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Xenosaga
With the barrage of new role playing games that arrived this month, I was tempted by three of them. Xenosaga, .hack//infection, or Dark Cloud 2. Being a Squaresoft fan, I decided to trust them and go with Xenosaga, prequel to another great RPG, Xenogears.
The game starts out as most games do, with a cutscene which gives you a brief introduction to the story and places you into the game. This was an unusually long cutscene, a trend which would continue throughout the game. The game is based in a world plagued by war. The Gnosis and the human race have been fighting many battles, and it seems little can stop the Gnosis. Military projects are underway to stop them, and Shion is one of the workers on a new android, KOS-MOS, designed to stop the Gnosis. Almost all of this story is told through cutscenes.
The game follows her for the most part, but in between it breaks to separate stories, all of which converge. Shion makes new friends like Ziggy, and they all help fight for the cause they all are after. A device known as the Zohar exists from the twenty-first century which is the cause for many disappearances. This is one of the main focuses of the story.
As for the gameplay, it is good while it lasts. The gameplay consists of running around outside of battles and fighting inside of battles. The battle system is a different kind than has been seen before. There are ranged attacks for certain enemies, melee for others, and special attacks such as ether attacks for the others. Ether attacks are basically magic, except in a science fiction pretext.
What i meant by, “it is good while it lasts,” is that there are a lot of cutscenes, which isn’t a bad thing in an RPG, and also these cutscenes last a long time. They ease up after a while of playing the game, but they still exist pretty heavily. Personally, I liked this for some time, because it was a better way to watch the story instead of me walking around talking to random people. Another plus is that the story is so deep it actually needs all of this
cutscene time. The cutscenes aren’t FMVs, they use in-game graphics with voice acting.
The sound of the game can be described as decent. The voice acting is good, better than Final Fantasy X, but a soundtrack is virtually non-existant. The music in the game went unnoticed for the most part, nothing as memorable as some of the songs by composers involved in other RPGs.
The graphics are probably one of the games strong points. Although graphics don’t matter in an RPG, it is nice to know the artists at Namco tried hard. Since they use the in game graphics for cutscenes, it does help to watch the lengthy ones since they are good on the eyes.
Overall, the game’s strong points outweigh its flaws. The cutscenes might be numerous and lengthy, but the graphics are great, the fighting system is refreshing, and the story is deep and engaging. I would recommend this to any RPG fan, but this is probably not the best introduction to the series for new players.
8.7/10
-Rory
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