Xenosaga: Episode I - Der Wille zur Macht

The Good
Poorly distilled cliff note quality quasi-Jungian philosophy, pre-pubescent robot girls in miniskirts, a female lead so oblivious to the calamities around her that you want to punch her, and giant battling robots. It can only be another Japanese RPG, and despite what I just wrote, it's my favorite game of the last year.

Despite what many reviewers have said, Xenosaga is very much the prequel to Squaresoft's cult classic Xenogears, so players familiar with the latter know what to expect: one of the deepest and most satisfying stories you're ever likely to find in any RPG any time soon. Sure, by movie or novel standards Xenosaga's plot is as hackneyed as they come, but it makes for an astonishingly compelling RPG.

So what's it about? Damned if I know. In the future mankind has been forced to live a nomad-like existence in space. We are at war with an insectoid inter-dimensional race called the Gnosis whose only desire appears to be to wipe us out. Why? Damned if I know. Add in some monoliths straight out of 2001 a Space Odyssey, a whole bunch of religious symbolism, a robotic weapon that appears to be turning into a human, a cyborg who doesn't want to be human, a strange guy in hotpants that might be an angel and a villain who enjoys sucking the life force out of little girls, and you've got a heck of a lot of questions to be answered and one hell of an interesting plot.

It's all told in beautiful FMV sequences interspersed with your average puzzle solving and some good strategy oriented combat. Boss battles are particularly cool.

Some have complained about the amount of FMV in the first portion of the game, but I'd rather watch a (mostly) well voice acted FMV then scroll through pages of text (know what I mean Xenogears people?).

Characters and monsters are beautifully rendered and animated. Backgrounds are uniformly sterile and uninteresting.

Script has some super corny lines of dialogue (in a Japanese RPG? Surely not!) but is for the most part pretty compelling and well delivered.

The music is astonishingly good, but pretty sparse.

Bring on part II....I've got questions that need answering.

The Bad
Racing a giant stuffed bunny rabbit. What the heck was that, Namco? All this religious symbolism and dark characters, and I stumble upon a bunny right in the middle of nowhere....whatever. Lose the bunnies.

The Bottom Line
There is nothing out there (no, not even Final Fantasy X) that approaches the depth of plot and gameplay that Xenosaga offers. It's an almost flawless game and destined to be a classic RPG series. Buy it.

PLOT: 10/10, GRAPHICS: 10/10. CHARACTERS: 9/10. GAMEPLAY: 9/10, REPLAY: 4/10. OVERALL: 10/10.