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Impressions....
I've played
Xenosaga for : 1:10:37 ..
Introduction
Xenosaga is not made by
squaresoft.. although that doesn't mean anything for game
quality ... Xenosaga is made by Monolith which in turned
is produced by Namco .. Monolith's company is mainly composed
of all ex-squaresoft employees ... dispite squaresoft un-involvement
with Xenosaga, the team that brought you Xenogears, is bringing
you Xenosaga ... why did they quit Square ? .. well for
the same reason most of the public hate square.. for being
a business ... Squaresoft cares only about profit and not
the quality ... so most of Squaresoft's project are severly
rushed and far overhyped ... Xenogears was severly pushed
and look at the graphics on that game ... ick ...
A few past games that some Monolith employees had involvement
with were games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story
and Chrono Cross ... all GREAT un-Final Fantasy games ...
( Final Fantasy Tactics does not count as a Final Fantasy
... it was original called the Zodiac Brave Story, but changed
to turn a larger profit ) ... these are games that Squaresoft
has made that are simply the best .... anywho, enough with
the history lesson ....
Graphics
the graphics are certainly
the first thing you notice in the game ... directly after
choosing New Game, you are simply thrown into very detailed
beautiful CG animation.. the same of which i showed at spamm
last week ... like Xenogears, the intial FMV has eveyrthing
to do with the story, but absolutely nothing to do with
the immediate story ... this beginning FMV far surpasses
most video game computer animation to date..
beyond the FMV quality the game graphic quality is equally
astounding... The gameplay enviroment graphics surpass Final
Fantasy X ... parts of the enviroment that are further away
are blured out which gives a real sense of depth.. and still
far away enough so that it doesn't get annoying or unrealistic
...
Overall modeling quality is par.. with the exception of
KosMos ... KosMos is by far the best looking character in
the game so far... all other characters seem like they were
created from the same template...
Character Animation isn't too far above par ... It suffers
from the same downfall of the animation in the Final Fantasy
Movie where is was trying to be TOO real and at most times
end up just looking like puppets walking along a stage...
Lip synch is not bad... slighty better than Final Fantasy
X's japanese lip synch but still far from perfect....
Gameplay
and you thought Metal Gear
Solid 2 had too much cinema and not enough gameplay.. out
of the first 1:10 i've had maybe 20-25 minutes of pure gameplay...
every thing else was cinema and non-interaction ....
the Gameplay isn't too hard to learn... but i think i'm
still missing something with it ... ^_^ ... its battle engine
is alot like the original Xenogears... although i haven't
had enough gameplay to actually build up my characters or
learn any combos ... Each character has a choice of a physical
attack, or a projectile attack which both take 2 AP, and
then from that attack can choose another physical or projectile
attack.. and this builds combos.. eventually.... and during
battle those who operate Gears ( AWSG ) can jump in and
take place during the same battle w/ a gear...
Enviroment gameplay is a little more in depth than Final
Fantasy X ... the one enviroment i've actually been in so
far, had multiple levels, ladders, and obstacles which you
could blow up with a gun ... ^_^ ...
Battle are not random... on the enviroment you can clearly
see your opponents and some cases, if you run fast enough,
you can get away from them ... also.. if you just happen
to blow up a flammable barrel near an enemy, the enemy in
battle will be weakend by the fire... blowing up stuff will
also reveal items and hidden passageways ...
but .. Xenosaga's biggest flaw thus far.. Load times ...
transition from cinema to battle ? ... 6 seconds of lag
... 6 SECONDS !!! ... thats alot ... Final Fantasy X's transitions
were no more than 3 seconds ... but much like Final Fantasy
X, the ps2 Harddrive supposedly eliminates 75% of this load
time ... bringing it down to a smooth 1-2 seconds ...
Audio
The music is Xenosaga is
simply fantastic ... what else would you expect from Yasourni
Mitsuda ( hehe, i think i spelt his name wrong ) .. the
intro music with the begining CG is both powerful and interesting
... be sure to have a subwoofer hooked up to get the full
effect of the shear thrust of sound ... its magnificient
... now if only i can find an online retailer who sells
the soundtrack for less than 40$ ...
beyond the music, the sound is equally powerful... most
spells used in battle have the character's voices echoing
in volume with the sound effects of the spell ... all sound
volumes in the enviroment are linked in tune with the distance
from that object making the sound and you, the main character...
walk closer it gets louder, walk further it dies out ...
this technique is not used with the voice acting though...
the voice acting quality thus far is nice.. it's not too
over the top.. and it certainly doesn't suck .. there really
hasn't been any great emotional scenes at the moment, so
the 'acting' part of voice acting hasn't been an issue ...
although it's only done during a cinema scene and battle
... while in the enviroment there is no voice acting.. speech
is conveyed through the text box like all RPGs were before
Final Fantasy X...
The Language
Barrier
yes thats right ... this
IS a japanese game, so it IS in japanese ... at the moment
i think this'll add just a little difficulty to completing
the game ... i doubt it'll be as easy as Final Fantasy X's
language barrier ... so far it hasn't held me back ... Gameplay
is rather uneffected because all spells and attacks are
either in KataKana or English ... but all cinema's are spoken
in Japanese which is a huge crutch to get the story...
Overall
?
so far, so good ... Xenosaga
seems to be completely dependant on its story over all else,
which was the main focus of expanding the story of Xenogears
over 6 games in the first place ... at the moment there
is no sign of a world map or multiple gameplay enviroments...
but i saved right after a cinema so its coming eventually
...
i'll add some more details
of Xenosaga as/if they develop in the game ... there are
6 playable characters as illustrated in the instruction
book ... and so far i have 2 ... Shion and KosMos ...
i won't be giving away any story type spoilers along with
my impressions ... besides, i can only pick up so much from
japanese text, voice acting i can gather i few things but
not enough ^_^ ..
- Dyre - 3.06.02
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I've played
Xenosaga for : 1:48:07
a note on
graphics : well the graphics certainly die down when
you are walking through coordors on a spaceship ... textures
are VERY basic.. the don't go to far beyond simple colors
and a little shading ... motion capture is win or lose,
simple moves look great, walk cycles are ok, and movement
while talking is still somewhat low ...
a note on gamplay : the main character head moves
when you walk by something that should be drawing your attention
... this is a very nice technique to point out items and
people ... it was very useful in Silent Hill 2 ^_^ ...
a note on the language barrier : ugh.. why the hell
do they have to talk so damn quick ... i think i caught
the jist of what's going on but christ... japanese complain
we talk too fast.. obviously they haven't played this game
...
style : one thing that i really liked about Xenogears
was dispite how bad the graphics were, they would still
have unique camera angles and closeup shots.. Xenosaga goes
a bit further beyond camera techniques and uses some great
visual effects to show the character's emotional responses
... there's been a black and white scene where (someone)
was in her mind .. and also quick pauses of time where this
happend as well ... very effective ...
and of course, n3o ... the reason i started my little
spiele with graphics is because thats the first thing you
notice in the game ... most of the cinema's in the game
are all realtime graphics.. the 'digsite' FMV at the begining
is prerendered.. but after that the whole 'realistic' them
does drop ...
the anime style type models and animation brings back the
overall quality of the graphics, but it forces you to pay
more attention to the story and characters, much like the
graphic style of Xenogears had done ...
yes graphics don't make the game ... Xenogears is pure proof
of that, and hopefully people will look beyond the shiny
gloosy look of Xenosaga to see what Monolith is actually
doing with the story ....
- Dyre - 3.06.02
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I've
played Xenosaga for : 5:11:02
a note on
gameplay : over 5 hours now, and i've only really had
maybe 2 solid hours of an explorable battle enviroment...
i've died twice now ... both due to carelessness and stupidity
... ugh... everything else has been cinema, though ...
but christ.. plenty has happend ...
Kos-Mos is badass ^_^ ...
its very interesting how the story is developed ... its
skips around alot from the character's immediate situation
to the overall situation back at leader's of the humans
... quite interesting.. i only wish i really knew what
was going on ^_^ ...
- Dyre - 3.06.02
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I've
played Xenosaga for : 8:22:07
gameplay
v. cinema : cinema still winning with around maybe 5
hrs. of cinema v. gameplay's 3 hrs...
this game reminds me too much of Episode 1 of Star Wars...
the setting and characters... although Star Wars' future
continues on without the extinction of humanity ...
the feeling is still the same ... brand new characters
that have everything to do with the characters in the
later released chapters.. but nothing that really hints
that at all ... its a real strange feeling .. how does
this turn out ? ... its like watching the last half
of a movie or anime, and then after finishing the end,
going back and watching the first half you skipped ...
Disclamer : i don't like Star Wars.. it was just
an easy reference
well i've died another time ^_^ ... due to carelessness
again, although this battle was quite hard... i don't
know if i actually have to beat this mammoth boss in
order to progress... or if there is some trick to lesser
its damage and hit poitns ... because i completely got
my arse kicked... oh well ...
the language barrier hasn't given me any dire trouble
at the moment, besides that fact i don't really know
whats going with the story ... it hasn't effected gameplay
to the point of running to gamefaqs and begging for
answers...
... this whole thread has kinda turned into a gameplay
diary.. good thing or bad thing ? .. if you hadn't noticed
i usually post after i die in the game ^_^ ... luckily
i'm not one of those people who plays for any number
of hours w/o saving ....
- Dyre - 3.06.02
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Gametime
: 11:05:67
Gameovers : 4
what an
annoyingly hard boss that was... and i'm still unsatisified
by beating it too .. i died twice on it .. not due to
carelessness but by the boss overpowering me SOOooOOo
much ... i walked around for about an hour leveling up
my characters and then i still got the tar beaten out
of me ... so i tried once more and i beat the boss easily..
what the hell ?! .. impossible difficulty to no difficulty
? .. what the hell did i do so differently that took care
of this boss so easily the second time ? .. ugh ... a
very unsatisifying victory ...
all the characters are in the mix now, but there has been
no world map at all, unless you count the spaceship i'm
flying around in ... cinema v. gameplay : it evened up
considerably after leveling my characters for an hour
... gameplay is now ahead by 55%....
All the characters are quite badass.. KosMos is badass..
Ziggy is badass.. Jr. is badass.. Chaos is badass... Momo
is ok, i guess ... and Shion is cute/hot ....
language problems ? .. well considering the results of
that blasted fight i must've missed something in the dialogue
.... also, i spent maybe 10 minutes wondering around until
i realized that i was giving a tour of the spaceship to
the new characters we found ^_^ ...
good news : CDjapan.co.jp finally decided to carry the
official Xenosaga OST .. so now you don't have to pay
those inflated american anime store prices of 40$ .. you
can pay the direct yen pricing equivalent to 22$ ... what
a steal .. and then you can laugh at AnimeNation trying
to make such a large profit on a fairly inexpensive OST...
the famitsu rating of Xenosaga was a surprising 33/40
... very surprising considering they gave Dead or Alive
3 a 38/40... a 33 isn't a bad score though, its still
a Famitsu Gold Rating .. but not a Platinum Rating -_-;;
...
disclaimer : namco merely produces Xenosaga, much
like Nintendo merely produces Perfect Dark ... Monolith
is composed mostly of ex-squaresoft employees.. so its
not truly a namco game ... almost the same team that worked
on the original Xenogears and a couple other GOOD squaresoft
games is the same develop team that made Xenosaga .
- Dyre - 3.07.02
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Gametime
: 14:41:16
this story
seems very very interesting as it digs further into
the supporting characters...
the dungeon that i'm currently in is very massive...
i haven't seen a dungeon this massive since the old
Super Nintendo Final Fantasy's ... about 2 1/2 hours
so far of exploring and fighting ... and i'm not even
done with it yet ... but besides the length of the dungeon,
the enviroment itself is quite intreguing ...
The 'dungeon' that i'm in is a decade old research/military
facility that has been inhabited by the alien menance
known as gnosis... the downfall of this instilation
had to do alot with both KosMos and the non-playable
character that is with, Andrew ... plenty of heavy stuff
going on with Andrew as he split up with our group as
we forcefully entered this enviroment ...
The story telling style is very dimensional ... hints
of Andrew's past continue to surface through his consciousness..
and you learn some interesting stuff about him ...
Xenosaga continues to be very very very very interesting,
much like how the story of Xenogears unfolded as you
continued...
Leveling
Details
as much as i know of them, anyhow
I'm almost
now 90% i know what i'm doing when it comes to actually
building the characters with points received from battles
.... at the end of the battle you get Experience points
like you do in almost every rpg.. this points are distrubuted
to all members of the party including the ones not participating
in battle ... besides the normal experience points there
are 3 other type of points you gain ...
T.pts - Technique Points - which are used for two things
... T.pts can be used to gain levels on your combo finishers...
combo finishers have 3 values, the tech level, the speed,
and the wait .... Tech level, well that basically just
the power of the attack, the speed is the amount of
turns you need to build up to use the attack, and the
wait.. i'm not really sure ^_^ .. it sounds self explanitory
though, right ? ...
T.pts are also used to gain one or two more points to
any character stats, such as Strength, HP, and so forth..
very expensive though...
E.pts - Ether points (magic) - are used to gain more
Ether abilities... ether abilities are gained through
a hierarchy much like the whole sphere board of Final
Fantasy X, except each character's board is unique..
you need a certain amount of pts to gain a new ability
on the hierarchy or you can spend your points giving
the ability to another charcter in your party ...
S.pts - Skill points - skill points are used to gain
an ability from a 'skill' item in your inventory.. once
gained you can equip only 3 of these abilities ... these
abilities are like Physical Attack +2, Poison Evade,
and so forth ...
you usually get 5-10 of each type of these pts. after
battle and most ways to spend the points usualy start
costing around 100, and build up higher.
- Dyre - 3.09.02
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Xenosaga I
Der Wille zur Macht
out of 4
Sony Playstation 2
February 28th, 2002
Production
Japanese Release
Director
some guy
Development
Monolith
Distrubution
Namco
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