Finished Xenosaga
PostPosted:Sun Mar 02, 2003 5:08 am
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>The 80 hours of gampelay must be 50 hours of Xenocard or something I missed. By my estimation this game will be about 15 hours if you crunch it down to a normal RPG. Or, in other words, no 45 minutes boss battles, no more leveling up grind sessions on every other boss, and no 30+ minute cut scenes that you can't skip (well, you can, but you got to watch it at least once to know what's going on).
The short version: The characters are cool (some of them). The plot doesn't even make sense, if there is even a plot. It's a very medicre RPG with way too much cinemas and some very cool characters. Now the blabble. I have talked about the other aspects of the game before so I'll concentrate on the characters, since the characters of Xenosaga IS the story.
Shion - It's no surprise I hate Shion. She's not good looking. She has no story to speak of. Her attacks don't look spectucular and doesn't seem to do that much damage unless you get her secret robot thingy. Clearly she's supposed to provide the emotional contrast to KOS-MOS's calculated coolness, but all she ends up doing is sound like a complete idiot. A lot of conversation seems to go like this:
KOS-MOS: "According to my calculation if we do this we will have the highest probability to succeed."
Shion: "Let's do this instead."
KOS-MOS: "Shion, that decision is just stupid and can't possibly work."
Shion: "But I'm doing this with passion not just calculating percentages so it must work!"
Yeah, whatever. Remember if you ever work for Shion, she'll always choose the option that gets everyone killed because leaving one person behind to die for the good of others is so cruel that only a heartless rational being like KOS-MOS can suggest something like that. Smart people guided by emotions lets EVERYONE die together so no one is left alone. It's a good thing Shion's not in any positions of authority in this game and people like KOS-MOS and Jr. keeps her stupidity in check. Oh yeah, every mystery in the game can be explained by the picture of the naked Shion. I think that's supposed to be something religious. She's supposed to be very important because Nephilim said so and she's never wrong.
KOS-MOS - Miss Rational with cool angel wings on her back for no apparent reason other than wings are cool. Like most of the game everything about her is a mystery since explaining things would be too hard. She's powerful in battle, and she has some pretty funny lines in combat. Other than that, a fairly boring character.
Chaos - Like they'll happily point out in the instruction booklet, the Angel Boy hails from a higher dimension of existence and is so powerful that we can't even comprehend his power but thankfully he's not allowed to use his divine powers without a good reason, so he gets to die like a normal human fighting enemies. He has a pleasant voice to listen to, and since almost of his attacks are ether-based he rips up the high physical defense bosses that abound in the game.
Ziggy - Ziggy is more like a support character... nothing much ever happens about him. He does his job though.
MOMO - To be honest, I'd consider her one of the two main characters of this game because she actually has depth to her character. The Magical Girl ripoff has a surprising amount of personality and depth. The scene where she met the Kirschwassers is one of the few parts in the game that make sense, and it's handled quite well. She's always cheerful and doesn't whine nonstop about how she's a loser which seems to be what counts for character development in recent RPG.
Jr. - The other character I consider the main character. The scenes toward the end involving him/MOMO/Albedo are actually make sense which cannot be said about the rest of the game. MOMO and Jr. actually makes a good couple without being cheesy. Like MOMO, Jr. has problems but he's cool enough to put them behind and focus on the real problems, which I guess in Xenosaga makes him a poorly developed character because we know people that cry forever in their past nightmares are the coolest character ever.
Nephilim - Also known as the Elly look alike. Sometimes she speaks things that no one can possibly understand (except Chaos, who knows all and sees all) before leaving because it's cool to say cryptic things that are never answered. I suggest leaving the volume off when you reach the Song of Nephilim. The song is creepy and just downright horrible. If the song is related to Nephilim it's no wonder she's forbidden to show up the mortal realm without a good cause.
Jin Uzuki - Also known as the Citan look alike that never showed up in the game until the very end. I found this out going through the keywords dictionary on the UMN. BTW, the two entries on the keywords list about Shion's brother are "Jin" (which you can't possibly know since his name is never mentioned) and 'bookworm'.
Ein Rugel/Dopplewogel - A mysterious being of incredible power. He's so mysterious that even his name is a secret, until you fight him and then you suddenly learn his name is Ein Rugel when you move your targetting cursor to him. At least Namco didn't named him after a Seraph or one of Jesus's disciples even though he wears a cross and looks like an angel, so I guess that counts for something.
Margulis - The Sephiroth clones might be overused, but at least he's cool.
Albedo - The Sephiroth clones might be overused, and he is not cool. Actually, he's just downright insane, even more than, say, Kefka.
Sophia Peithos - No, this is not a person... just another boss without a name until you fight it, but I thought the name is cool and deserves mentioning. The Gnosis sure have strange names...</div>
The short version: The characters are cool (some of them). The plot doesn't even make sense, if there is even a plot. It's a very medicre RPG with way too much cinemas and some very cool characters. Now the blabble. I have talked about the other aspects of the game before so I'll concentrate on the characters, since the characters of Xenosaga IS the story.
Shion - It's no surprise I hate Shion. She's not good looking. She has no story to speak of. Her attacks don't look spectucular and doesn't seem to do that much damage unless you get her secret robot thingy. Clearly she's supposed to provide the emotional contrast to KOS-MOS's calculated coolness, but all she ends up doing is sound like a complete idiot. A lot of conversation seems to go like this:
KOS-MOS: "According to my calculation if we do this we will have the highest probability to succeed."
Shion: "Let's do this instead."
KOS-MOS: "Shion, that decision is just stupid and can't possibly work."
Shion: "But I'm doing this with passion not just calculating percentages so it must work!"
Yeah, whatever. Remember if you ever work for Shion, she'll always choose the option that gets everyone killed because leaving one person behind to die for the good of others is so cruel that only a heartless rational being like KOS-MOS can suggest something like that. Smart people guided by emotions lets EVERYONE die together so no one is left alone. It's a good thing Shion's not in any positions of authority in this game and people like KOS-MOS and Jr. keeps her stupidity in check. Oh yeah, every mystery in the game can be explained by the picture of the naked Shion. I think that's supposed to be something religious. She's supposed to be very important because Nephilim said so and she's never wrong.
KOS-MOS - Miss Rational with cool angel wings on her back for no apparent reason other than wings are cool. Like most of the game everything about her is a mystery since explaining things would be too hard. She's powerful in battle, and she has some pretty funny lines in combat. Other than that, a fairly boring character.
Chaos - Like they'll happily point out in the instruction booklet, the Angel Boy hails from a higher dimension of existence and is so powerful that we can't even comprehend his power but thankfully he's not allowed to use his divine powers without a good reason, so he gets to die like a normal human fighting enemies. He has a pleasant voice to listen to, and since almost of his attacks are ether-based he rips up the high physical defense bosses that abound in the game.
Ziggy - Ziggy is more like a support character... nothing much ever happens about him. He does his job though.
MOMO - To be honest, I'd consider her one of the two main characters of this game because she actually has depth to her character. The Magical Girl ripoff has a surprising amount of personality and depth. The scene where she met the Kirschwassers is one of the few parts in the game that make sense, and it's handled quite well. She's always cheerful and doesn't whine nonstop about how she's a loser which seems to be what counts for character development in recent RPG.
Jr. - The other character I consider the main character. The scenes toward the end involving him/MOMO/Albedo are actually make sense which cannot be said about the rest of the game. MOMO and Jr. actually makes a good couple without being cheesy. Like MOMO, Jr. has problems but he's cool enough to put them behind and focus on the real problems, which I guess in Xenosaga makes him a poorly developed character because we know people that cry forever in their past nightmares are the coolest character ever.
Nephilim - Also known as the Elly look alike. Sometimes she speaks things that no one can possibly understand (except Chaos, who knows all and sees all) before leaving because it's cool to say cryptic things that are never answered. I suggest leaving the volume off when you reach the Song of Nephilim. The song is creepy and just downright horrible. If the song is related to Nephilim it's no wonder she's forbidden to show up the mortal realm without a good cause.
Jin Uzuki - Also known as the Citan look alike that never showed up in the game until the very end. I found this out going through the keywords dictionary on the UMN. BTW, the two entries on the keywords list about Shion's brother are "Jin" (which you can't possibly know since his name is never mentioned) and 'bookworm'.
Ein Rugel/Dopplewogel - A mysterious being of incredible power. He's so mysterious that even his name is a secret, until you fight him and then you suddenly learn his name is Ein Rugel when you move your targetting cursor to him. At least Namco didn't named him after a Seraph or one of Jesus's disciples even though he wears a cross and looks like an angel, so I guess that counts for something.
Margulis - The Sephiroth clones might be overused, but at least he's cool.
Albedo - The Sephiroth clones might be overused, and he is not cool. Actually, he's just downright insane, even more than, say, Kefka.
Sophia Peithos - No, this is not a person... just another boss without a name until you fight it, but I thought the name is cool and deserves mentioning. The Gnosis sure have strange names...</div>