I'm still a bit undecided about the overall look, differentiating the technically good from the visually pleasing. On one hand, it has some of the better character models to grace the PS2, each sporting plenty of detail with some of the best-rendered hair to grace any game. This translates wonderfully to the well-animated cut scenes and even to the CG, which flows beautifully due to the use of in-game character models. Clipping still exists all over as hair and fingers pass through each other and various body parts, but even during the extreme cases in which entire body parts disappear into the floor, it is kept low-key enough to not be a bother. All of these things add up to make the cut scenes that seemingly appear with your every movement always a joy to watch, as they don't suffer from any of the problems that plague something like Final Fantasy X.

On the other hand, the designs themselves are where it starts to fall apart a bit. Everything is in space, and on top of that almost exclusively in spaceships, so no matter where the characters travel, it's nothing but sterile steel walls with silver as far as the eye can see. Even when they encounter destruction and cities torn apart, it's never more then a few minutes away from being once again encapsulated by cold smooth walls. I can count on one hand the number of times during the entire game in which something natural (or a man-made environment designed to look natural) showed up. In contrast to the game that this is essentially a remake of - Xenogears - this becomes particularly lacking, as the characters themselves suffer from the same shortcoming. All controllable characters save one suffer from almost-bad "we're in the future" outfits that manage to stave off the bad taste of FFX's clothes, but just barely. To have more people dress like the secondary members of the Elsa ship would have made them all look so much more natural. Instead we get forced oddities like the neon green knee-zip pants paired with an otherwise cool black trenchcoat that comes off more like "bad thrift-store shopper" than "head of a corporate conglomerate."

Voice-acting, thankfully, is just as successful as the visual technical front. It does ultimately suffer from two problems: a slightly unnatural sound, like the actors are purposefully enunciating every syllable, and Mary's southern accent, which only seems to kick in every other word or so. She really needs to make up her mind how she wants to talk, as her switching back and forth gets real annoying real quick. Outside of those annoyances, the voices are some of the best to grace the genre, each fitting its respective character with emotion never coming off as forced or lacking. In particular, a flashback of Jr. and a scene with Albedo are particularly chilling, simply because the voices were so perfect. If they had been off or inferior, those same scenes could be throwaway filler, but instead, the laughter and speech were so haunting and evil that both became immediately etched in my memory.

When the characters are actually interacting with each other and progressing the story, it is nothing short of astounding. The development and pacing is excellent, with just enough being fed to whet your appetite for more without ever letting it seem like you know everything. It's so tantalizing that every time I sat down to play Xenosaga I had to tear myself away hours later, always hungering for more and always wanting that next cut scene in hopes of it revealing more than I knew it would.

Once a scene begins, it's best if you sit back with a cup of your favorite beverage, as the average clip goes on for about ten minutes or so, with the lengthy ones taking so much time they have save points in the middle. Yet no matter how much they appear and no matter how long they go on, it remains so good because there's no other RPG with a story quite as deep or nearly as well done. This is truly an amazing bit of story-telling, something I shouldn't describe because it needs to be experienced, and revealing anything would be a disservice to it.

As I said earlier, the playable portions aren't nearly as much a part of a game as the story is, and they come off as limited when compared to other RPGs. There is no exploration; it's more like a mini dungeon crawler in which the only times you have control are in any kind of home base for supplies, and then it's off to a fairly linear area to fight your way through before the next series of cut scenes. Repeat for 30-odd hours. Even though there isn't as much here as I'd like, the developers definitely didn't skimp on what they did provide. Enemies are shown on the overworld and you can choose to activate battle or run away from them as you wish - although that doesn't always work, considering enemies are sometimes stuck in an area so well you have no choice but to fight. There's even a weapon provided to blast through walls and break open containers, offering a bit of interaction with the environments as well as a very satisfying explosion sound.

The battles themselves have a weird sort of balance. They're more like traditional RPGs in the way they play out as opposed to the heavy offense nature of Xenogears, but many little touches make the system one of the finest around. Winning battles nets more than experience points, it also gives out skill, tech, and ether points, each of which can be used for its respective area out of battle to improve specific areas for everyone. Tech points allow a character to boost the power of his special attacks or even allow the strongest blows to be used without charging up, or can be used to improve attributes. Skill points have the incredibly handy feature of being able to copy the ability of equipable items, so that even if you only have one poison guard everyone can copy it so your entire party is protected. Finally, ether points can be used to obtain more powerful spells or copy spells to characters that couldn't normally learn them. The system is insanely deep, allowing each person to become whatever you want them to be so long as you're willing to invest the time.

Using everything to fight with is just as interesting, and boss battles often require a lot of planning. From tech attacks to the different kinds of boosting (allowing you to intercept enemy attacks and vice versa), it becomes a carefully controlled dance in which a single misstep can cost dearly.

A few different controllable giant mechs, called AGWS, are at the characters' disposal. These are very much a double-edged sword, offering colossally high hit points and massive damage at the cost of being unable to heal or revive during battle. In addition, their weapons require ammo. Also highly annoying is the fact that status effects on them cannot be removed, meaning AGWS can even be removed completely (along with the character piloting) for an entire battle by a single spell if not equipped just right.

The difficulty in general seems very picky. I would be killed by a boss multiple times, then decide to go kill a couple more enemies first for fun, and suddenly the boss would die without any problem. Placement of tech skills literally changes the entire way battles play out and often means the difference between life and death. But frankly, there's so little fighting done overall that it's never a big problem and it rarely takes very much work to level up if need be.

Ultimately, Xenosaga left me a bit unfulfilled. The story is incredible and the execution is unmatched, with a battle system that offers far more than it first appears, but the lack of control on my part and such small playable areas made it seem like the quickest 33 hours of my life. So much time is spent watching, that the visited cities and inhabitants seemed underdeveloped with little to no backstory - almost wasteful of such places. With five more chapters, however, this is promising to be a story that eclipses anything else in video games, besting possibly even the epic Soul Reaver series. For what Monolith has done with the focused characters, I suppose I can let the extra bits slide, but we shall see how it develops. A shame it doesn't feel quite as good as Xenogears. Yet.

· · · MechDeus