The best story ever told in the scifi genre.
The bad: Voice acting is not exactly great but it gets the job done, story may confuse people, IT ENDS :(
Xenosaga Episode 1 Der Wille zur Macht aka The Will to Power. The title is taken from the philospher Friedrich Nietzsche's book of the same name. The game takes place far into the future when the human race has made it to the stars and is spread out throughout the galaxy. At the beginning you take the role of a young female researcher working on the battle android(or something) called KOS-MOS. The ship that you start on then gets invaded by some alien creatures and kills everyone and then things start getting underway and the story begins. I will not spoil anything from the story because it something you must see for yourselft.
For gameplay it is pretty easy to get a hold of. Your given options like any old turn based RPG attacks have two categories both which are set to seperate buttons on the controller. Close range and far shots are the two main categories for attacking. The third is special attacks performed with O. Players can automatically attack up to two times or just go once and then use three attacks including the most devastating. The devastating attacks can also be upgraded in the tech skill menu.
Apart from standard attacks the other menu includes Move for moving you character on the batttle field, Items for using items that you have like cures and things, Ether for using "magic" attacks and cures and the A.G.W.S. which is a big robot thing that is very slow but very strong.
As for outside of battle its just simple walk here talk to these people find thiings and avoid or run into monsters. All monsters are visible on a map and on screen, alot of the time they are avoidable but sometimes you may just want to walk into them to attack them. There are also little objects on screen that when destroyed they cause different situations for the enemy like freezing them or slowing them and giving all your characters a boost in the battle.
Graphically Xenosaga looks pretty good. There not graphics that will make you look twice but they look good none the less. As for the cutscenes, they look pretty much identicle to gameplay just with alot more going on. All the characters in the game have a very distinct anime look with the big eyes. As for lips matching words that does not exist the words are completely off almost 98% of the time with the mouth.
The voices though although they work theres something about them thats just... not great. In comparisson to other games voice acting Xenosaga is pretty meh. The little girl voice can also be annoying at some times. As for sound effects they all work pretty well with things. No complaints from me on that. Explosions go boom guns go bang laser beams go swrghz. But I still feel the voice acting could have been better which is something they did wrong with the sequel because they got worse so theres no real problem with episode 1.
The overall lasting appeal is great. With a fun little mini card game to play with friends and the great long story the game can last one a long time. And then theres just gowing around looking for everything trying to find every secret and explore every place. Lots of fun is to be had with it. Overall it is a great RPG that anime fans and Scifi fans will probably like alot.
Note: This was not spell checked read at own risk.