The saga begins

Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht was a game that only interested be due the man who developed it, Tetsuya Takahashi, who also directed Xenogears which was, at the time, my favorite game. It’s not something I would have looked at otherwise since I’m not into giant fighting robots. Space, JRPGs, and weird foreign titles, yes, but not giant space robots.

The game opens up with a surprisingly short opening cutscene for how movie-like the game is. The tutorial dungeon is in a virtual space/testing ground for a blue-haired robot who just seems out of place when there are giant robots but okay.

And then downtime as Shion walks the length of a spaceship to deliver the data from the test which, probably could have just emailed. And then the game ramps up. Giant space amoebas attack and really mess things up. Like, everyone dies, including the cannibal with face scars. Eventually, the great McGuffin, KOS-MOS, wakes up, saves Shion and repeatably tells her, “I need to be cleaned”. Then everything blows up.

The blue-haired robot named KOS-MOS floats through space until she hits a nearby salvage ship who makes a necrophilia joke before they allow her, and eventually Shion and co on, thanks in part to the advice from a guy named chaos (in all lowercase, to my chagrin) who hates doors but can teleport.

Then we jump playable characters to a cyborg named Ziggurat 8 who’s tasked to save another type of maybe robot girl named MOMO (she got all the capital letters instead of chaos) who is a realian. I don’t know what a realion is, either. He breaks her out of an asteroid prison, she tells him his name is dumb to only go by Ziggy because he's a dog, and they fight with another dude with a facial scar. They meet up with Shion and party, fight some more robots, wash dishes, and wonder why Andrew Cherenkhov is going crazy as they get eaten by a gnosis/space amoeba. They walk through an amoebaed city discovering nothing of lasting plot relevance. They get into a boss fight that is REALLY FRICKIN’ hard. It was on release and it’s still nineteen years later. Maybe good game design?

So then we switch MCs again to a boy named jr. who shoots things which is, honestly, very sensible when everyone else is using melee. I’m still not fond of him, though. No reason why, really. We just never clicked. Anyway, he walks through a battleship owned by the same people who imprisoned MOMO. A reference to game III is here, which is rad, and then they blow it up. Then they meet up with the recently freed from amoeba boi crew and go to the space beach owned by jr. because he’s actually a billionaire or something for reasons never really explained. What’s a Kukai and what’s it do?

The next dungeon is when the entire foundation gets arrested by the Galaxy Federation because of a deep fake and a traitor in the federation which is never expanded upon. They all do another dive into KOS-MOS (the K stands for KOS-MOS because Shion sucks at naming things) because she’d have the proper video recordings. But for some reason, they all go back in time fourteen years to the forbidden planet of Miltia as it became forbidden when everything went to hell. We explore somethings about Shion and Jr. (and no one else despite all but Ziggy being there) and fight a boss to get free and retrieve the video. Game III will answer all of those questions.

Then the charges drop just like that because space courts drop charges with the appearance of any evidence...and them the space amebas attack again.

I spent three days on this goddamn boss only to discover that jr. has a spell which silences even bosses and it became a joke. I hate this game (but really just my life). MOMO gets kidnapped by jr.'s eccentric and slightly maybe pedophiliac brother Albedo the Albino so we go into space pyramid which plays a generic three-note code found in several movies and tv shows. Don’t play South Park around robots. And the final dungeon which looks likes the final dungeon in Xenogears. They blow it up and KOS-MOW grows angel wings to help the ship from blowing up.

EP 1 is probably the best all-around game in the series. II does things better, but also damning flaws of its own. The characters don’t get THAT much growth, but we shouldn’t expect them too since we all know Xenosaga is a marathon, not a sprint.

The battle system is fun. Two-button attacks, one near and one far which sets up the abundance of special attacks. Everyone has their spot, except MOMO who is too fragile to properly utilize. I prefer Shion, KOS-MOS, and Ziggy, but chaos is definitely someone I wish I utilized more often. He’s kinda black magey but there are no real FF style archetypes in this game.

The worst part of the game is the lack of music. The official OST lists 45 songs, but I’ll be dammed if I heard all 45 in my playthrough. Most get played so infrequently I couldn’t name where they’re played. Most of the dungeons and peaceful areas are just quiet and white noise. Yasunori Mitsuda composed the music so I’m disappointed since I'm of the people who prefer him Uematsu.

The only other real qualms I have a Quality of Life things which come from two decades of time so what can ya do. They get better in future games. That and the giant robots are totally meaningless. I used them in one late-game boss battle. They're too expensive to properly maintain and pretty void character uniquenesses.

This only took me 45 minutes to write so I think I made my progress goal. Good job, me.