The Shrine

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman", Modern; text-align: left; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://www.thegia.com/news/0103/n29p.html">Oh hell yeah!</a>

Xenosaga.....ohhhh yeah...</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Well, I just reached Yafutoma I'm not sure how far it is through the game only that I'm still on Disk 1 and I can say that if I was reaching the final dungeon now I would still consider this the best RPG I have ever played.

The Plotline is very orriginal, I can't really compare it to any other game at this point. I have yet to finish the game, but so far I'd say the Story is extremely well done. The game translates extremely well.

The setting is the age of Exploration, but in this world, everyone travels by Airship, and the continents and Islands all float. Every single Town and City in the game is amazingly well done, and they only get bigger and bigger as you go on. The diversity among the Cities is very well noted, although towns all have some sort of inn, Docking facilities, weapon, armor, and item shops, etc... No two towns are very much alike, aside from towns that are in the same Kingdom or Empire. Of course, there is a lot of exploration to do, on your path, you will make many discoveries, and people will actually pay you for information on these discoveries, and will sell you information on others. The World in this game is so huge that of course, exploration is a major part of it.

Of the 3D adventure related games I've played so far, only Zelda Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask along with Vagrant Story have Dungeons that excede the Dungeons within Skies of Arcadia.

Music and Graphics are excellent, probably the best seen in an RPG yet, they really help to convey the atmosphere of the game.

Character Battles are turn based, the difference here is your party has a power guage to share between them, Super moves and magic both draw from this guage, and each turn you gain more points. You can also focus to gain more points onto your power guage. Magic also takes up MP from your character. There are also ship battles in the game, they are more strategic than any non-tactic/strategy RPG ever made.

The game is very easy to move around in, you feel as if you have much more freedom than most other RPG's made in recent times.

Characters are all done extremely well, party members, crew members, enemies, etc...


All in all, if you have a Dreamcast, or are planning to buy a Dreamcast and you at all like Adventure games or RPG's, you MUST buy this game.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "Copperplate Gothic", Modern; text-align: left; '>That's amazing! But doesn't Square own rights to the story? Or did the director procure them all?</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman", Modern; text-align: left; '>What does this have to do with anything?</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman", Modern; text-align: left; '>I think they only own the naming rights.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "Copperplate Gothic", Modern; text-align: left; '>I wouldn't bet on that, the game was very deeply rooted in Square.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Depends if Square wrote the story or not, if not, they may have had a contract to use that story for one game only, or for a certain time period, or perhaps they sold the rights.... Xenogears of all RPG's has the best story to it of any RPG IMO.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "Copperplate Gothic", Modern; text-align: left; '>Yes, it does. One of my most favorite games ever.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman", Modern; text-align: left; '>Oh yeah, I totally agree there.</div>