Continuing with my vaguely vitriolic rantings that might interest perhaps a handful of people: Xenosaga.

For some reason I was incredibly excited when Xenosaga was announced. I was in high school at that time, going through that phase where yes, bizarre esoteric philosophy really is the bomb (I was a nerd if you couldn’t already tell). Looking back on this I’ll be damned if I can figure out why, because the spiritual forebearer to this game, Xenogears, was arguably the most convoluted game I have ever played, both game play- and story-wise.

But that’s not my point. My point is Xenosaga. Going into it I probably knew immediately something was amiss. Why is that? Well, allow me to answer my own question with a question. Successful stories tend to make sense, don’t they? Because it’s about two hours in and I STILL HAVE NO CLUE WHAT IS HAPPENING. All I know is people are saying words (most are made up, I later checked) about… Something. I guess it was supposed to sound like a bunch of scientists in the future talking about future-stuff, but all it accomplished was confusing the hell out of me.

That’s pretty much par for the course of the entire game, though. Lots and lots of references to the Zohar and stuff like that, which even one glance of the associated Wikipedia page can tell that it’s definitely not something I want to even hear from, really.

I guess if you were really, really into fanfiction and comparative religion you have found your new favorite game. What I can say about both the story and the actual game itself is it seems like it took plenty of work, but the question is why someone might want to put so much effort into something so boring and so over the top convoluted. I wager that if they spent half the time actually thinking up decent characters and plot points instead of just attempting to sound deep the game would have been great. But instead it comes off as a game with a huge chubby for itself.

I’d make a bulleted list about what specifically is wrong with the plot, but I can summarize it with one bullet so I’ll do that:

• The story sucks. Plain and simple. Here’s the thing about sprawling space epics: typically the people involved are interesting enough so you care about their plights, and their universe by extension. I don’t know who this Shion girl is and she really doesn’t strike me as someone I’d care to know, so I really don’t care if these Alien (from the movie, Alien, and that’s where they ripped the idea from) eat her or not. Really none of my concern.

At its game play core it’s a competent RPG. Ignoring the stupid plot the game works by itself, so I can’t really comment. Room for improvement? Of course, but that’s really not the problem with this game. It’s as if the developers got together and, instead of concentrating on, I don’t know, making a good game, they instead got together and said “let’s make the most pretentious, convoluted mess of a plot we can possibly muster” and did just that.

Also, for future reference, Monolith Soft, when you threaten to tell your story in eight parts, you’ve already lost most of your audience due to time and money constraints alone. How long did it take the Final Fantasy series to reach number eight? The Dragon Quest series? You’re looking at ten+ years and several hundred dollars just to finally learn the deep secret of this drab, boring universe which will undoubtedly end like every generic RPG I’ve ever played (because you aren’t capable of better, let’s be honest): THE REAL ENEMY IS GOD!? NO!! You were already heading in that direction with the esoteric Jewish and Christian theology anyway, so don’t lie.

Written for Gamer Blag