Ray, of Light wrote:

Nice. There are a few little errors and fucked-up sentences. I like the ending especially.

I took a stab at an edit, but thanks to the exquisite pain of trying to show changes in HTML, there's no indication of what's changed. Run it through diff or something.

Ray!

There is a cutscene a few hours into Xenosaga where the main character, Shion Uzuki, and her pals are on some salvage ship. She has made dinner, and the crew of wacky cliches rave about how how they usually have such bad food because there are no women on board to cook for them.

The captain demands she refill his glass of water. Twice. Shion's friend (who likes her) politely asks for a refill, as well. She replies, "I'm sorry, I haven't noticed!" He mumbles to himself, "haven't noticed?" and the scene ends.

What is this scene about? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS!!!!!!!!!!! More importantly, why do I mention this? Because it's the dead giveaway that this game's story and dialogue were written by someone who simply can not write. I'm not sure if that exchange is supposed to be comic relief, part of a character arc, or some kind of love interest. It doesn't matter: the writer is in over his head, dealing with characters and situations he obviously can not fucking control, and should abandon his day job as a self-important video game plot writer, to sell pencils and string on the street corner, or wash people's windshields at the red lights.

Judging by my senses and perception skills, which are light years beyond any fan of Xenogears or Xenosaga, they spent more time working on the detail of the 12-year-old MOMO and her panties, than working out a story that makes sense and isn't preachy all the time. If people aren't having meaningless conversations with each other in this game, they're preaching the importance of human rights to each other. This, from the country that cut out their prisoners' organs and ate them raw at banquets. You get the feeling, even from the game's "war is so mean and not nice" sentiments, that they still blame us for attacking them.

This game leans heavily on its writing, and resembles an actual game only on the rare, platitude-free occasions when you are free to wander around a corridor area for a while, or fight a few bland battles. Then you turn a corner, and there's a very extended cutscene with an obviously evil character spouting off about how "these realians are merely toys, I will blow them up to help me save myself!" And then the very sympathetic main characters scream, "NO, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, HOW DARE YOU, YOU ARE JUST LIKE AMERICA WHEN PEARL HARBOR ATTACKED OUR FLEET!"

Apparently, some people believe that any long story must be good, no matter what. Note the blowjobby review from Gamespot, which gives the game an 8.1, after a crippling laundry list of negative comments that, if directed at any other game, would have docked the score to about 1.5.

Here's something that Gamespot said, and not me. Tell me if you think this seriously makes sense. Like everyone who's played it, they allow that the game has extremely long cutscenes. Gamespot's 8.1 OMG GAME SO COOL ANIME RULEZ review says that they do (occasionally) get boring. So, if the game is mostly cutscenes, and they get boring, wouldn't that make the game plain old boring?

I have no problem with the cutscenes being long. I have watched movies. There are no random encounters or interactivity, except for rewinding and such. I like movies. Especially if they have a good story. If I'm playing a game, and it has long cutscenes, the same rule applies. The cutscenes in Xenosaga are not really boring, I thought. They're just really really bad. And again, since the game is made up of them, that doesn't give you a lot left to work with.

I will throw out a few point scores for the people with short attention spans.

Graphics: 8

They aren't bad, obviously someone with no life beyond creating 3D woman-models poured a lot of work into this game. They had a field day with everything below the waist, but the American release omits the ability to look up skirts. Just another example of America RUINING the sacred art of Japan with their puritanical witch hunts.


Some of the attack effects during battle are absurd. Some characters throw flower petals or important-looking ancient text at their enemies, or binary code. Seeing this stuff fly around when you hit an enemy degrades the effect of fucking up some bad guys. The effects are quality, but absolutely overkilled: like most every other element of the game, no one was around to tell the programmers and designers just where the fuck to get off.

Panties: 10

Almost every female character in this game wears a skirt, up which the designers have indeed created something other than stretched-out polygons to block the view. Either they wear that skirt and like it, or they have no skirt and wear some kind of skin-tight one-piece thong suit instead.

MOMO panties: 10

This will be the biggest selling point. Everyone knows the story sucks, but when MOMO -- an android with the appearance of a 12-year-old girl, to sort of disguise her, the game alleges -- shows up in a cutscene, you can usually see her kneel and show a flash of bright white panties under her short-short skirt. Literally, you cannot avoid seeing her panties several times. Even when she dies, she does it ass in the air, with a clear behind-the-feet view of Elvis-adorned cotton panties. The anime creators know there are a lot of pedophiles who want to see a 12 year old with big eyes and a cute pert nose sexualized as much as possible, but still have a perfectly good excuse for it. In this case, it's the transparent "she is an android, not human" excuse. Save it for the Devil, motherfucker, because the court of Crimes Against Humanity is sentencing you to a quick and painful execution. Shot to death on the lawn of the White House.

Hype: 0 (zero)

They released a lot of weird news about this game, to build interest. I remember reading Xenosaga would be the PS2's first double-sided DVD, it was so expansive! This was a weak lie. Leaked reports of the American version cutting an objectionable scene left Xenogears fans frothing at the mouth (with rage), and blaming evil Americans for desecrating Japan's hallowed art, represented in that case by an extended, moan-filled fisting of a pre-teen girl by the fully-grown villain. The only thing left to hype is the soundtrack, which would be one 10-second piece of tense music, which is repeated millions of times during the game's (allegedly) tense parts.

Story: 0 (zero)

People who think they're buying this for the story obviously have no clue what a good story even is. Most of the plot twists are obvious hours before they are revealed, unless they are from characters that only showed up a moment before. Every character they make you think could be dead, shows up a minute later, alive. When you see one character has a special skill that gives him better defense only when a specific character in the game is behind him in battle, you'll know that those two characters will become fast friends before THEY even know it.

Sound: 0 (zero)

The voice acting is horrible. They couldn't find anyone who could speak ONE four-word line without fucking it up? I guess not. Music in this game barely exists, most of it is a few songs repeated over the several endless, mind-numbing hours you spend on your ass, playing this peace-time atrocity.

Fanbase: 0 (zero)

Some of the creepiest motherfuckers you could ever regret meeting, even if it's on a message board on the internet. There isn't a brain cell to rub between them, except for the brain cells that control how importantly they consider themselves.

Overall: 10... out of 100,000,000! RLROLFOL

Everything right about this game was stolen from FFX. Everything they brought themselves is fucked up beyond belief, repair, and forgiveness. Everything they thought would be cool in this game is overdone so, that if it's cool at all, it isn't cool after the first time. It was a good idea to have a game with an epic story that reaches over several games. When they were finished, they were left with a failure on every conceivable level of artistic humiliation. When I go to bed at night, I realize how I could accidentally make a better game in my sleep. In fact, I already have several times.