3.5/5 ★ – DarkDrawer's review of Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht.

This game is very hard to review for a variety of reasons. It's so mixed on certain aspects while excelling wildly in others. Overall, I think the good outweighs the bad, but if I did not enjoy the characters and some gameplay quirks as much as I did, I could see myself being very critical of this game. Anyway, I'll start with the bad. This game is pretty slow. Amidst the cutting edge model work of 2002, is a slow jrpg with cutscene moves that can bloat any fight scene. Fight scenes that you cannot run or avoid a lot of times as enemies are encountered in the overworld and walking past one requires some careful pathing. This builds into a fighting system that I wish I understood better. I wish I felt obligated to build out the tech tree, but I don't think there's enough tech experience to go around. Add on some bosses that are really all too hard sometimes and this game was very frustrating at times. With that being said, the cast is such a delight. We have Shion Uzuki, a Chief Engineer for Vector Industries, KOS-MOS, a female android with mysterious powers, and so much more. From a Cyborg to an android race called Realian, this game has a living and breathing world that exists. You WILL learn a lot about this world whether you like it or not and I definitely liked tidbits. I'm especially interested in following the story of Allen who is a coworker of Shion's with an obvious crush. This game has obvious parallels and even some spiritual successor characters from Xenogears and a highlight here is Vanderkam who is very similar to Vanderkaum (lol) from Gears. But this character gets a pretty extensive story in comparison to his predecessor. There's a lot of setup here for the future with this cast and even the ramifications of Vanderkam, but even this game has a satisfying ending. Everything surrounding Shion and her motherly/sisterly relationship with KOS-MOS is such a delight. Despite my misgivings with the combat, it's pretty fun when you get the hang of it and in the endgame, there's some campiness if one finds every robot part as well which adds to some ridiculousness. Like it or hate it, this game is a part of a series with more in store for the future and regardless of gameplay failings, I'm excited to see where these characters will take me.