Xenosaga hands-on impressions

[02.28.02] » It looks good, of course, but what about the gameplay?

   Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht has hit Japan and appears to be a smash success for Namco. First-day sales seem remarkably strong; gamers in the Tokyo area have reported seeing lines of over one hundred gamers outside stores this morning. Though it will take a few days before first week sales are reported, Namco may have managed to launch a new franchise to offer Square and Enix some serious competition. Since Xenosaga's gameplay and battle system and early story details have already been described in great detail elsewhere, these spoiler-free impressions will focus on general game impressions.

   After starting Xenosaga, most gamers are sure to be immediately struck by its high quality of presentation. It hardly bears repeating at this point, but Xenosaga is a very pretty game. The in-game engine handles the abundant story sequences and battles without missing a beat; director Tetsuya Takahashi's uses the capabilities to their utmost at almost every moment. Thus far, Xenosaga's music has been quite good, mixing original songs with reprises of themes from the original Xenogears. The game's voice acting is well-done, and the lip-synching and facial animations are well-timed. Xenosaga's prerelease materials have held the game up as a paragon of visual excellence, and the finished product delivers on that promise and more.

   The quality of presentation comes with a price, however: lengthy load times. Though it seems unsporting to complain about loading, some of Xenosaga's load times seem excessive. There's a small one or two second lag between the field map and the status screen; hardly an inconvenience, but noticeable nonetheless. More egregious are the transitions between different areas on the field map. The first time that a black loading screen stayed and stayed on our TV screen, we were worried that our PlayStation 2 had crashed. After a few more of these "hangups," we took out a stopwatch and started timing the longer scene transitions. Load times of fifteen to twenty-five seconds were not uncommon. Installing the game to the PS2 HDD (hard drive) will help reduce the wait, but gamers with just the base console are out of luck. Hopefully, these load times can be improved for the U.S. release.

   But what about the gameplay? Xenosaga's balance of story and gameplay is sure to divide gamers as strongly as did the original Xenogears. It should surprise no one that Xenosaga is a very story-heavy title; what may surprise even Xenogears fans is the highly structured way in which the story is meted out. Xenosaga is a carefully paced experience; director Takahashi has a very clear idea of how he wants the player to experience the game, and everything about the title, including the gameplay, is subservient to this goal. Though the gameplay systems and minigames are robust and well-developed, the actual quantity of gameplay--at least in the initial hours--is carefully distributed.

   In an interview about the game, Takahashi said, "In Xenosaga the story and game sections are completely independent of each other. To put it in an extreme way, I wanted a game that could be turned into a drama if you extracted all the story portions and put them on video." For better or for worse, he has succeeded in his goal. The result is a game with stunningly presented narrative sequences (scripted sequences of over an hour are not at all uncommon), but gameplay that, for all its many strengths, feels oddly irrelevant to the direction of the story. Xenosaga is an extremely scripted gaming experience. Many modern RPGs push you along a preset path, to be sure, but few leave the rails as visible as Xenosaga. When the game does let you take control during its first few hours--which is rare enough--it feels more like a concession to genre expectations than an actual chance to steer the narrative. Early battles are either ridiculously easy (to showcase KOS-MOS' superhuman strength) or deliberately impossible--if Shion encounters enemy Gnosis forces alone, she deals 0 damage and receives 9999, dying instantly. Xenosaga's early stages makes no effort to hide its puppeteering strings; Takahashi is in charge, and the player is simply along for the ride. It's a gorgeous, well-scripted ride, to be sure, filled with interesting characters and all the threads of a promising plot, but once a lengthy scene is started, the player is powerless to interact.

   The standard disclaimer applies, of course: these are first impressions based on our experience with the beginning stages of the game. It's entirely possible that the game opens up significantly in its later stages; given how much we've enjoyed battling and party micromanagement thus far, this would be an extremely welcome development. Players should just consider themselves warned: Xenosaga wants to tell a story. It does so well and at length.