutscenes, which are actually in many cases real-time rendered by the PS2. The graphics are truly incredible, smooth, and full of color. The entire game takes place aboard various star vessels and space stations, and the ambiance of those places is very accurately reproduced. I love the holoconsoles, and know that someday that technology will be a reality. The portable Holo-PC that Shion carried with her made my mouth water. From the explosions, to the giant mechs, to the characters, and the technology, and of course KOS-MOS, everything just looked so good. I even think that the in game characters looked better rendered than those of Final Fantasy X. Some of the amazing things with effects were done that I had never before seen in a Playstation 2 game, essentially a holotransparent image of 3-D CGI on a 2-D surface inside of a 3-D environment like an office or room. The tech attacks were full of explosive effects, and particles. As it would seem, there seems to be three tiers of graphical quality in this game, ranging from certain narrative cutscenes or dialogue with vert high detail that are pre-rendered, then cutscenes that are rendered in real-time that have very smooth detail, and then the battle scene graphics. There are no majorly noticeable differences between video that was being pre-rendered and the real-time, no lag, or obvious bad editing. If this were a movie, it would be the best Sci-Fi movie ever attempted, I imagine there's a whopping 30 hours of rendered footage in this game, all specifically designed for telling the story. Much of the game borrows a lot of themes and screenplay from Anime. The visuals in Xenogears are over the top, and Monolith and Namco really showed that they can make a great looking RPG that really transcends the fact that it is a video game, this is more like an Epic Sci-Fi/Philosophical novel. It is truly a visual work of art. This was the kind of game I have been waiting for.

The Gameplay for Xenosaga has some similarities to Xenogears however there have been a lot of things reworked and you have a lot more control over your characters stats and abilities in this game. Between the cutscenes you navigate the various environments, mostly starships, and VR mindscapes created within a device called the Encephalon (just imagine the chair from the Matrix, but a full body pod instead, same idea). While not in battle you can explore the environments and destroy objects to obtain hidden items that you can use in the quest, and talk to people. Battles are not random in Xenosaga, all the enemies can be seen before you decide to enguage in battle which is good considering this prevents you from entering a battle with 1 HP and getting instantly annhilated. Once you enguage battle then you must initiate attacks by pressing either the Triangle, or Square, or if you increase the speed of your Tech attacks you can press Circle to perform a powerful Tech attack, that either attacks one enemy or all the enemies. During battle party members can cast Ether spells, which allow for healing, change the status of party members or enemies, or inflict direct damage on the enemies. Some of these are quite impressive, especially if you find all the Robot parts, and assemble Erde Kaiser, a kick ass Anime Toon Mech (Looks like a transformer or built out of LEGOs) that comes and does 9999 damage on anything, but it pretty much eats up all your Ether Points, and takes up all your Either Spell slots. Another method of attack involves AGWS. AGWS are the same thing as Gears from Xenogears, essentially giant mechs with big guns and swords. When you hop into an AGWS, your attacks usually relate to the weapons equipped on your mech. If you skip your turn and choose Guard, you will build up AP, and on the next turn, if you have two of the same weapons equiped on each arm of the AGWS mech, you can perform a W-ACT which allows for a very powerful attack. I liked how much you could customize your characters in this, kind of reminded me of the level of control you had in Final Fantasy VIII. You can use earned Tech Points to improve your character's Tech Attack, but these can also be used to increase Vitality, Ether Defence, Evasion, etc. There are also earned points to learn new Ether Spells, and extract abilities from various equipable items you find laying around or buy in the stores. During battle there is a special event icon that rotates at the bottom, and timing your finishing blow on the enemy on the Bonus up icon will yield tremendous points to quickly upgrade your characters. Besides the main game there are mini-games added like "XenoCard" which is essentially a digital version of a CCC like Magic: The Gathering, or Star Wars, or Pokemon. It's kind of cool to play it once you learn the hang of it. There is quite a lot to do in Xenosaga, and if you find all the Keys and Segment Addresses, assemble Erde Kaiser, or raise the funds to purchase that 300,000 GP super Mech at "Talk To Me" store, then you could spend at least the full 80 hours the game says it takes to play, and then some.

Where Xenosaga shines above all RPG's out currently is in the storyline. The storyline is told through incredible graphics and many hours of spoken dialogue. I have to say that Xenogears really took me aback, never before had I seen a video game delve into the depths of philosophy and ties to religion and various systems of human spirituality. Xenosaga touched on quite a bit of this as well, and also brought into account the affect of psychology and the workings of the mind upon the understanding of the human will to exist and the drive to understand life and afterlife. I was truly blown away by the technical and literary proficiency in this game. Xenosaga is not a game for little kids to play, there are cerebral concepts that I think would only be best understood by someone with a college level of education in Theology, psychology, literature, and mythology. Xenosaga does come with a handy in-game glossary though for gamers that might not be so educationally inclined. I spent an hour just reading the glossary learning what all these different organizations, acronyms, technologies, and committees, etc do. There are some obvious referances to dogma and mythologies brought up in Chrisitanity, Gnostic Doctrine, the Kaballah, and also referances to Carl Jung, the archetypes, pleroma, etc. You'll see Ziggy's "Mark on the Forehead" as well as the gargantuan monoliths each named after the 12 Apostles of Jesus each bearing a mark of a Hebrew letter. Don't take any unusual word in the game for granted, many things are double entandre's here, from Albedo and Rubedo, to the play on the french word peche' (peach) and pe'che' (sinner). Nephilim is related to two different things in this game, a spirit from a higher plane of existance, a song that only genetically engineered humans can hear (Song of Nephilm), and a huge obolisk by the same name. Just researching all the names and referances in Xenosaga is the game outside of the game. One of the psychologically demented villians Albedo himself is some kind of futuristic pedophile that obtains orgasmic gratification from draining the spiritual essence from these little girl syntheic humans called 100 Series Realians. There were names of things in this game that were being used that I had to take a Mythological and Theological dictionary to get an accurate desciption, even the mysterious beasts, the Gnosis, is taken directly from Gnosticism. The whole phantom like quality of the Gnosis reminds me quite a bit of the beings in the movie "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." Take away all the relationships between all these concepts, and you have incredible character development, however by the end of the game there are still characters that have not been fully explained, like "chaos" (and yes with a small "c") and how KOS-MOS's mindscape is a conduit to a spiritual dimension, and why she has an almost Goddess like capabilty. Some of the lesser characters are marvelously portrayed, from Captain Matthews (He wears a hat that says he's a Boozer) to Gaignum Kukai and "Professor", all of them absolutely incredible, never have I seen a game go to this extent. Final Fantasy X doesn't belong in the same league as this game in terms of storyline and character portrayals. There are times that I was on the edge of my couch or simply standing up gazing in awe of the intensity of the action, from entire fleets of starships being vaporized, to giant mechs pumping thousands of rounds into phantoms. In terms of depth of the storyline this game blows anything that has come before it out of the water. I can't give this a score higher than 10 on a scale to 10, but if I could, I would, this goes above and beyond the scope of what games do these days. This game is a must have for anybody in college that wants to challenge themselves, or any fans of Sci-Fi, or Anime. I am wating with bated breath for the sequel to this game.

Probably the only soft spot in Xenosaga was the games musical score, or lack thereof at some spots. Throughout most of the cinematics there is an appropriate score, very filmlike, and at the end of the game there is the beautiful Kokoro song, sung in Englsih. The actual music that plays when it plays is performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and I have to give them a hats off for doing that. Music plays during battle, but it's the same battle music throughout the game except for the last boss. The only weak point is the lack of any kind of background music between cut scenes. Usually the only thing you are hearing are your character's footfalls on various surfaces from shallacked spaceship corridors, to rugs, and metal grating. There is also a lot of machine noise and spaceship drive hum. Basically imagine yourself in a corridor on the USS Enterprise with no one around, you would hear this low hum all the time of the warp drive all the time, and that's mostly what you hear while on the spaceships. There are also noises like computer hard drives, cooling fans, drive seeking sounds, beeps, and blips, auto door hisses, very techy stuff. During battles many of the explosions are very intense and rattle your house if you are using 5.1 surround sound on this game. The sound effects are solid, but the sometimes the incessant humming while walking the starship corridors can get to you, especially with the surround sound. There were times that the low humming and whirring just plain put me to sleep, like some kind of meditative white noise kind of thing.

Xenosaga is one incredible game, really. I can't say enough good things about this experience. This is like watching every single episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion back to back, so much storyline is presented in this game from the discovery of the Zohar to the Milian incident and the destruction of Proto Merkabah. Xenogears had it's doldrums during the game where it seemed slow, however Xenosaga is pure and simple a tour de force of action and character involvement. If you don't get this game you should be shot on site. As a gamer, or even just a fan of Anime, or maybe Star Wars, you owe it to yourself to go play this game. I highly recommend this for mature gamers looking for something to challenge their mind beyond their thumbs, but anyone should enjoy the visuals and the total experience of this. Any unfavorable comments I've heard about this game come from what it would seem are MMORPG junkies who are content to play mindnumbing quests to level their Dark Elf and discover some rare item on the server, and just keep leveling and leveling, but with little attention to any sort of tangible storyline. Then there are the dummies that "don't likez dem reedin' games," Truly I've played a lot of RPGs, and a lot of video games and this one ranks up there as the greatest storyline ever crafted for a video game. I hold Final Fantasy VII, and VIII, in high regard, but both Xenogears and Xenosaga truly take you to great distances of thought and beg to ask questions about the nature of existence, spirituality, and the distant future of mankind and the ethical implications of godlike technology.

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