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For the record, this is NOT a Xenogears prequel

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Anyone playing Xenosaga with the hopes of it being directly related to Xenogears must be warned... it isn't.

However, it IS the creation of the same force who created Xenogears, the husband and wife team of Tetsuya Takahashi (story, script) and Kaori Tanaka a.k.a. Clio Saga a.k.a. Soraya Saga (story, and SOME character design... not to be confused with Kunihiko Tanaka, who is the main character designer) It's VERY similar to Xenogears in many ways. They've taken the same backstory, themes, and ideas and laid an entirely new plot on top of it. Both deal with the discovery of the Zohar, humanity leaving earth (Lost Jerusalem) and seeking a new planet to call home (New Jerusalem) and a myriad of past events which are referred to by the characters in the story. However, the epic of which Xenogears was episode 5 centered around the creation and ultimate destruction of Deus, and Xenosaga doesn't even mention it. Anyone who's read the "Xenogears Perfect Works" book knows that Episode 1 of the Xenogears story was ENTIRELY ABOUT the creation of Deus. The remaining episodes were about different generations of humans which were created by Deus. If Deus doesn't even exist in Xenosaga, there's simply no way the two games are going to literally and directly connect.

EDIT 1/6/2003: It recently occured to me that it would be interesting and cool if perhaps the entire Xenosaga series (6 chapters?) ended with the creation of Deus. I'm not predicting this, though.

Nevertheless, Xenosaga is going to be instantly familiar and pleasing to Xenogears fans, it was definitely cut from the same cloth and shares a lot of common threads. "Spiritual prequel" might not be too inappropriate. Just don't expect to see Chu-Chu flirting with Fei when we get to Xenosaga Episode 5, 'cause it ain't gonna happen.

Xenosaga is "smaller" than Xenogears. It's a shorter game, first of all. Xenogears took me over 80 hours to finish, while Xenosaga took me "only" over 50 hours. There are fewer locales to visit, with less variety (the entire story takes place in deep space, on spaceships and spacestations.) There are fewer playable characters. It doesn't have four entire chapters of backstory to be exposed through the course of the game, as Xenogears did. But while it can't quite measure up to the sheer epic scope of Xenogears, it's the beginning of a new story, a very complex and intriguing one. Xenosaga pushes the envelope of cinematic gaming. There are a couple of non-interactive sequences which are an 45 minutes to an entire hour long. If you're one of those staunch types who say things like "I prefer to PLAY my games, not WATCH them" then you should steer clear. There's a lot to watch in Xenosaga. But the story and characters are interesting and the scenes are well executed and presented, so personally I had no problem with it.

Truely Awsome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is an awsome RPG, although you do have to commit some magor hours on it to get veyr far, its awsome. If you are a serious gamer then you will like this. If you just getting into gaming get FFX then reserve FFXI and FFX-2.

WOW!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I haven't played a game this good in quite a while. Xenosaga is very story driven. The game starts off kinda slow, with your progress constantly interuped by cut-scenes. However, it picks up later, and the cut-scenes are all to further the story (expect for a long one of them eating dinner....). The game is very fun, and quite challanging in a couple of parts, challanging enough that i recommend getting the strategy guide. Overall, I loved it. The graphics are A+, the story is good enough to hold your attention for 40+ hours of gameplay, and its challanging enough to not get boring.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The epic tale of Xenosaga is a story over four thousand years in the making. The first chapter in this massive RPG behemoth is Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille zur Macht. In a world of "Fantasy RPGs," Der Wille zur Macht is a solid sci-fi adventure which easily gives Star Wars a run for its money. The gameplay is quite a step up from the rest of the RPG lot. While the basic controls remain the same (run/walk from right to left, north or south...) it is the battle controls that truly shine like the stars among which this game is set. As opposed to merely selecting a simple single-styled "attack" from the actions menu, you are enabled to do a number of different, customizable "Tech Attacks" (or combos) via pressing the SQUARE, TRIANGLE, and CIRCLE buttons in patterns. This system gives a much greater amount of depth to the battles, and introduces a higher level of strategy, especially considering different Tech Attacks have different elements. "Ether" is the sci-fi equivalent of "magic," only more believable, utilizing (in some cases) the use of nano-machines. All in all, the attacks and ether graphics are beautiful, and a pleasure to look at---which puts a positive spin on lengthy boss battles (even when your under-leveled characters are being mercilessly wiped out). As for graphics---they are perfect for the setting of Xenosaga. The characters are animated perfectly, and look just as much like anime characters as polygons could possibly allow. With realistic facial expressions and gestures, you begin to see the game's characters as real beings, allowing yourself to be further immersed in the game's awe-inspiring story. Over the past few years, the wall between movies and games has been ever-crumbling, and Xenosaga completely obliterates it, by being the most cinematic game in history. Theoretically speaking, that could go either way, but for Xenosaga it was only positive. The cinematic sequences are so beautifully directed (with expert "camera-work" and special effects) you may very possibly forget you are playing a game, and believe you are watching the longest, most intriguing movie ever made. The brilliant musical scores of Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, and Shadow Hearts to name a few) serve to give an even more cinematic feel to game. Many of the tracks are performed (perfectly) by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Each piece goes perfectly with its portion of the game, whether it be the tense, but bueatiful battle theme, or intimidating and menacing themes of the games many villains. With believable, lovable characters (both good and bad) and excellent voice acting (each voice is perfect for their corresponding characters), excellent graphics and unbelievable music---all tied to the most complex and immersive storyline ever seen, heard, or experienced make Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille xur Macht a must-buy game of Biblical proportions (in many, many ways).

Amazing!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The graphics are very well done. If you've ever watched any Japanese anime, you can compare the graphics to that only it's all 3 dimensional. The models have been done very nicely and are amazingly as close as you can get to the real thing (in anime terms that is). The special effects that are used in the game will put your eyes in a daze. The lighting system is very nicely done. The environments are all in full 3D. The only thing that I kept on noticing was that you couldn't control the camera like you could in Xenogears. I thought that that was a really nice feature in Xenogears but it's not there in Xenosaga. But it doesn't matter that much because the camera angles are done really well. You will definitely not have any problems because of a faulty camera angles.

When there are important pieces of the story to tell the game engine shows it all using pre-rendered CG movies. The CG movies are very well done. And all the space battles are just jaw dropping, They still have to put a little more work in the way they render the characters the characters tend to look a little elasticky around the waste. When the game is not telling a story using the pre-rendered CG scenes, it switches to using the in-game 3D models. Apparently for the story telling, the developers have included high resolution models, and let me tell you that they look beautiful, they're smooth and almost flawless. The bad thing about the story telling is the voice acting. Now I don't mean that the voices were bad or that they didn't suit the characters, I mean that the lip movements were not coordinated. This could get annoying at times but it's easily overlookable. The voice acting was done very well, much better then in Final Fantasy 10 (if you'd like to compare). All the voices suited the characters' personalities, you could kind of tell what the character's voice would sound like without actually hearing it just from their looks. Nice. The thing that gets to me the most with RPGs on console systems is the turn based battle systems. All you do most of the time is attack and attack. Now if you take a game like final fantasy, you should know that battle strategy is non-existent. All you do is prepare for the battle, put on the right armor choose the right [tool] and choose some useful accessories, and provided you are at a sufficient level all you do is [play] away. With Xenosaga's battle system it's a whole different story.
Gone is the day when all you have to do is press the attack button and chose a spell to cast. With Xenosaga you have all these gauges that you have to constantly keep an eye on. It's extremely intuitive and original this battle system in Xenosaga. You have a boost gauge. If the boost gauge is filled up, you can force your turn to be next. Of course the enemies can do that too and even counter boost your own boost sometimes. You also have to use combos. Meaning square followed by triangle will yield a different result then if you press triangle and follow up with square. Each press takes away 2 AP points. You get 4 AP points each turn, and any unused AP points carry over to the next turn. Then of course you have the EP (Ether points) points which allow you to cast magic spells. After each battle you get some experience points, some ether points, some skill points and some tech points. You can use all these different points to enhance you characters in different ways. Skill points can draw out skills from accessories, Ether points can help you learn new spells and also transfer spells to your buddies, and Tech points help you learn new combos AND let you level up your existing tech attacks. Tech attacks are the most useful when fighting, you really have to keep an eye on which tech attacks you set for a character, cause different tech attacks have a very noticeable difference on different enemies. Also another thing I really liked about this RPG was that there were no random battles! W0000T! You could see all the enemies on screen and choose whether to avoid them and sneak away, or [meet]them head on ...

Xenosaga Episode 1--Review by Seth Martin

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I think that this game is excellent. It has in-depth character development and a facinating storyline. You have good character selection in much of the game and many different ways to develope characters. There are multiple weapons, tech. attacks, and ether skills for each character and different skills can be extracted from items you find or purchase and then set to each character. The graphics throughout the game are phenomenal, the voice quality and music is great, and the movies are exciting and realistic. The game is challenging but not too difficult and there are many secret/hidden items to find. The game also has four exciting minigames to play. As an experienced RPG gamer I would highly recommend this game to anyone.

Good Times, Once You Get Past the FMV's

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game on name recognition only. I had played the original Xenogears, and was quite pleased with it. Seeing this in stores, I had to pick up. This games is dominated by FMV's (Full Motion Videos). Which, overall are very good looking, with the minor annoyance of no hair or clothes movement even when the character moves. And when I said dominated, I mean the first 3-8 hours of the game is mostly FMV. But, because the story line is so complex it would be hard to explain it all through gameplay elements. But it would have been nice to make it a little more involving. The battle system itself is different from many other RPG's that I've played. It is based on AP (action points) which limit how much you can do on a turn. using an item uses 3 ap, magic spell 4 ap and so on. The Ether magic spells)equiping is something that I dont like. You can have a maximum of 12 spells equipped, but they would all be first level spells. most of the spell you would like to get equipped take up four of your 12 total slots. the tech attacks are quite fantastic, but can get boring after seeing them 100 times over and over, with only a slight camera angle change every so often to make it more interesting. over all it is a complex, fun, and exciting game that all fans of the rpg genre should pick up. and get ready for the long haul; you can save your characters after you beat it to us in xenosaga: episode 2.

Amazing, WOW, Best RPG ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the most amazing game i have ever played, it has wonderful graphics and a amazing story line. These guys really did some thinking to make this game. I am just dying for the 2nd edition to this game to come out. This game is by far one of the most best RPG's I have ever played before. I just want to thank the people who made the game for allowing me to play the best RPG ever created in plastation 2 history.

Only 3 hours in, and I can't stop playing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

There isn't much to say about Xenosaga that hasn't already been said. Namco hit the nail on the head with this game, and if you don't have it already then buy it right now! The graphics are amazing, the story is impeccable, the characters seem "real", and the enemies are right on where they should be.

I just wish Xenogears could have had graphics like this...

Gabe

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game has everything you could ever want. It is the first game of a 7 game series. It has graphics more beutiful than FF10 and it has story as good or better than FF7 along with 8 and 10. There are some long cut scenes but they arent anoying like the ones in FFX were they pop up everytime you change scenes. They show when nescisary and are used to explain the story. Also there are no random damn battles like in the other rpg's you have to walk into an enemy bee seen by one or be heard by one for them to attack you. Also in this game the cut scenes/FMV's can be over 45 minutes long. Not only that but the battle system is beutful and very strategic but not so strategic that it bores you. Also in batlle instead of the Gaurdean forces summons or aeons you might be used to you can instantly pilot a giant robot as if from Gundam or an Armored core game. The voice overs are done beutifully ALOT better than the ones that are in Final Fantasy 10. The style is anime most definatley but apeals to anime haters just as much as anime lovers its just that damn good. Also it has wonderful Sci-Fi that will catch your eye. Not only that but some scenes are even a little bit strange. They make you wonder who that is. Why do you keep seeing that strange little girl doing things. What is he doing! You may even be mad at the characters some times. The enviorments are huge and you may get lost sometimes. But dont worry you will figure it out very soon. Also MOST not always but most of the time a cut scene will start when you enter the area that you are suposed to be in. GET IT NOW RENT IT IF YOU HAVE TO BEFORE YOU GET IT BUT SELL YOUR HOUSE FOR IT ....SELL YOUR SISTER FOR IT GET THIS GAME (Would you like to by my sister shes anoying)

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