Xenosaga - PS2 Game (Retro Fam)

Good shape

Having exhausted myself of Final Fantasy (from the PS1 all the way through the PSX) I decided to walk on the wild side and try this game.Boy was I pleasently surprised!If you happened to play Xenogears for the PS1, this game is loosely based on events that occured in that game.One thing this game has going for it is a story. Many reviews peg the game time at 80 hours but don't worry: A great portion of this is made up of those cinematic events!I've only completed the first 2 portions of the game but I am well impressed enough to provide ratings for this game:Graphics: 9/10The cinema events in this game will simply blow you away. Keep in mind if you've seen the XBox 360 or PS3, you can't compare the graphics of the 2 systems (duh!). But compare this game to other PS2 releases and I assure you the graphics hold up just fine to any other PS2 game, and in many cases far exceed them. In battles, the special effects are impressive, from Shion's Ray attack to KOS-MOS R-Blade. Tecmo defintely had a winner with the graphics from this game.Sound: 9/10The music often fits the mood of the situation perfectly. I was definitely on the edge of my seat in the level where you are trying to evade the Gnomis without getting touched! Now, my ONE gripe with this so far is the music doesn't change for bosses as it does with other RPG's. This is slightly annoying but a minor complaint.Sound effects are right in place and very good.Presentation: 9/10So far, the game directs you well in w.

Ok, I will start by simply saying I loved this game, it was a lot of fun, had a complex and compelling Sci-Fi story, and it had characters with depth to match the story. There has beeen an overwhelming shortage of decent Sc-Fi RPG's, and I'm happy to say this is the best one I've played since Star Ocean:the Second Story.The layout of the game isn't complicated. The battle system is traditional turn based, and each charater has a different set of special moves that you can use to attack, and upgrade to cause more damaage. Encounters can be dodged by avoiding enemies and there special canisters in the environments that can be used to give you an edge against opponents. It doesn't seem like a wholee lot at firrst, but the turn based battle system became much more fun as I upgraded more and more special moves and soon had characteers that could devastate any enemy group. Even when my characters were this powerful, the game still posed a challenge. This is a place where the game strikes gold, it is one of the most balanced games in termes of ddifficulty. It is sharp enough to challenge you, but not so much as to have you breaking controllers off the wall. There are even some battles that you can't possibly win through brute force, and some of these encounters are done with very fragile characters. in these cases you'll have to use strategy too defeat your opponents, and this is something the developers did very well.The story is absolutely incredible and very compelling. the story.