Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht

This is actually my second attempt at playing this game. My first playthrough a few years ago ended when I got to Song of Nephilim, got wiped by the first enemy I encountered, and then I didn’t pick the game back up until October of 2024.

This time around, I had a much better idea of how I wanted to play the game and how to interact with its mechanics, and ended up way stronger than I was before. What I ended up doing was stat syncing (google it) ether attack on Shion, KOS-MOS, and chaos. Ether attack impacts not only Ethers, but also any triangle attack and associated tech attacks. By the end of the game, I had over 80 ether attack on all three characters, which granted both big damage and fat heals. I also actually followed a guide to get all of the robot parts, which allowed me to basically skip the final few bosses thanks to Erde Kaiser. Very nice.

As I did with Xenogears, I recorded my entire playthrough so that I could share screenshots and clips with my friends if I wanted to. Unfortunately, my PS2 has a dead CMOS battery so I don’t actually know how long it took me to beat the game. I guess I could sum the length of all the recordings, but I don’t feel like it.

As for my thoughts on the game’s story, I already enjoyed it from my previous playthrough, it really was just the gameplay stopping me from finishing it the first time. Thanks to my somewhat bad habit of reading wiki articles for fun, I do know things about the characters that I shouldn’t yet, but like I said for Xenogears in my 2024 roundup article, it is still fun to see events actually play out on screen. I think Xenosaga 1 laid a solid foundation of the world and characters, and I’m excited to see how they evolve throughout the next two games.

Xenosaga is a trilogy I’ve wanted to play for a long time, and it’s exciting to finally have the first step done.