Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra

The third entry in the Xenosaga series marks an abrupt end for the franchise, and the last game Monolith created before they joined the Nintendo camp and started producing a very different style of game altogether.  But did the developers manage to come together and create a satisfactory conclusion to the trilogy, or was Xenosaga Episode III just a far cry from where the series started?

Xenosaga's first episode was a well-regarded one among most RPG fans, while its sequel was considerably less so; while it still did well critically, its reworked combat system and a number of bizarre and unnecessary changes caused the series to lose quite a bit of face with fans.  Monolith took several of these criticisms to heart, though, reworking the combat system once again for the third game, reintroducing most of the voice cast from 1 (though Joshua Seth is kept on as chaos and Michael Gough as Jin) and, as the box proudly boasts, shops have returned, so having to grind for items is now significantly less of an issue than it was in 2.  Code for the game has also been optimized quite a bit, resulting in generally shorter loading times for cutscenes and battles.

The art style for the game has been reworked too, striking a balance between the anime style of 1 and the realistic style of 2, which I felt was a welcome change.  Less welcome is the fact that the visual style is much darker overall - I recall very few instances of the sun shining or even many brighter colors anywhere in favor of an overall muted tone.  It matches the heavier mood of the game, admittedly, but it doesn't have the same appeal as its predecessors for the same reason.

Xenosaga III's combat system is the most 'traditional' of the three games, doing away with most of the elements from the first two in favor of one that resembles a traditional turn-based RPG.  Combos are largely done away with in favor of generic attack/magic/item commands, with a heavier focus on buffs and debuffs, using and countering status effects, and exploiting enemies' elemental weaknesses.  One can also spend a turn to swap reserve characters in and out mid-battle a la Final Fantasy X, which can help during longer battles.  Attack animations are also generally shorter, which helps improve the pacing.  A few twists are added to prevent combat from becoming too monotonous, though.  Boost returns once again, letting a character break the normal turn order to get a turn immediately.  Boost charges also fuel certain special attacks; finishing an enemy with one of these will result in a "Finish Strike", causing that character to earn extra experience and skill points.  These special moves will also power up with repeated use, with the exception of chaos's Imperial Judgment (which must be used on Gnosis-type enemies to power up) and Jr.'s Red Dragon (which must be used on either Gnosis or biological enemies).  Each character in a battle, friend and foe alike, also has a Break Gauge that depletes as they take damage; once it's fully depleted, they will be stunned and take extra damage for two turns.  Because of this, managing your party's Break to avoid being left vulnerable and trying to Break your enemies' guard both factor heavily into combat, particularly during boss battles.

A particularly strange element here is the Gnosis, who, as in the rest of the series, cause characters to "whiten" - repeated applications of this in combat will cause them to disintegrate and make them unavailable for the rest of the battle.  Items can reverse the process before it reaches the fatal point, though more often than not, you'll end the battle before then anyway.  It's also a bit jarring to see a character literally disintegrate in battle but be totally fine when you exit back to the menu after the fact.

E.S. combat remains relatively similar to the previous game; each turn you're given a pool of points to spend, which you can allocate however you wish among your mecha's current weapons.  One can also cast Ether to attack, Charge to recover HP, and use items, which can heal the entire party or even revive fallen allies (unlike the previous game).  Anima charges are built up as damage is inflicted, which fuel your most powerful attacks, and you'll occasionally get a "co-op" when attacking, causing one or more of your allies to jump in for a followup strike and a bit of extra damage.  As in the previous game, these fights are pretty spectacular to see, but not particularly deep on a strategic level.

Xenosaga III, like its predecessors, also doesn't skimp on the side content.  There are a number of optional quests to undertake, bosses to fight, weapons and accessories to find, and yes, even some fan service in the form of swimsuit outfits for every character if you want to see them fighting with almost nothing on; they're not quite as useful as in the old games as they no longer give bonus experience points, but they don't have the same drawback of giving you no defense either, so that's a plus.  My personal favorite, though, is the resident minigame HaKox.  A strange arcade title that plays like a cross of Gyromite and Lemmings, having you maneuver various characters from the game safely to a marked goal while pushing them out of the way of hazards with movable blocks mapped to the four face buttons.  You earn bonus points for grouping them together and sending them through all at once too, which is necessary to get the highest scores and prizes on many of the later levels.  Admittedly it is a little bizarre to see all the major characters from the story being pushed around a big grid by colored blocks, but the game is surprisingly addictive and fun - so much so that if it were released as a standalone game, I'd probably still buy it.

All things considered, I'd say that Xenosaga III does an admirable job of being a polished and complete-feeling game in spite of the series' abrupt conclusion.  However, it's not flawless; they were clearly trying to fit everything into the final chapter all at once, which results in quite a lot of confusing scenes coming all at once that take some time to unpack after.  The final area of the game is also probably the most blatant example of this - almost every major character and subplot from the series conveniently gathers here all at once, giving every character a chance to sneak in their final moments before the credits roll.  It's all well done considering the circumstances, but it still feels a bit convenient and, well, rushed.  Even with that, though, I think Xenosaga proves to be a solid conclusion to the trilogy, and despite it being extremely unlikely, I'd love to see the series get definitively concluded in some form down the road.

Developer: Monolith Soft
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Platform: Playstation 2
Released: 2006
Recommended Version:  N/A

Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse

The second episode of Xenosaga saw its design and the series as a whole undergo a number of change-ups, in no small part due to a major change in the development team and a shift in management at Namco. But does Xenosaga Episode II still manage to provide a good RPG experience, or was this the start of a decline in quality as well as sales? 

Episodic games are always a tough sell, even when they're well-done; after all, you're basically asking fans to pay for several games released at full cost or close to it right out of the gate, with no guarantee the full product will be any better than a single standalone game.  It's an even tougher sell in the RPG genre, where there have already been numerous highly acclaimed games with self-contained stories that span upwards of 30 hours in running time and more continue to be released on a regular basis, so cutting off your story partway through as a means to sell more content later is a very risky move.  The only company I can think of that saw any real success with the format was Telltale Games, but even they couldn't keep the momentum going; they ultimately spread themselves too thin with numerous licensing deals in a very short period, which led to poor worker morale and declining quality, culminating in a steady falloff in sales and a very abrupt shutdown and bankruptcy that left most of their employees out in the cold.

Xenosaga was unfortunately not an exception to the rule; while the first game in the series sold over one million copies and all three games did well critically, this wasn't enough to stave off declining sales with each entry.  Things probably also weren't aided by the fact that this was the only game in the trilogy to get a European release.  Yes, the second game, which drops you off right where the first game ended, with zero context given for who any of the characters are or what they're doing (and unlike 1 and 3, there is no in-game glossary or plot summary to get you caught up).  Alongside decreasing sales, changes in management at Namco led to the series being cut down from six episodes to three, Tetsuya Takahashi no longer being actively involved in the games' development (moving into a story writing and consultant role), and Soraya Saga leaving the project entirely, resulting in the later two games being considered inferior to the original by most fans.

The most immediately noticeable of these changes is in the presentation. Most of the characters have had their voice actors recast, and many of these changes are for the worse.  Shion in particular is often singled out as the worst change, now being voiced by Olivia Hack and far less expressive than Lia Sargent's take on the character.  The highlight of the new cast is definitely Joshua Seth, whose mellow voice fits chaos much more than Derek Prince (and the studio seemed to agree, as he was kept in the third game as well). The visual style has also seen a drastic revamp, going for a significantly more realistic feel rather than showing off the heavy anime inspiration the original had.

Combat has been heavily reworked from the original Xenosaga as well, attempting to incorporate more of both a puzzle element as well as a chain-combo system not unlike the latter two Shadow Hearts games.  Basically, each character now has one of three attack types (hit, pierce or slash) that deals more damage to certain enemies or less to others, and each enemy now has a sequence of buttons that will Break their guard; once broken, each following attack that turn will deal double damage. One can also knock down or pop an enemy into the air after a Break, which adds another bonus on top.  The Stock mechanic is built to take advantage of this too, letting you skip turns in order to save them up for later use - in this case, adding extra attacks onto your combos. It's a bit to get used to, but once you've mastered it, the game becomes too easy, letting you rack up thousands or even tens of thousands of points in damage per turn and even destroying bosses in very short order. This does achieve its goal of making many of XS1's underutilized characters more useful - Ziggy and MOMO are now virtual game breakers - but it does feel a bit one-track compared to most RPGs. 

I was also glad to see mech battles - a key element of Xenogears but relegated to a mostly-useless footnote in Xenosaga I - make a return here. In this game, you get a new type of mech in the E.S., which is essentially a separate set of playable characters - though the main cast pilots them (with the choice of pilot determining what abilities they may use), they gain levels and experience completely separate from their pilots and are only usable at certain areas in the story.  Combat is changed up for them too, letting you spend a pool of points each turn to chain together sequences of attacks, defend to reduce damage and build Stock, or (with MOMO) cast Ether spells.  Landing attacks also ties into another mechanic called "Interrupt Attack" - a chance to intercept an enemy's strike and counter with your own, which grows as the IA meter fills but empties if you sustain a critical hit.  One must also be careful not to let their ES units be defeated, as the player cannot revive them if they fall. 

Another strange changeup is the complete removal of both shops and money in favor of increased enemy drops. It's one thing to not have such a thing in your game, but to include it in the first game of the series and then leave it out of the second is just bizarre.  Even moreso considering you can still sell items as part of a sub quest to pay off Captain Matthews' debts. Even the developers seemed to think it was a bad decision, as Xenosaga III's box touts the return of shops as one of its defining features.

As in the first game, there are still numerous sidequests to complete - some filling in bits of story while others are mostly just for fun.  However, the rewards almost always leave something to be desired, often granting you a costly special move that does much less damage than a single good combo. I suppose you do at least get a cool animation out of them most of the time, but it's a little disheartening when your reward for a quest is something much more expensive (and much less effective) than a standard combo attack.

So, Xenosaga II, for both better and worse, is a drastically different experience from the first game. I actually liked a lot of the mechanical changes - the combat system is really fun and rewarding to master (maybe a little too much though, as mentioned) and seeing mech battles return to being a prominent element of the game was definitely welcome. Other changes are definitely for the worse, but even the devs realized they messed up, as they reinstated shops and nearly all of the original voice cast for the third game, and made sure to polish up and rebalance many of the changes this one made. Xenosaga II is a game I still enjoyed playing and recommend to anyone who asks, but its unquestionably the weakest of the trilogy.

Developer: Monolith Soft
Publisher: Namco
Platform: Playstation 2
Released: 2005
Recommended Version:  N/A

Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht

 The first game created by several of the Xenogears alumni after their split from Square Enix, Xenosaga was planned to carry on the epic feel and planned episodic format of that game while pushing an original tale in a science fiction universe. But does Xenosaga's aiming for the stars pay off, or does it simply crash and burn on the launchpad?

Xenogears was a heavily divisive game on the PS1, with fans praising its dark storytelling, complex characters, philosophical themes and impressive production design while others criticized it heavily for its clunky game design, dragging pace and being released in a very unfinished state: the second disk of the game was infamously almost nothing but flat exposition peppered with boss battles.  It was also clear that Tetsuya Takahashi had much bigger plans for Xenogears than Square was willing to accommodate - according to the Xenogears Perfect Works book, it was planned as one part of a six-episode saga, with numerous branches into other media as well.

As a result of this, Tetsuya Takahashi was one of many Square alumni to split from Square and form his own studio - in his case, forming Monilith Soft under Namco's banner. His first project there alongside Soraya Saga (Co-writer of Xenogears and his wife) was Xenosaga - a spiritual successor indented to carry on Xenogears' legacy and realize many of the ideas he originally had in mind for that franchise, theoretically free of company meddling.  Things didn't quite pan out as originally planned, but that's a tale we'll get into once I visit the sequels.

It's clear right away that Xenosaga was built on the same model as its predecessor, becoming less of a game and more of an epic anime series with some gameplay sprinkled in.  Indeed, a common criticism of the series is its brutally long cutscenes, which can stretch upwards of 30 minutes at times (which is especially prominent in the first game, but somewhat better in the sequels). However, they do put in a lot of effort to make sure they're always worth watching - they're well-staged and shot, smartly written and even have some very high quality voice over for the time, featuring well known  talent like Lia Sargent, Richard Epcar and Derek Stephen Prince as key characters.  Certainly a nice contrast to many modern RPGs, which seem to mostly consist of dull incidental dialog warbled out by apathetic actors while their characters just stand around and the camera cuts spastically between 300 random angles to keep you from falling asleep; waste of good money if you ask me. 

The writing in Xenosaga also proves to be a stark contrast in another big regard.  Like it's predecessor it doesn't shy away from philosophical themes; hell, every game's title is a direct reference to one of Friedrich Nietzsche's works, all of which also get name-dropped (in English) in their respective games. However, its storytelling doesn't get swallowed up by its themes and become pretentious; the onscreen events are very much driven by the characters, and each one shows their own flaws, talents and motivations that lead them to do what they do.  Nobody fits into the mold of a cliché or becomes an overt Mary Sue, and even the villains are relatable on some level.  It really does highlight Takahashi and Saga's talents that made Final Fantasy 6 and Xenogears shine, and definitely lends Xenosaga a human element that few other RPGs I've ever played have matched. 

But while Xenosaga's primary focus is on its narrative and not its gameplay, that isn't to say what gameplay is there is lacking; far from it.  Combat operates on a somewhat similar principle to Xenogears, letting the player chain together moves into combination attacks; they will regenerate 4 AP a turn and can bank up to 6, which equals out to a three-hit combo from a full bar (two normal attacks and a more powerful "Tech Attack" which generally must be unlocked and equipped first).  In addition, dealing damage will fill up the "BG" bar; once full, the player can use a Boost to immediately grant one of their players a turn, superceding all turns following theirs; enemies can use this too, however, so one must be wary of that, particularly later in the game when they will abuse it liberally to give themselves several turns in a row.  It quickly proves to be integral to winning some fights, too - in particular, one boss fight features an enemy that will immediately heal themself back to full once their health drops below half, so building up BG to sneak in enough turns and deal enough damage to defeat them before they can heal is key to winning.  Some characters can also summon an AGWS - essentially, a mecha - to fight within, effectively replacing their normal moveset and giving them an HP buffer.  However, I found that these generally weren't very worthwhile - unlike Xenogears, their stats aren't a huge leap over your base characters, and they tend to do too little damage and die too quickly to be effective, even after several upgrades.  I usually just stuck to fighting on foot for the duration, save for a few story scenes where I was forced to use an AGWS.

Another somewhat odd element of combat is the "Event Slot".  At the bottom right of the screen you will see a small icon that shifts every turn, and depending on what icon it displays, you will earn various bonuses on that turn.  For example, you may get extra Boost gauge from attacks, have a higher chance of inflicting a critical, or get extra Tech, Ether and Skill points from an enemy you defeat that turn (with a 2x, 4x or even 10x multiplier).  Indeed, sometimes it's better to manipulate turns and try to get a bonus than to let a battle end too soon.  That said, enemies also benefit from higher critical chance or Boost gains, so spending a Boost to deny them those bonuses can also prove important.

Xenosaga also goes out of its way to avoid a lot of things that were criticized about Xenogears.  Cutscenes are now skippable, so you no longer have to view them all again if you die on a boss fight after a long sequence of them.  You are also given warning before you pass a point of no return - generally entering an area much tougher than the previous one, giving you chance to power up and restock if need be.  In addition, while the plot is a mostly linear one, one can use the EVS at specially-marked save points to revisit any area they've previously been to, allowing them to grind or pick up items they may have missed the first time through.

Of course, there is also no shortage of side-content in the game.  There are four prominent minigames to play; AGWS Battle is just for fun and plays like a simpler version of Armored Core or Virtual On (albeit with a surprisingly large number of playable AGWS).  The Drill Game is a simple claw machine style game that allows you to win prizes, with better ones generally inside smaller objects.  XenoCard is a collectible card game which is also just for fun, but surprisingly complex (and collecting all the cards proves to be quite a time investment).  And finally, my personal favorite, the Casino, where you can play Poker or Blackjack to collect coins, which in turn can be traded for some very powerful items if you have enough patience to rack up a large enough total.  Basically, you won't be hurting for content  if you're a die-hard completionist, but if you're not, all of these can also safely be skipped as you make your way through the story.

While not flawless, Xenosaga is a well executed experience; arguably the best yet seen from the Monolith camp.  Its gameplay ultimately takes a back seat to the story, but remains fun and engaging regardless, and its world building is excellent, effectively immersing the player in a well-realized science fiction universe with a lot of religious and philosophical themes, yet never feeling overdone or pretentious in doing so.  Characters are wonderfully realized, getting you fully immersed in their tale, and the voice acting is of very high quality for 2003; easily on par with any prominent big-name anime that was popular at the time (and utilizing several actors thereof).  It may be largely ignored nowadays by its publisher (save for KOS-MOS appearing in the odd crossover game like Project X Zone), but it's widely regarded as one of the best RPGs on the PS2 for good reason, and is a game that more than a few modern "cinematic RPGs" should take some cues from in its production design. 

Developer: Monolith Soft
Publisher: Namco
Platform: Playstation 2
Released: 2003
Recommended Version:  N/A