Before recommending this game, I want to make one thing clear: this game has tons of cutscenes and they are long and full of technical details. If you have no tolerance for this, you will not like this game.
That being said, Xenosaga is a unique, engaging experience that will stick with you if you give it a chance to have its way with you. You'll quickly notice that the actual game is not as ambitious as the narrative and doesn't have the attention to detail present in said narrative, but the combat is fairly deep and strategic and the environments get the job done, even if they are not particularly inspired. And while some may call the story pretentious, the pretentiousness pays off in the form of a story that serves up the kind of striking, unorthodox moments that are not common in the genre. It's kind of like Metal Gear Solid wrapped in a Zone of the Enders atmosphere and aesthetic. Yes, the game has its fair share of faults, but being trite is definitely not one of them.
The story is extremely complicated, so I'm only going to give the most basic summary. Xenosaga: Episode 1 hinges on Shion Uzuki, a kind of bookish babe who works for a company called Vector Industries and is developing and testing a battle android called Kos-Mos, who I'm sure anybody who has an interest in this game all ready realizes is the game's "mascot" so to say. Kos-Mos is being developed to fight off an invasion courtesy of the Gnosis, a rather frightening species of alien that is wreaking havoc on the universe. I know this sounds rather simple, but the Gnosis invasion is only one layer of the story. Woven into the Gnosis narrative are secret societies, government duplicity, philosophy (the title is actually taken from the work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche), religion, moral tensions regarding the treatment of androids, etc. This is such a dense tale, packed with so much information and detail that the game sometimes bites off more than it can chew and the characters are tasked with explaining things rather than doing things. In fact, the game's shining moment is the one with the least exposition: the first Gnosis invasion. Sure, the exposition is often interesting, but sometimes the obsession with technical details gets rather boring and makes the cutscenes drag on longer than they need to. But overall, this is a story that tries hard to engage you and in a genre with an abundance of trite stories, you'll appreciate the effort.
The game is not as big on character development as it is on plot details, which is why it's a good thing that the characters are all ready quite well-developed when they come into the story. With the exception of the character Chaos, who the developers try way too hard to impart a mysterious aura to, they all have pretty well fleshed-out motives and they seem quite convincing even though the story can be pretty crazy at times. Furthermore, the flashes into their pasts are quite intriguing and made me want to see the series through. That being said, there are some characters that grate even if they are well-drawn. Shion is condescending and b!tchy and has a shrill voice that perfectly embodies those qualities and her assistant Allen is such a weak lapdog that it might infuriate you if you have a low tolerance for neutered males. The rest of the cast is pretty likeable however. Kos-Mos is always android-like to the point of adorableness, Junior's man-in-a-boy's-body attitude is endearing and the relationship between Momo, a much more human android who takes the form of a 12 year old girl, and Ziggy, an ex-human who wishes to completely become a machine, is precious.
Story is the driving force of Xenosaga: Episode 1, but the gameplay is no slouch. The battle system might take a little getting used to and some battles drag on too long, but once you get used to it, you'll find that the system is quite strategic and rewarding. Basically, it works like this: you can press square or triangle to combine basic attacks in various combinations. If you guard and build up enough AP (I believe the full term is action points), you can combine two normal attacks and one special move, which the game refers to as a tech attack. If you don't guard, you won't be able to pull off these attacks with any regularity, so it pays to guard often since you'll also be shielding yourself from the pretty nasty attacks that enemies throw at you. Your normal attacks and tech attacks sometimes have elements attached to them (like fire or lighting, though it's much more subtle and realistic here) and you'll need to use the right combos to exploit enemy weaknesses. Range is important as well, which is why the game gives you ranged attacks and close quarters attacks. Augmenting this is the ability to move to different positions on the battlefield to minimize damage. Plus, the enemies will sometimes push you back, compromising your ability to attack, so you'll need to use the move function to get back into the action. I know player movement in turn-based battle systems isn't exactly novel, but it's a nice change of pace in Xenosaga.
In addition to combinations of physical attacks, you can use ether, which includes things like healing spells, buffs and debuffs, and other useful "spells". Since the game gives you tons of ether-restoring items, it pays to use ether as much as you need to.
The most useful and fun aspect of the battle system is boosting. If a character's boost gauge is full, they can take an extra turn. If you can keep your characters boosted for long enough, you can create a situation in which your opponent can't get an attack in edgewise, which is extremely satisfying. Luckily, keeping your characters boost gauge up is easy since you can fill it via a boost ether.
There's another way to get boost, which leads me to the event slot. During the battle, the event slot will alternate between different phases. One phase boosts a character when they land a hit during said phase, another slot ups damage output, another gives a character more points for defeating an enemy, etc. Smart players can use event slot to shape the rhythm of a battle to their own liking. And if you don't really care, you don't really have to pay all that much attention to it, even if it benefits the enemies just as much as it benefits you. That being said, boosting is not as easily ignored. You can get through most battles without utilizing it, but some battles are tough as nails without some form of boosting.
The character customization is very robust, maybe even too much so. You have experience points, which increase your level like any other RPG, but then there's also technique points, which can be used to upgrade techs and increase the values of individual stats; ether points, which are used to acquire new ether skills (or transfer them to other characters); and skill points, which are used to extract skills from items. These skills help prevent status ailments like poison and confusion and do other neat things like increasing defense or revealing an enemy's HP information. Of course customization freaks will have a whole lot to sink their teeth into, but others might find it tiresome to manage so many different kinds of points. It pays to give attention to them all however.
Another thing to manage is the A.G.W.S, which are mechs that certain characters can pilot at any point in battle. They are quite tank-like if you bother to upgrade their frames, but I never found them very useful, except for certain bosses later in the game. I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say that most people will find the A.G.W.S to be kind of lame compared to the mech sections of Xenogears.
The battle system could have been a little trimmer overall, but for the most part, I thought it was engaging and rewarded strategy. It also helped that the bosses were fairly challenging, but not overly so. Mindlessly attacking simply won't work at normal levels, so it pays to have a strategy, especially one centered around boosting.
The game is not all that impressive in respect to the environmental design. There's nothing particularly wrong with it and the environments are like something out of a cool sci-fi anime, if not particularly detailed, but you can't help but feel that the overall structure of the game underachieves compared to its ambitious story. The game is pretty linear, but unlike Final Fantasy X, it doesn't have the aesthetic beauty or visual attention to detail to compensate. The game does have atmosphere and to be fair, it does have a few very interesting locations, but the environments are a little flat on the whole. Competent, but nothing to write home about.
The pacing is mixed. Some sections are extremely exciting due to suspenseful pacing, but other sections seem like they involve too much wandering back and forth. Fortunately, the game has enough exciting moments that most of the time you'll be compelled to push forward.
The visuals in Xenosaga: Episode 1 are undoubtedly crisp and are some of the better JRPG visuals you're likely to run across on the system, but the game doesn't really hold a candle to the Final Fantasy games. The character models are great (with the exception of Chaos) and everything has a very smooth, clean look that is easy on the eyes, but there is a certain lack of detail that makes it so that the visuals excel more in terms of technical competence than artistic design. It's still a great looking game however. Plus, the cutscenes generally kick ass (especially the ones involving android bad ass Kos-Mos) even if some of the transitions are abrupt and choppy.
The sound aspect of this game is weird. The non-musical sound design is excellent and offers plenty of atmosphere and ambience. The music, however, is sparse and forgettable with the exception of a few tracks. Perhaps the abundance of silence serves the game's generally eerie atmosphere, but it's kind of disappointing that there's not much music and so much of the music that is there is just not that compelling.
In the end, Xenosaga: Episode 1 will not rock people's worlds the way Xenogears did, but it is nevertheless a thoroughly engaging experience that really can't be gotten anywhere else. The philosophy and religion and even the German subtitle might make some roll their eyes, but I am glad to have experienced something as resonant and unique as Xenosaga, pretensions and all.
GAMEPLAY: 4.5/5
DESIGN: 4/5
STORY: 4.5/5
VISUALS: 4/5
PLAYABILITY: 4/5
VALUE: 4/5