My XenoReview - (Quite favorable)

[Cobalt Katze]

I have had no life since I started playing on Friday. Well, ofcourse there is the occasional time I've had to go to class, and eat, and sleep, but besides that no life... And if you make it thru this review (which might have a few spoilers here and there), feel free to post your own views as well as any questions you might have. I think I've been doing fairly well in the game so far (havn't beaten it quite yet. But I'm close.), but any questions before you arrive at the large pyramid-structure I can answer

Guys, this game is worth getting for many many reasons. These aren't in order, but are all equally important.

1) The story, obviously. Yes, it will screw with your head. Some areas of the game take place in places that technically don't exist. But this isn't just some random trip through crypic messages and religious reference up the yinyang. Everything is very meticulously planned out, and eventually will make sense. And some mysteries carry over to the next games, but the game will let you know when this'll occur. See, since the game is so complex and mind-hurting, Monolith's included a nifty auto-updating Glossery of: acronyms, terms, references, quotes from literary works, theories, etc. as they are mentioned in the game by the many characters. Also noted are when certain plot threads won't be continued until the next chapter, such as the case with Shion's brother Jin (who looks alot like a younger version of a certain doctor from XG) What this does though is give you a nice sneak peek at what WILL be in the next game(s).

2) The sound experience. Okay, first my few gripes with the sound. The only disappointment I've had so far is the lack of a boss battle theme. It's a tad anti-climactic when you've got this cutscene with very dramatic music, and then the battle begins and it's the same old music again. There's also a somewhat short track called Song of Nephilim that is great, but a tad too short for some cutscenes and the dungeon it plays in. But aside from those two things, the soundtrack is absolutely briliant. And not just the soundtrack either. The voices have been heavily debated like ANY english voices. If you want my personaly opinion, I think they do their job incredibly well. Considering there are around 15 hours of cutscenes, the voices hold up well throughout the whole thing. The only voice I can't stand are those of Mary and Shelly, Gaignan's two little arm-holders. One has a very dead-pan voice that works for KOS-MOS, being an android, but on a human it gets hard to stand. And then the other has an annoying-as-all-hell western accent. If she said "Lil' Mastah!" one more time, I was gonna strangle her.. but unfortunately the game's not that interactive. On the awesome side of the spectrum, here are some of my fave voices-

- Albedo: This guy is seriously Kefka in a bishounen suit. He does the voice perfectly, and his voice couldn't be more insane. Nothing's more creepy than a madman. And, um, if you have my say on things, I think he's even a bit more insane than Kefka.

- chaos: He may come off as sounding annoyingly cheeky at first, but I love how different he sounds from everyone else. He's got a certain foreignness to his voice that definately is pulled off well.

- Gaignan: He's suave, definately. I dunno, he's not the most major character, but his voice rocks.

- Shion: Seeing as she's the main character, I'm glad they pulled her off well. She can be, like chaos, a tad happy in the beginning, but then the Eva run-away! syndrome kicks in later and we see a big variety of emotions, which is quite nice. Her fear of lightning in particular produces a complete 180 from what you see at first.

- Juli Mizrahi: I don't know what's so special about her voice, but it just sounds good.

- Representative of Second Miltia (I forgot his name): Okay, so he's not the absolutely best-voiced, but every time he says "U-DO", I get a good laugh. Mainly because at first, he's the ONLY one who says it.. So someone says "it's..." and he'll chime in "U-DO!!"

3) Cinematography. No, seriously. If there was gonna be an award for best in-game cinematography, this game would win hands-down. It's hard to explain why exactly it's so good, but that's because I'm not very fluent in the language I'd use to describe it. One thing of notice is the absolutely seamless use of CG in coordination with in-game graphics. To the majority of people, you will probably not notice any difference between the two. This is because the CG is only used when the game would normally slow down from an over-abundance of polygons or effects on-screen. So essentially what you get is a melange of very well-chosen camera angles. For example, there's a closeup of KOS-MOS that's definately rendered in realtime. It then cuts to a shot where it shows KOS-MOS and thousands of Gnosis. This is done using the in-game engine, but pre-rendered because if the game were to show it in realtime, there'd be an immense dose of slowdown. A very smart and well-executed choice. What's even cooler is there is one (perhaps more, I'm not sure) deathblow that KOS-MOS has that utilizes a CG movie. It doesn't have any load time, which is nice, and again the camera is positioned in a way to make it work for any battle.

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4) Gameplay: I separated this from the first grouping mainly because it's what defines this game and makes it not just a big interactive movie. There is gameplay, and lots of it. During the beginning of the game, there isn't quite as much. You essentially take in each section of the beginning in chunks. You've got one area to explore extensively, where all the action happens. Then a big series of cutscenes leads to the next large area, and so forth. Eventually you've got a large 'town', two ships, and a small 'village' you can visit at your own disgression. And ofcourse there's also locations that technically don't exist. But I won't talk about those The battle system is great, hands down. There's so much customization that you really wanna work on your characters. A.G.W.S. may be optional, but they're very handy in certain situations (there's one boss battle that may be impossible on foot), and I just love upgrading 'em for the heck of it (if I have the money.) And I'll just let it stand that there is some strong strong gameplay backing up all the cutscenes.

5) XenoCard. Okay, so the game's got a bunch of various minigames. You've got Driller, an obscure drilling game, an okay Virtual On-style A.G.W.S. fighting game, Slots, and Poker.. But what really takes the cake is the faux CCG called XenoCard. Throughout the game, you can buy starter and booster packs for this card game much like Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon, but XenoCard is all based on events and characters in Xenosaga. It's incredibly fun, and involves a lot of strategy. There's around 180-ish cards too, so there's plenty of variety when putting together 40 card decks. And the best part is that you can save up to 5 decks and the game supports a 2player mode, so you an' a friend can play against eachother rather than just against the A.I.

That about wraps up my little review. I've barely covered it all, but those are my biggest ups and downs about the game. Very recommended. This is probably the most fun I've had with a game since Final Fantasy X or Vagrant Story.

Oh, and I havn't kept an official count, but the ammount of times I've said "holy shit.." in reference to what's going on in-game is quite off the chart in comparason to other games.

[Sciler]

Xenocard....must...play...xenocard...

tahts what's absorbed my life.

[Cobalt Katze]

Hell yeah! That's all I did this morning, hehehe...

Hey, I'm tryin' to compile a complete list of cards so I can try to make XenoCard for Apprentice (it's a CCG thingy)

Wanna help fill in my list once I post it later today, Sci?

And if it isn't complete between the two of us, I'm gonna be doing some major Poker-playing tonight so I can raise a bunch of coins and buy all the limited cards, and enough boosters to flesh out my collection.

[GAAZ]

Well, I beat .Hack so I started playing XenoSaga. It's pretty cool so far..I think I'm like an hour in. My only problem is the low amount of Ether and the cost of spells to cast at low levels is unbalanced..I'm sure it'll level off later but for now it's kinda whacko.

Also, you get that Mech when ya fight specific things as opposed to whenever ya damn well please. (I've only fought in the virtual thingy so it's understandable but I hope it isn't like that in the rest O-the game.)

Anywho, kick ass game with flaws I can overlook but only till March 15th when ZOE 2nd Runner comes out...~sniffle~ That game looks SOOOOO pritty!

[slingshot40]

So AzVegeta how was .Hack?


Thats just Prime!