A great ending to the three part series.
Cons: replaced many cutscenes with pop-up text with pictures, some characters didn’t have much to do.
Xenosaga III is a pretty good ending to the three part series. There is a lot to be uncovered. Deception, sacrifice, conspiracy. Xenosaga III contains all those elements. I don’t want to talk much about the story because there are plenty of spoilers. But, in the beginning, you get to play as Shion and you get Canaan and Miyuki to help you out. That’s right, they join your party. After her mission, Shion goes to Fifth Jerusalem to meet with her old friend Allen. This is also where she sees KOS-MOS once again. She also sees a new unit named T-elos. T-elos leaves Shion in awe after a demonstration of her capabilities. Next to perform was KOS-MOS. So, Shion watched KOS-MOS’s demonstration as well. Eventually, you’ll meet up with the old team. They all team up again to set out on yet another mission. This is when you really get to test out the battle system. You’ll collect skill points along the way to acquire new skills. The battle system has been changed a lot. You now have a menu with attack, tech, ether, special attack, guard, and escape commands. Tech will give you a list of moves like heavy physical attacks to use. You’re also introduced to the new break system. When a character’s break gauge fills up, they will be immobilized for two turns. It can be both an advantage and disadvantage because both you and the enemy are vulnerable. So, that takes us back to tech attacks. You’ll get break attacks along the way to do higher break damage to enemies. But, the tech attacks you use consume ether points, so you may run out of ep during a long fight. Okay. Now for the cool special attacks. You probably remember boost from the previous two games. You have one boost gauge yet again and you can consume boost to use special attacks. If you finish off an enemy with a special attack, you’ll get a finishing strike bonus which gets you extra experience and skill points. This is very useful against bosses. Special attacks level up the more you use them as well. On to the E.S. battles. They’ve definitely been jazzed up. You have a certain amount of energy to consume each turn. Every attack consumes a certain amount of energy. So, you can use as many attacks as you want in one turn until your energy runs out. For example, the E.S. Dinah has three different attacks that consume a different amount of energy. Suppose you have 400 energy and one attack consumes 310 energy, another 250 energy, and the last 150 energy. You’ll be able to use one 310 attack or a 250 and 150 attack or 150 and 150 attack in one turn. You’ll get it once you play. As you attack, you have an anima gauge which builds up like boost. You can’t actually boost, but when it fills to one, you can use a special attack if you want. Anima also makes your attacks consume less energy. So, you’ll be able to use a special attack on one turn. The next turn, you’ll still be in the anima state, so your attacks will use less energy. The finishing strike bonus applies to E.S. battles as well. What else can I talk about? Oh yeah. Throughout the game, you’ll get those lovely cutscenes. Sadly, a lot of the in-game talking is done with those pop-up text boxes with people’s pictures in them. It’s like Baten Kaitos if you’ve ever played that. Sometimes, it’s just annoying because the actual cutscenes are really good. And sometimes, they’ll have a 2 second cutscene and then go to the pop-up thing. The graphics in actual cutscenes are good too. So, I think you’ll enjoy them. Oooo…at the title screen, there is now a data option. So, you can load data from your current game so that you can see character models or even the cutscenes in the game. Sweet. In the actual game, there is a database with various terms in it. If you’re like me, you’ll be relying on it to understand certain concepts better. But, there are a lot of words, so chances are, unless you love reading, you won’t be reading everything. I also felt like some of the characters didn’t have big enough roles, but I guess that’s because they did in the other games. So, it’s not that big of a deal because they story is pretty good and just filled with spoilers. Well, if you decide to pick up a copy, I hope you enjoy it. Xenosaga III may even be as good if not not better than the first one. I guess that’s it for now. Bye.