Xenosaga games. Yes or no?

[80Maxwell08]

So I've been reading about Xenogears and wondering if it's worth playing that but from what I've read here just reading a let's play would be better. I haven't seen the Xenosaga series mentioned much though. I remember playing the first one quite a bit (though I never finished it) when I was a kid but I played a lot of crap as a kid. Also I only played the first one which I managed to reacquire some time ago. So is the series worth going through or should I just stop before I've wasted any of my time?

 

[yes plz]

Xenogears is the best of the Xeno lot. Sure, the second disc sucks, but as far as JRPGs go, the first disc is probably one of the best JRPGs to exist. I'd recommend playing it.

For Xenosaga, I enjoyed the first for its story faggotry (really, there's no other reason to play it), absolutely hated the second one (shitty story and shitty combat; they basically changed writers after the first one) to the point that I never completed it, and thus never played the third one, which I've heard (even from people who hated the second) that it's the best of the series. I've been meaning to try to replay through XS myself but have been waiting for the fan translation of the DS remake of 1&2, which was written by the original writer for the series but as per the nature of all fan translations, it could be another couple of years before it sees the light of day, if it's released at all.

Overall, the answer to your question essentially comes down to how much you like cinematics and story related stuff in your JRPGs. If you really like your JRPGs story heavy and don't much care about gameplay, I'd say give them a try. If, instead, you prefer gameplay over story crap, then avoid the Xeno series like the plague.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Overall, the answer to your question essentially comes down to how much you like cinematics and story related stuff in your JRPGs. If you really like your JRPGs story heavy and don't much care about gameplay, I'd say give them a try. If, instead, you prefer gameplay over story crap, then avoid the Xeno series like the plague.

I can ignore one over the other provided one side is really good. Thanks for your post.

 

[Dire Roach]

Xenosaga Episode 1's story is slow, convoluted, and easily forgettable. The characters are full of derp. The gameplay is a series of dull combat grinds lightly sprinkled between cutscenes that seem to last longer than most movies you can watch in a theater these days.

But you already played this one, so I write this as a warning for anyone who, like me, enjoyed Xenogears and was curious about Xenosaga. If Xenosaga Ep.1 is supposed to have a good story, I don't want to imagine how awful the second and third episodes are.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Just avoid Xenoblade. That game was all kinds of shit.

 

[SuicideBunny]

from what I've read here just reading a let's play would be better.

no, play it yourself, including the incredibly tedious beginning of the second disc. it's still worth it.
as for xenosaga... not worth buying or playing when you can just look for all the sequences on youtube and watch those.

 

[Malpercio]

Xenogears is a must.

Xenosaga eh, it's kinda hit or miss. I wouldn't recommend it blindly unless you know what are getting into, 1 is good but sloow, 2 is awful, 3 is best in the series both story-wise and gameplay-wise (it's my favorite jrpg).

Of course the series is pretentious Japanese thing with Christian namedropping and whatnot, but if you are playing rpg you should probably be able to deal with these things.

 

[abnaxus]

 

[80Maxwell08]

Well I was going to play Xenosaga 1 eariler but for some reason my disc won't work in my emulator. Works on my PS3 though. Is this a common occurrence with the first game or is it just me? I'm using PCSX2 1.0.0 if anyone has heard this happen before.

 

[yes plz]

Is the game simply not working at all or are you getting a lot of graphical and performance problems with it?

 

[80Maxwell08]

Is the game simply not working at all or are you getting a lot of graphical and performance problems with it?

It doesn't show up. When I boot up the emulator it boots up like there's no disc. It doesn't even register there's a PS2 game in the disc drive. I put in another game and it works fine so it seems to be only my Xenosaga disc with this problem.

 

[yes plz]

Xenosaga is a dual layered disc, so your drive might not be able to read it.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Xenosaga is a dual layered disc, so your drive might not be able to read it.

Well no idea what the problem was but I found out how to take an iso from the disc so I just did that. Works fine now.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Xenosaga 3 is worth playing

 

[Gurkog]

Am I the only person who was bored to death while playing Xenogears? The combos and stuff were OK at the start, but it just got repetitive after a while. Don't get me started on the platforming finale... never finished the game because even though I was masochistic enough to get to end I was not going to punish myself with that.

I also found the story boring as hell. Maybe I am just not into anime.

 

[yes plz]

Yeah, the platforming parts did range from mildly annoying to fucking atrocious, but now when ever I replay it I do so on ePSXe and make liberal use of savestates during those parts.

Speaking of the story, I wish someone would retranslate the game. Not that it was particularly bad or inaccurate but I remember finding it really awkward at times.

 

[abnaxus]

CD2 of Xenogears is torture. It nearly ruined the entire game for me.

 

[Whisky]

They're great if you like cutscenes. I mean really like cutscenes, because the game does not fuck around with them.

As for gameplay, generally it goes 3 > 1 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 2.

Xenosaga 2's battle system is absolute boring bullshit.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Well I think I'm going to play through them. Also when emulating Xenosaga 1 the second save point you can come across crashes the game. So I need to go find the 3rd one and hope that doesn't crash it too. Or I could find out how savestates work. Either or.

 

[groke]

Yasunori Mitsuda is cool, some times you might almost think you're playing Chrono Trigger instead.

 

[Damned Registrations]

CD2 of Xenogears is torture. It nearly ruined the entire game for me.

I didn't mind it. Half hour cutscene was a nice break after the 5 hour marathon of attempts to kill the fucker right before him and the game was plenty long enough already without making you fight through another 5 dungeons.

 

[yes plz]

The problem with those 'cutscenes' is that about half of them aren't even what most people think of when talking about cutscenes, even for JRPGs. They're not scenes of the characters doing stuff or even talking to other characters, instead it's a single character giving you the cliff notes of cutscenes that you didn't get to see.

 

[abnaxus]

It's like with the final two episodes of Evangelion.

 

[Whisky]

Yasunori Mitsuda is cool, some times you might almost think you're playing Chrono Trigger instead.

Yeah, it's too bad he didn't do the rest of the series. Though the person they got for Episode 3 was pretty great, they're same with the person who did the cutscene music in Episode 2 (The gameplay music of 2 though...ugh...).

Actually it's odd, for a JRPG there's so many areas with no music in Episode 1.

 

[Malpercio]

Yuki Kajiura is awesome.