Xebek’s Blog

Story:

The story I think was what made this game what it was. The ending however left so much room for another game that I just can’t believe they cut off production of the fourth game. I can only hope that they will continue it someday even though they said they were canceling it. What really shocked me about the story is how much things happened near the end that would be really permanent. I mean, Jin, Canaan, Nigredo, Dimitri, Margulis, Pellegri, Kevin all die. There isn’t much chance for them to come back, and then you get the ending with KOS MOS and chaos where they are pretty much separated from everyone else for god knows how long, although not dead, and we get basically four people of the original seven remaining. However MOMO and Ziggy stay behind to work in office positions basically, leaving only Jr. and Shion to go forth and do any continuation in the story. So the ending is mixed in if it is continual or not. On one hand you have this whole thing where they leave off with chaos basically telling Shion to find Lost Jerusalem, and this being a very important thing, however you also get the complete separation of all the cast.

Sound:

The thing I remember the most about the sound has to be the music that was playing during the boss fights. For the most part the music wasn’t that memorable, but there were several instances during boss fights where I thought how great the music was. Listening back to the OST there is a lot of really beautiful music, although it just didn’t’ seem to pop at me during the game. Not5 to say it wasn’t used great in the game however; the music just seemed to blend in with what was happening extremely well.

Graphics:

The graphics were great, there seeme3d to be a constant good keep with the graphics I thought. Although I hated how they edited the blood out, I’m reminded of a scene where young Shion was holding her hands out catching the blood that dripped from her mother, and they just showed her holding nothing and freaking out about it. Besides from that editing, the graphics from the scenes were pretty good. They of course were a bit better during the scenes that you didn’t have to scroll though the text yourself, but they didn’t suck during the ones where you had to.

Gameplay:

At first I didn’t like the gameplay, which really is just the battle system. I liked the old one a lot, I loved going though a bunch of combo’s dealing with multiple people in order to break and do a lot of damage. However this battle system turned out better then I had previously thought it would be. There really was a lot of strategy involved in the later part of the game. However I wished that it would have reached its peak a little earlier. I can only remember the last three boss fights or so that had really interesting fights. By which I mean I had to do a lot of different things in order to win, I mean I only even needed to cast on the spell that auto revives once in the last battle. I only ever used the spells that cost a huge amount of EP to increase damage like tenfold during the last two fights. Basically I loved the final three fights or so, the battle system and all the skills involved with it were great. Along with the bosses themselves, the changing weaknesses and forms were all very neat, however it didn’t reach its peak until fairly late to which is the only thing I really have a problem with.

Overall:

Overall Xenosaga, the whole three games, have truly been amazing. Xenosaga has some of the most in-depth and thought out things that just blow me away. There are so many things such as political groups, scientifically details of things that don’t exist, and so on. There are multiple organizations and groups of individuals and planets, governmental politics that have an affect on how things happen, and a surprisingly large religious influence. Not only that, but Xenosaga has used those aspects in an overall very exciting story I think. You don’t know for sure what is the real final objective, as throughout the story you are figuring things out.

Not only is there a great overall story, but there are dozens of individual side stories that intertwine. There is the whole deal with Jr., Nigredo, and Albedo, there is Canaan and his story, Ziggy and his past, MOMO and Juli, Juli and Joachim/Joachim’s past, Jr. and Dimitri, Allen and Shion, Jin and his past with Pellegri and Margulis, Shion’s past, Shion’s relationship with Kevin, Shion’s father, Fibroin and Virgil, KOS MOS and chaos, Wilhelm and the Testaments, Wilhelm and chaos. All of these are almost stories by themselves; however they are also at the same time part of the overall story. That’s what gets me the most about the story I think is not so much is there a big story and lots of smaller story, but there is a big story that contains and implements the smaller side stores that give insight into individual characters.