Story

Xenosaga Episode 1 mainly focuses on introducing the characters and antagonists for the series. There is so much to take in, in this first episode that it would take more than 1 playthrough to understand everything that’s going on. The main plot of the first game is the search for the mysterious artifact known as the Zohar and the conflict with the mysterious race known as the Gnosis. It is rumored to be a device of immense power and many different groups are after it for their own reasons. The Zohar is sleeping on old Miltia which was sealed off years ago by Joachim Mizrahi during the miltian conflict. As well as that there is a strange race called the Gnosis who are terrorizing the galaxy. Nobody knows where they come from but it is believed Joachim Mizrahi is responsible for bringing them to this galaxy during the miltian conflict. They came from another reality and they can attack this world while remaining in their own making them extremely difficult to fight. This is the main reason that KOS-MOS was commissioned as she has been programmed with an ability called the Hilbert Effect which drags the Gnosis, physically, into this realm so they can be attacked.

Gameplay

Combat

The Combat in Xenosaga is very similar to another RPG, namely Xenogears. This is no coincidence as they share a lot of the same developers. The combat is broken up into character combat and mech combat. However unlike Xenogears and the other Xenosaga games there are no dedicated mech sections. The mech combat is completely optional. Because of these the on the ground combat is much more fun. The battles are turn based with the order predetermined and viewable at all times, and there are no random battles. The main battle mechanic is the AP system. Characters are assigned a certain amount of AP at the start of each turn and they can use various attacks, or a combination of attacks until their AP is used up. You can also store AP for the next turn, which allows you to pull off more powerful attacks, and deathblow attacks. Like all other rpgs the game also has magic attacks that are called ether attacks.