The last episode of Xenosaga and it shows greatly in the design!
The battle system is light years better then #2. I loved the ES battle system, I went back to Able's Ark after I bat the game just to fight in the ES.
However, there were some down sides. I felt there was too much emphasis on the ES battling and not so much on the normal battling method. Also in this game the Gnosis were a pain the in ass to fight because they had such high defense coupled with high hp. Towards the end I started escaping from Gnosis battles because they were taking too long and making me waste too many items. My party's level was 56-58.
Boss battles in this game seemed toned down for the most part. The only one that gave me hell was Inversion, I had to fight that thing literally 8 times before I beat it yet I beat Zarathustra on the first try (the final boss) as well as the final fight against Margules and Levi in one try (its supposed to be the hardest ES fight in the game).
The story was AWESOME this time around, I literally said WTF!!! when Wilhelm did what he did toward the end, I had no idea.
It ties the plot up nicely and I thought it was the best executed out of each of the other games.
The game quality was superior in 3 as opposed to the others, the CGI scenes were very well done.
The voice acting in all three was superb but I felt that there was more feeling in this game then in the other ones.
Oh and Allen finally gets to score with Shion!! Right on! Been waiting for that ever since the first game. On that subject, Shion turns into a real B**** this game, if you have played it, you know what I mean.
But I loved being able to learn about her past, its so...colorful. And really sheds a lot of light on to the happenings in the other two games.
Xenosaga is a must play for RPG fans.