Uh,
before we start, I did not intend for this essay to be almost 4000 words
long. Buuuuuut, here we are. So, yeah.
Oops. I can really get going when
I’m talking about things that I love. My
bad.
What
is Xenosaga? It’s a trilogy of games for
the PS2, which takes place within the same universe as Xenogears on the PS1,
and the Xenoblade Chronicles games on the Wii/Wii-U/Switch. It’s an epic space opera that’s deeply rooted
in philosophy, and the hidden meanings behind the myths that make up religion. It manages to have religious undertones
without being overtly religious. It
merely explores ideas put forth by Christianity from a standpoint of looking at
the roots of Christian mythology and examining what sort of sci-fi metaphysical
weirdness can be made up to explain them.
You
can watch a pretty good fan made trailer for the trilogy to get an idea of what
the series is all about here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5icsrI84aws
So,
one of the side effects of having zero social obligations outside of work for
almost two years now is that I’ve had a lot of free time to myself to work
through my videogame backlog. All those
games I picked up, thinking hey, this one looks good, maybe I’ll play it
sometime. Yeah, now I’ve played through
most of those. I was sitting there,
looking at what was left, and kind of not really feeling like starting any of
them. I mean, I am down to the dregs
here. And, the thought of actually
finding something productive to do with my time frightened me, so I thought,
what’s a game I really enjoyed that I wouldn’t mind playing again. And Xenosaga popped into my head. How long has it been since I played through
Xenosaga?
Holy
crap, that first game came out in February 2002.
That’s
almost twenty freaking years.
D’oh. I’m old.
So,
I went to my shelf, and grabbed the trilogy, then headed to my closet to dig
out my PS2. As Bandai Namco, who hold
the distribution rights to this series, view the trilogy as a financial
failure, they have never invested in porting it to any other systems. It is available on PS2 and PS2 only. I dusted off my trusty old PS2, and then went
to Amazon to buy a PS2 to HDMI converter, because apparently my shiny new TV
doesn’t have RCA ports on it. So, a
couple days later when that arrived, I plugged it all in, popped in Xenosaga
Episode 1 and… crap. My PS2 is so old
that it no longer reads discs. So, back
to Amazon, how much does a PS2 go for these days. TWO HUNDRED FREAKING DOLLARS!?!?! That’s almost as much as they cost when they
released over 20 years ago. What the
hell! Over to Ebay, then. Not much better.
But
I was set on replaying these games. What? No! Of
course I didn’t spend $200 on a PS2. I
downloaded a freaking emulator, hooked my laptop up to my TV via HDMI, and
played with a wireless Xbone controller.
So. A bit of history for this series. It first began with Xenogears for the
PS1. That was, despite its second disc,
my favorite PS1 game. It did a lot of
things I’d never seen, story and character-wise, in a videogame before. It was kind of more of an adult sort of
story, with questions about the meaning of existence, uncovering the truths
behind the myths that make up religion, and defining oneself. It was a game that wasn’t afraid to treat me
like an adult instead of a kid. At one
time it was in the running to be Final Fantasy 7, but it was deemed to be to
philosophical and religious, and was released as its own thing. Unfortunately, the team working on the game
ran through their entire budget before reaching the end of the game, and when
they asked Squaresoft for more, they were given just enough money to slap
together a quick visual novel style ending for the game that many people found
to be very unsatisfying. I was annoyed
by it, but I loved the story, the characters, and the world so much that I
replayed that game several times, looking for all the hidden meanings in
everything. And off course there is that
infamous line of text at the end of the credits. “End of Xenogears Episode 5.” Whaaaaaaaaat?
There was going to be more of these?
Did I miss four others? To the
fledgling internet, I must know!!! Yeah,
no, they were just pulling a George Lucas and telling a later part of the story
first.
Fast
forward a few years, and it was announced that Tetsuya Takahashi, the creator
of Xenogears, had left Squaresoft to form his own company Monolith Soft, and
struck a deal with Bandai Namco to produce a six game series taking place
within the same universe as Xenogears called Xenosaga. I was so incredibly hyped for these
games. A continuation of the game that
I’d loved so much? Maybe those 4 missing
Xenogears episodes that were teased at the end of the credits? Hell yeah!
Sign me up! So, I watched and
waited eagerly for the games to release, Watching and rewatching trailers for
the game over, and over, and over again, which brings us to 2002 when the first
game finally came out.
So. Xenosaga Episode 1. It was all I had hoped it would be and
more. It’s a completely new story with a
lot of the same themes, philosophical ideas, and religious undertones as
Xenogears, but with new characters and in a new setting. An alien race called the Gnosis are slowly but
steadily wiping humanity from the galaxy in the distant future, while Shion
Uzuki, a software engineer, and our main protagonist, is developing weapons to
fight against them. There are half a
dozen different factions, all with different goals, vying for dominance while
the end of humanity is visible not too far off on the horizon. It is truly epic in scope, but doesn’t forget
that an epic story is nothing without well developed and sympathetic
characters. There are certain things
that tie Saga to Gears, but they’re pretty subtle, and you don’t need to play
one to enjoy the other. There are things
like the Zohar, Anima Relics, and the Wave Existence that exist within both
stories, etc.
So,
was the game as good as I remembered it being?
Well, yes and no. The story and
characters are still amazing. But the English
translation is terrible, and the voice acting isn’t much better. The gameplay and graphics are very
dated. Your character moves at a snail’s
pace. The battle animations are
ridiculously long and cannot be skipped or sped up in any way, and it has a lot
of sections where there’s just a ton of pointless backtracking toward no real
end but making the game longer. There
are also some pretty hefty difficulty spikes early on in the game. It is not balanced very well AT ALL. The game was also heavily censored for the
English release, removing several scenes deemed to be too intense, and removing
a fair quantity of blood. But oh man,
that story and those characters. I loved
it. Even with the clunky gameplay, bad
acting, and terrible translation. It’s
still a great, great game even now, twenty years later. While playing through it, I was constantly
saying to myself, this game is so good.
This game is better than I remembered it being. Man, I love this game.
The
game sold pretty well, but not amazingly so.
It made money, but only just. It
also had a lot of criticism. People
didn’t like the way that the story is told through long sections of prerendered
CG cutscenes. There are some very long
sections where you’re more watching the game than playing it. It was also pretty short. You can do a full completion of the game in
under 30 hours. These two things are
pretty typical by today’s standards, but back then, people got pretty annoyed
at the number of cutscenes, and the fact that the game wasn’t 60+ hours in
length.
So. That brings us to Xenosaga Episode two, which
released 2 years later. I don’t think I
have ever been more hyped for anything in my life than I was for this game. And it did not disappoint me. It was better than I hoped it would be. The game also ends with one of the most epic
cliffhangers I’ve ever seen in a videogame.
Now, this game is the “controversial” one in the trilogy. People really seem to HATE this game. The focus shifts from Shion, the main
protagonist in the first game to Jr., who was more of a side character that
didn’t really enter into the first game until about halfway through. And Shion is basically sidelined for a pretty
large portion of this game while we delve into Jr.’s backstory. But, as Jr. was a pretty intriguing character
in his own rights, I wasn’t mad at the shift of focus from Shion over to
him. I still really like Shion, she’s my
favorite character in the series, but I understood that Jr. really needed to be
the focus of this story. People were
angry that instead of cutting down on cutscenes like they wanted, Monolith Soft
doubled down and added in far more cutscenes than in the first game. They also created an entirely new battle and
skill system, and whoo-boy, that battle and skill system.
To
call the battle system complicated would be an understatement. It is ridiculously complex, and it requires a
fair bit of strategy to get through even fights against trash mobs. Enemies have weak and strong zones in a paper
rock scissors sort of thing, and every enemy is different with its
weaknesses. And then there is a break
mechanic, and a knockdown mechanic, and a boost to skip enemy turns mechanic
that all have to be mastered and utilized or else the game will just completely
steamroll you, because it uses all of those things against you at every
opportunity. The game also breaks its
own rules on how the battle system functions on several of the boss fights to
artificially make the fights more difficult.
It also does an EXTREMELY poor job of explaining how it all works to the
player. I had to look up a guide to
explain it to me in detail the first time I played this game, because I was
getting slaughtered on just normal trash mobs, much less boss fights. Luckily you don’t have to remember what each
enemy’s weak zones are, because there’s a skill you can unlock that will
remember them for each enemy type you encounter after you figure out what its
weakness is. That is, of course, if you
can figure out how the skill system works.
The first time I played this game I didn’t even realize that there was a
skill system until I was almost halfway through the game. That is how poorly the game explains things
to you. The skill system is also overly
complicated and pretty clunky to use. The battle system is so unwieldly that it even
the simplest of fights can take forever to get through, and boss battles can
last upwards of 30-45 mins. This is not
helped by the fact that the battle animations, like in the first game, are
extremely slow, with no way to speed them up.
Back in the day, when 3d character models were kind of a new thing, gamers
were awed by intricate battle animations.
They were a brand new thing that added to the experience. Now-a-days, we’ve all seen it and ain’t
nobody got time for that no more, but back in the early 2000s, that was just
the way that games were made, and nobody complained because we didn’t know
better, and we were still being dazzled by the graphics.
And
so, all of these things kind of pissed a lot of people off, and turned them
away from the series. And even so, I
still love the game. It’s a perfect
continuation of the story, delving deeper into the mysteries, while also
advancing the plot and the characters. But,
Xenosaga 2 still outsold Xenosaga 1, despite the backlash. Again, the sales were respectable, but not
amazing. So, as Monolith Soft was
gearing up to head into production for the third game in the series, Bandai Namco
came to them and told them that the series was underperforming, and they had
one game to finish their story.
So,
they took the story that would have been Xenosaga 5 and 6 and they crammed them
into what would become the Xenosaga Episode 3 that we have today. It’s pretty blatant that this is the story of
two games in one, as there is a very distinct climax and cliffhanger cutting
off point that was clearly meant to be the end of game 5. But what about the story for Xenosaga 3 and
4? Why, thank you for asking, random
imaginary person I made up to ask that question. The story for what would have been Xenosaga 3
and 4 was stripped down to it’s very, very, very bare bones and released in a
six episode visual novel, which was, of course, never officially released
outside of Japan.
All
together, the visual novel parts add up to being about 90 mins long, and it’s
basically just a couple of the voice actors telling you a brief summary of what
the games would have been. It’s pretty
unsatisfying, and extremely low budget, if I’m being honest. The problem is that some elements of the
third game do not make any sense at all without having seen this visual novel
first. Shion does a bit of recapping the
events that happen between the games, but she doesn’t go into enough detail to
make it all gel and make sense. A lot of
it is left to your imagination, which can be pretty annoying. It wasn’t until years later that I was able
to find an English fan translation on youtube, and finally fill myself in on
the missing elements of the story.
You
can find the fan translations I watched here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhkdGQOixb1cbR4UDX1iFT1M_ErV5dWxA
Bandai
Namco had so little faith in the international sales of this game that they
only produced a limited quantity of the English discs. Basically, if you didn’t preorder this game,
you probably never saw it in a store.
And it was never even released officially in Europe. There are even stories floating around on the
internet that people who did preorder it never got their copies, because Bandai
Namco didn’t send out enough copies to cover the preorders that some stores had
taken for the game. It was this mess
that prompted Nintendo of America to pass on translating and releasing
Xenoblade Chronicles, the next game in the Xeno series, until the fan outrage
reached epic levels. And even then, they
botched it with a craptastic Gamestop exclusivity deal that managed to piss
pretty much everyone off, including Gamestop.
Anyway,
when this game came out, I was pretty disappointed with it. I can’t even remember why. Fifteen years ago me was a freaking idiot. This game is amazing, and it is now my
favorite one of the trilogy. Now that I
know what happens in the year between Xenosaga 2 and 3, the story makes a lot
more sense. The battle and skill systems
were simplified, streamlined, and BLESSEDLY sped up. The graphics were improved upon. The focus shifts back to Shion as the main
protagonist, and man does this game put her through the wringer.
There
are a few things you’re probably going to notice right off in this game. The first is the sound design. For some unfathomable reason, someone thought
jacking the volume on your character’s footsteps up to 11 was a great
idea. It’s kind of annoying. There are also several sections where someone
is repeating something endlessly over an intercom in the background and it can
get pretty annoying. The next thing
you’ll probably notice is that there are nowhere near as many prerendered CG
cutscenes in this game as in the previous two.
This was done to save time and money, and help facilitate cramming two
games worth of story into one game. The
first game had something like 7 hours of prerendered cutscenes. The second had 12. This one has 3. Instead, we have rudimentary in engine
graphics giving simple motions corresponding with what’s happening, while the
story is told through dialog text boxes that are voiced over it. Oddly enough, for me at least, this made me
feel more like I was playing the game rather than watching it. Strange that such a lowering in quality in
the visuals of story scenes would be more immersive than the prerendered
cutscenes, eh?
This
game has far more censoring than either of the two previous games in the
trilogy. And there are some pretty
egregious edits here. The complete
removal of blood from the game leads to some hilariously bad scenes where the
blood is a big part of what is happening.
A young version of Shion trying to pour her dead mother’s blood back
into her because she doesn’t understand what death is and thinks she can fix
her by doing so comes to mind. Imagine a
scene where she’s doing that, but her hands are completely empty because the
censors removed all the blood.
The
ending is a little rushed, and it’s pretty open ended. Things are resolved, and it is a clear ending
in the story, but there’s room for more stories if ever they decide to continue
it. But I loved it. Like I said, after replaying the whole
trilogy, this game is now my favorite of the three. Shion is a great protagonist that goes
through so much horrible crap through all three games before she finally comes
out the other end stronger and better for it.
She’s not perfect. She makes
mistakes. Hell, she even joins the villains
at one point in the game because she’s so desperate for someone who will show
her even a little bit of love and kindness, and accept her for who she is. It makes her overcoming everything and realizing that what she was really looking for is the ability to forgive, love and accept herself that more
impactful.
A
character like this would just never exist in modern media. No female character is allowed to be anything
short of perfect these days, which makes them very boring and hard to relate
to. Any big character moments are
completely undercut by the fact that they’re never wrong, completely incapable
of failure of any sort, and have nothing to really overcome and earn that story
moment. But a character who is suffering
from things I’ve suffered from, who is looking for the meaning in her own
existence, and who keeps getting beaten down repeatedly over the course of the
story, but still finds the strength to stand back up again. That’s a character who is meaningful to you
long after the ending of the story. That’s
going to stick with you. That’s a
character you’re going to remember. Who
is going to teach you things about yourself.
A character that you can stand up and root for when the odds are long,
and cheer for when she finally overcomes.
It
just really illustrates how completely awful modern media is at the portrayal
of strong female characters to me. Strength comes from more places than just a character's muscles. A character can be strong without being an ultimate badass in a fight. The ability to endure, and stand back up again when the world slams you to the ground is another, and frankly more meaningful, way of showing one's strength. A
character that doesn’t earn her eventual triumph in the end isn’t a character
worth remembering. For example, if she
didn’t have the Star Wars brand attached to her, would you even remember who
Rey “Skywalker” even was at this point? Can you remember ANYTHING that she did? Can you name one single defining personality trait that she has, or quote a single line of memorable dialog that she gives? Neither can I.
Did the Captain Marvel movie earn her Carol's moment of triumph at the end of her movie through overcoming any sort of adversity? What's that, she just remembers dealing with shit literally every human being on this earth deals with on a daily basis and pretends that overcoming it is some epic triumph? Yeah, fuck you Captain Marvel writers, you have failed to write a character that is even the slightest bit compelling or unique. She's not even uniquely bad, because characters exactly like her bland, unrelatable ass are popping up in all forms of American media. Shion
earns it by having a dark and tragic past that is deeply explored throughout
the trilogy, being shown to fail time and time again, being visibly beaten down
by the horrors of her life, and, when faced with her own death, decides to deny
the villain what he wants, something that SHE also wants very much, for the
greater good. Choosing to sacrifice her
life, if need be, to do the right thing, instead of the thing that she feels
she deserves after all that she’s been through.
Do
you see the difference?
So. The question is: Is the Xenosaga Trilogy
worth playing in 2021?
Yes. It absolutely is. With some minor caveats. It is a great story, about great
characters. It explores some really deep
questions about the meaning of existence, and why we go on with our lives. It delves into interesting questions about
religion without pushing an overt religious message down your throat. The gameplay and graphics are a bit dated. Gameplay in the third game is more in line
with modern JRPGs, while the first two games are pretty clunky, slow, and
needlessly complicated to play. These
games have long been near the top of my list for favorite videogames of all
time, and replaying them has only reaffirmed to me why they deserve to be
there. They are epic in scope, and
emotionally meaningful. That is, if you
can get past the clunky gameplay, bad translation, silly censoring, and
questionable acting in the first two games.
Now
for the bad news.
These
games were never released on any system but the PS2. They never sold terribly well, which means
there are limited copies existing in the world, especially for the third
game. A full set of all three can run
you upwards of $400 these days. And that
is assuming that you have access to a working PS2, which, as I found out, I no
longer do. For most people, the only
financially feasible way of playing these games would be to… ahem… sail the
high seas, if you know what I mean. If
you can get your hands on copies of the games, or have no compunctions against
piracy, I highly recommend them. They
are among my favorite games of all time.
(Note
that I do not condone piracy, I’m only pointing out that the option exists for
those with fewer scruples than me. Yes,
I did emulate the games to play through them this year, but I still own
them. I have the discs sitting on the
shelf right over there. I paid money for
them, and I ripped the .ISOs from the discs myself to plug into the emulator.)
Also
to note, there was a 12 episode anime series made of the first game. It is extremely low budget, and the story is
changed significantly. It’s just not
very good, and it kind of misses the point of the story entirely, so I wouldn’t
recommend it. But those games man. They are amazing and beautiful. Go play them, however you’re able to.