An intresting JRPG that keeps you going for its story, although it feels like it drags on, best for anime and JRPG fans.
Story: 4000 after humans left the earth and moved to outer space the galaxy is being threatened by species known as gnosis; which devours every living thing in the universe and have the power to manipulate matter, their battle with the humans almost lasted for decades and while human technology has advanced significantly so do the gnosis, the gap between their strength never seems to fade and it is only a matter of time before the human as well as other life forms will fall to the gnosis, now the fate of humanity rests within the shoulders of dr Shion Uzuki and the combat mobile weapon KOS-MOS.
Graphics wise the game is alright, it sort of tries to immitate and anime art style with a bit of cel-shading added to the mix, while the mouth and body motions are fliud facial expressions are almost non-existent or very very very difficult to notice, so its like a bunch of puppets talking to eachother which doesn't look very impressive, the game however doese feature amazing looking CG cut scenes and the environments look great.
The game is progressed in a linear fasion that are split into chapters, while there isn't any exploration involved you will later be able to backtrack in order to pick up some items you may have missed in the previouse levels.
The story of the game can be very confusing for those who can't keep up with the constant short words and game exclusive vocabulary characters keep talking about in the game (like UMN or AGWS or Gnosis and many many MANY more) so if understanding the story is an issue there is an encyclopedia which gives a detail of every characters, enemies and weapons you have encountered in the game.
Combat wise the game is turn based, the combat is pretty deep and complex and gives room for much creativity.
Basically although each character will have a single turn to do something there are variouse things they can do in those turns,
for one you can attack using AP (Action points) basically every attack consumes a number of action points, every turn you gain 4 AP, attacking will cost 2 APs so you will have 2 APs left so you can either attack again and perform combos or conserve the APs for the next turn in order to perform more powerful attacks that require more APs, conserving APs will also make your next turn come quicker than usual.
There are close range and long range attacks as well as each having their variouse elemental properties depending on the combo you input, so there is room for experimenting.
You can guard which reduces damage by about 15% (pretty weak defence bonuse though) and can be used as a way to conserve APs.
You can use Ethers (Magic) to perform variouse status effects such as healing, boosting attack power, boosting speed and etc.
You can ride mechas called AGWAS which will let you pilot a mobile suit, not only will it have greater fire power but will also have greater HP, defence and more powerful ultimate attacks, the down side though is that your speed will become slower and once you die inside the mech you will permenantly be KO for the entire battle and you won't be able to revive them.
There are other gameplay elements but i don't want to go through all of them since I don't want this review to drag on but in short, the game has a very deep combat system which gives room for plenty of creativity.
Like many other RPGs each battle will earn you experience points which will level up each character, you can only use a max of 3 characters per party but other characters will also gain experience points even if they are not used which saves you the trouble of having to level up each character.
Leveling up each character will not only improve their states but they can also learn new attacks and gain other items and points essential for specific character development.
As far as the game's pacing goes its managable, its possible to go through the game without ever having to grind however the boss battles have specific tactics in defeating them, using regular tactics will not only make battles significantly difficult but will make them drag on and make you waste lots of healing items, thats why grinding every once in a while is recommended so that you can figure out the best tactic to defeat those bosses.
Some bosses however are a bit flaudly designed, there are some who will start to execute attacks that give a huge amount of damage and they will often do them several times in a row (some bosses even have instant KO attacks) and that can make the game very frustrating.
As far the game's sound is conserned the voice casts for every character is pretty good so no complaints there, sound effects are varied as well however as far as music goes the game completely lacks variety, through out the ENTIRE game you will hear the same battle music for regular enemies and bosses a like, at first the music was good but if you hear if for over 20 hours then it will completely lose its appeal, as for environments you will only hear music during stress moments within the story (which is by the way the exact same music in every stress situation) otherwise every environment has no music what so ever which can kill the mood very quickly, you will ulimately want to continue playing only for the story and nothing else.
My conclusion of this game is that it has a great story and a very deep combat system, however the game completely lacks presentation and there is no music to make environments exciting and character facial expressions is almost completely abscent not to mention some boss battles are needlesly frustrating.
Xenosaga Episode I Der Will Zur Macht is a good JRPG but a hit or miss kind of game, I'd only recommend this for JRPG fans and those that like animes, as for the rest give the game a try, you may or may not like it.