[PS2] Xenosaga III: Also Sprach Zarathustra

Famitsu gave the game 9/9/8/7.

How ya doing, buddy?

This is a great find.

All of the Japanese Xenosaga Episode III trailers can be found subtitled and in HQ here: http://tsukinikawatte.gametrailers.c...og&id=4562&c=1

There's some that are still being worked on, but the real gem here is "trailer 14." Trailer 14 is actually a bunch of scenes from the English localization of the game. For those of you missing Lia Sargent, have fun with trailer 14.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Game is out and showing up on eBay. But I haven't been able to find anything about the Premium box. Even Namco's site doesn't list anything about it. Did they forgo the idea this time around? ;_;

And what's this I see?

Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra Namco Bandai Games America 08/29/06 US

Holy shit man. I'm so going hyper over all this.

(I am getting the Japanese special DVD, if anybody's curious.)

How ya doing, buddy?

I for one am a big fan of the Xenogears/Xenosaga series and my copy for the game has already been pre-ordered from the moment it became available for pre-order.

If Famitsu (who are known as being some the harshest video game critics of all time) scored an overall score of 33/40 for this game, I would think that is pretty good in terms of famitsu standards.

In response to some of the things that have been said about the series in itself and about the first two games in general I would like to share my opinion about it.

I understand and respect the fact that both Xenogears and Xenosaga are two completely different games that follow different storylines, I do disagree with what someone had to say on this forum that Xenosaga has no relevance to Xenogears whatsoever. The slight similarities that both games have are irrelevant to a point but if it wasn't for the success and the following of Xenogears we wouldn't of probably had the Xenosaga series to enjoy in the first place.

I personally think that Xenosaga has one of the most detailed plots and controversial religious oriented themes any rpg series has ever seen. I appreciate a detailed story and character development more than anything else.

I think its kind of unfortunate that the series is ending after this game, because it kind of adds an extra worry to myself that I hope they can tie up all the loose ends and all the extra questions within this one game. I personally think that they will or at least try their best.

To me, I enjoyed the first Xenosaga game much better than the second one. There are many reasons for this. I didn't really appreciate the second one because they changed many of the voice actors from the original. I thought the voice acting from the first game was perfect especially chaos's voice who was done by Derek Stephen Prince. I wasn't nescessarily a fan of the armor break battle system either. Even though Kajiura Yuki did a good job of composing the music for the second game, for me it just doesn't match up to Yasanori Mitsuda did for the first game. It just seems like to me the ending song for any Xeno game should of had the vocals done by Joanne Hogg of Iona because she did beautiful vocals for the ending songs of both Xenogears and Xenosaga Episode 1.

I've heard all the complaints of a lot of my friends who aren't particularly fond of the series because its more of a movie than a game in itself. I just loved everything from the first game; the battle system, the music especially the battle theme, the character voices and even the mini-games especially the xeno-card game.

I've read all the stories concerning people who were with this project and had abandoned it because of conflicts of interest and its kind of unfortunate this series could of had the potential of doing great things for a fairly long time.

Overall, I can't wait for it to come later on this summer, and I hope I enjoy it to the exent of other games in general, and even if this is the last xenosaga game I hope it goes out with a bang.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Sir VG

And what's this I see?

Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra Namco Bandai Games America 08/29/06 US

Holy shit man. I'm so going hyper over all this.

http://www.namco.com/forums/viewtopi...8cb01cb#136622

Yep. It's been confirmed by an insider at Namco. The date has a possibility of moving up or down two weeks, but there it is.

How ya doing, buddy?

I was looking over Namco JP's site, and I see absolutely no mention of a premium box this time around. I'm upset. I wanted a trilogy of boxes!

Oh well. Got the Japanese game and DVD coming. I wonder what the DVD will include for a bonus extra this time around.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

http://xenosaga3.namco.com/

Namco did something funny to the E3 trailer. They replaced all of the voices. I'm not sure why they did such a thing (especially when the recording should be finished), but eh. It's amusing to hear Allen sound like a foreign old fart. (And Jr.'s gone through puberty!)

I was speaking idiomatically.

I grew a cold sweat reading your post. I don't have a clue what that means, and I'm too afraid to go look for myself. You might think the chances of all the voices being recast in the last minute to be impossible, even absurd, but this series hasn't had the greatest luck so far. Check my journal entry for further info.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I'm kind of frightened by the trailer deal... but... I can't seem to get it to play. I click play, and it shows a black screen. Nothing happens, or loads. Tried in both IE and Firefox. Hmm.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by SOLDIER

I grew a cold sweat reading your post. I don't have a clue what that means, and I'm too afraid to go look for myself. You might think the chances of all the voices being recast in the last minute to be impossible, even absurd, but this series hasn't had the greatest luck so far. Check my journal entry for further info.

No, really. There's very, very little possibility for the entire cast to be chucked out at this point in the game. I mean, IGN's got footage up with Lia Sargent Shion-ing it up. The Shion voice in the trailer is not Lia Sargent, I guarantee you.

As for the foreign-sounding Allen, seriously, you need to listen to the trailer yourself. There no way they would let Allen have a 60-year old Mexican voice.

EDIT: A breakthrough!

Quote:

Some light has been shed on the trailer on the site: Apparently, it was a test trailer done by second string VAs for timing purposes, and was never meant to see the light of day, but someone accidentally threw it up with the preview site. The real trailer, the E3 one, will go up with the full site.

How ya doing, buddy?

I managed to get my copy of Xenosaga III and the special DVD. If the special DVD for the US release is like the Japanese version, expect it to be MUCH different than the one that came with Xenosaga II.

No Xenosaga II scene compilation. A bunch of trailers, scenes from big release dates in the history of the series, and some other factoids. However for Mitsuda fans, the man does show up on the DVD. He doesn't look like I expected him to look. Cool to watch him work though.

The other big disappointment is that in a misc section about the other games (Xenosaga Freaks and Pied Piper) they have a video about Freaks, but for some reason they seemed to have goofed and instead of covering Pied Piper, there's another XSII video.

The DVD wasn't even region coded. SL DVD even. >_>;;

If anybody wants like the trailers or wants to see the cool video with Mitsuda, let me know and I'll encode.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

A video of Mitsuda taking a shit, I don't care... it's MITSUDA! I WANT!.... Please and thank you =)

How ya doing, buddy?

I'll work on encoding that later. Encoding done: http://files.filefront.com/Xenosaga_.../fileinfo.html

As for the game itself, I've played the first section and I will alleviate some fears.

Battle sequences are MUCH MUCH IMPROVED from XSII. They're fast. You're not waiting 30 seconds for the battle to load. Battles themselves are fast as well.

Graphics are fantastic. Big expansive levels and much brighter than some of the gloomy levels in XS II.

The battle system has changed a bit. It's now one list of commands and also a "break" bar has been added. When your bar (or the enemies) hits full, you (or they) become dizzy, disabling them for a bit. Enemies also have a meter when you select them giving you a rough idea of how much HP they have left (if you've been keeping mental track of what you've done).

Battle music is hardly noticable this time around. It's there, but it's really faded into the background. Doesn't bother me though.

So far I'm liking this better than XSII.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Sir VG

[strike] Battles themselves are fast as well.

Until you get later in the game. In the last few chapters, battles usually lasted me three or four minutes each.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

In an unrelated note. Browsed IGN for a bit and saw that Xenosaga I & II for the DS still has not gotten a US release date, and I couldn't find any word of that actually having been confirmed for the US either. How's about an update on that, if anyone has one?

I was speaking idiomatically.

It's not coming to the US, which is stupid since it's supposed to be the "official" story that they are following.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by SouthJag

I couldn't find any word of that actually having been confirmed for the US either. How's about an update on that, if anyone has one?

A friend of mine sent me a scan of a Nintendo Power issue which mentioned that I & II would get a fall 2006 release in the US, but that doesn't seem very likely at the moment.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by B.K.

Until you get later in the game. In the last few chapters, battles usually lasted me three or four minutes each.

I didn't mean that battles are over in a short time, but loading, and actions are fast paced.

Remember how long loading times were in XSII? Cut that in about 1/10th.


I also find it interesting (thinking in regards to battles at the beginning) that Miyuki was using Shion's XSI MWS. ^^;;

Most amazing jew boots

Was doing some shopping on YesAsia and stumbled upon these, Xenosaga trading figures. They're called Xenosaga Legend, looks like the star of the set 01 is Kos Mos (appears to be all variants of costumes from the games), with T-elos included. Anyway looks pretty cool, might import me a set (want an X2 Kos Mos).



http://us.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.asp...id-1004464411/
http://animenewsi.com/index.php?itemid=9605

BTW, is there any sort of pre-order bonus for the NA version of X3? If not I might just wait till it drops in price before picking it up. As I still need to beat X2.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Casaubon

It's not coming to the US, which is stupid since it's supposed to be the "official" story that they are following.

Oh, really? Wow, I was not aware of this. I just beat it yesterday. I liked it, there were quite a few difference when compared with the PlayStation 2's versions. Regrettably, the game got a bit too easy at the end. :/ There was also no Kajiura.

Originally Posted by Hantei

Was doing some shopping on YesAsia and stumbled upon these, Xenosaga trading figures. They're called Xenosaga Legend, looks like the star of the set 01 is Kos Mos (appears to be all variants of costumes from the games), with T-elos included. Anyway looks pretty cool, might import me a set (want an X2 Kos Mos).

Ugh, they don't look really good in my opinion.

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by Hiro

Oh, really? Wow, I was not aware of this. I just beat it yesterday. I liked it, there were quite a few difference when compared with the PlayStation 2's versions. Regrettably, the game got a bit too easy at the end. :/ There was also no Kajiura.

Well, it kinda became the official story after they kicked off everybody from the XS1 team. As for the music in the DS game, I'm not sure who composed it now, considering it was Mitsuda in XS1 and it certainly isn't him now (if it is, he must have wrote it in 15 seconds. )

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Sir VG

Well, it kinda became the official story after they kicked off everybody from the XS1 team.

Yeah, I was aware of the "kicking", but...they're still out, right? Or did you just mean that Monolith placed the story that the original writers wrote into I & II instead of their "variant" that was in PlayStation 2's?

Quote:

As for the music in the DS game, I'm not sure who composed it now, considering it was Mitsuda in XS1 and it certainly isn't him now (if it is, he must have wrote it in 15 seconds. )

The music's by the fellow that did the anime's music, Yamashita Kousuke.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Quote:

Yeah, I was aware of the "kicking", but...they're still out, right? Or did you just mean that Monolith placed the story that the original writers wrote into I & II instead of their "variant" that was in PlayStation 2's?

My theory is that they still followed the storyplans that Takahashi layed out before they canned him, but because they had no idea what other ideas he was going to produce, they had to stick primarily to what they had on hand, and thin out the small plotline for the next 2 games. This is the only explanation I can think of for EPIII's pitiful running time.

If you didn't check my journal entry, I've been given impressions from a guy who knows a guy, stating that EPIII's total running time is 30 hours, and almost more than half of that time is due to ridiculously long dungeons (the final dungeon is reportedly 10 hours long. That's a 1/3 of the goddamn game) and battles. The story comes together nicely with the few cutscenes they show, but I'm sure it will confirm my earlier fears in that the story will run on fast-forward, avoiding any additional character development or small touches to hastily tie up all remaining loose ends.

I'm really hoping the information I was given proves inaccurate, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Just thinking about how this promising series quickly stumbled is too painful.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by SOLDIER

My theory is that they still followed the storyplans that Takahashi layed out before they canned him, but because they had no idea what other ideas he was going to produce, they had to stick primarily to what they had on hand, and thin out the small plotline for the next 2 games. This is the only explanation I can think of for EPIII's pitiful running time.

If you didn't check my journal entry, I've been given impressions from a guy who knows a guy, stating that EPIII's total running time is 30 hours, and almost more than half of that time is due to ridiculously long dungeons (the final dungeon is reportedly 10 hours long. That's a 1/3 of the goddamn game) and battles. The story comes together nicely with the few cutscenes they show, but I'm sure it will confirm my earlier fears in that the story will run on fast-forward, avoiding any additional character development or small touches to hastily tie up all remaining loose ends.

I'm really hoping the information I was given proves inaccurate, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Just thinking about how this promising series quickly stumbled is too painful.

I've been hearing quotes of 30-40 hours the main story from Namco US internal play testers and up to 60 hours of gameplay if you do all of the sidequests(there are a ton) and minigames. I really don't know how valid these claims are though.

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by Cetra

I've been hearing quotes of 30-40 hours the main story from Namco US internal play testers and up to 60 hours of gameplay if you do all of the sidequests(there are a ton) and minigames. I really don't know how valid these claims are though.

My clear file was right at 32 hours. I didn't do any sidequests.

How ya doing, buddy?