Xenosaga 3

[Wise Dragon]

anyone played it yet? I was wondering how it measures up to the other games.

[GrubbTheFragger]

I have heard it is as good as the others.

[dyzzispell]

No idea, but I'm waiting till the price drops. ^_^

[TriezGamer]

Well, I own it but I'm still struggling to finish Ep II. And Grubb -- All the reports I've heard is that it isn't as good as the other games -- it's vastly BETTER.

But since Episode II is irritating me beyond belief with the incredibly steep ramp in difficulty for the final dungeon, I'm having trouble finding the motivation to continue.

[GrubbTheFragger]

Well, I own it but I'm still struggling to finish Ep II. And Grubb -- All the reports I've heard is that it isn't as good as the other games -- it's vastly BETTER.

But since Episode II is irritating me beyond belief with the incredibly steep ramp in difficulty for the final dungeon, I'm having trouble finding the motivation to continue.

Yea Tries my buddy just told me that it is much better than the others.

[Wise Dragon]

it is much better than the others

Thats good to know. EP2 is driving me crazy too. I hope the next one is a little easier than that one. Thats why Ive been hesitant to get it cause the second is too hard.

[Tommy]

Meh, I've been stuck on Episode for AWHILE. The zombie dude drives me crazy. Plus, I can't start a new game because whenever a custscene from the first half of the game plays, the whole thing freezes.

I think I'll just forget about this series, especially considering that I heard "Xenogears" is by far, the best game in the Xeno universe and I have played through that twice.

[rocklobster]

Do they play the song it's named after anywhere?

[Rocketshipper]

song it's named after? o_O

Almost all the reviews I've read say it's a huge improvement over the first two, and that the story is very satisfying and a good conclusion to the series.

I got it for my birthday and haven't started playing yet, but I have the guide and I've been reading through some of the general information...It seems to me that the battle system this time is REALLY complicated.

[dyzzispell]

song it's named after? o_O

If we're still talking about EP3, that would be "Also Sprach Zarathustra". I believe that's the song that was used in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". It was a classical piece written by Richard Strauss in 1896, but that was based on a book by Friedrich Nietzsche called "Also Sprach Zarathustra". It's the most widely known song used in the movie.

[termyt]

I have it, but haven't played it. I am wondering how it will end, since it is based on Nietzsche’s philosophies.

[blue elf]

Well, I own it but I'm still struggling to finish Ep II. And Grubb -- All the reports I've heard is that it isn't as good as the other games -- it's vastly BETTER.

But since Episode II is irritating me beyond belief with the incredibly steep ramp in difficulty for the final dungeon, I'm having trouble finding the motivation to continue.

I've started playing it, but I haven't gotten really far into it yet. All the reviews seem to say that it's much better than the second game. The battle system does seem a bit easier to understand than the one in the second game, but I do miss the double techs.

I'm not sure if you mean the final story mode dungeon or the bonus dungeons, but if you mean the final main story dungeon, don't give up just yet. While the enemies in the final dungeon could be hard, I thought that the final series of boss fights were actually pretty easy in comparison. I think I was around level 45 or somewhere in that range.

[Rocketshipper]

I started playing it the other day and I'm up to like chapter 6 or 7 (I'm not sure which. I just trounced the Black Testament)

So far I have to say I'm really enjoying it. I think the first part of the game has some pacing issues and it took a while for me to get used to the new voiced dialogue sequences (I'm so glad I found auto-mode) but once I got to the first real dungeon (CAT research facility) things picked up and I got sucked into the story just as much as before.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the battle system, really. I think that the break bar this time is pretty useless, I rarely bother to try and break enemies and instead focus on getting finishing strikes; it's also a pain to watch your characters' health AND break gauges. I also kind of wish that special attacks didn't require boost, now that I have to spend all my boost getting finishing strikes I rarely use boost for getting extra turns. I'm glad that the characters learn different skills at different times this time (reminds me of FF 10's grid system) and have lots of character specific skills and stuff, but I think that there are just too many upgrades. I'm the kind of gamer who likes to try and unlock every possible spell and teqnique, but with each character having so many possible ones, and having to unlock each earlier set of abilities before you can move on, it seems like I'll either have to pick and choose or spend a zillion hours collecting SP. I wish the enemies gave out more SP, getting only 7 or so per battle is too little IMO. I really like the E.S. battles now; they are pretty close to how Xenogears had them, and so far anima special attacks rock. I must say that it's very satisfying, in on foot and E.S. battles, to get to cause so much damage. The E.S. special attacks, even at level 1, do enough damage to kill almost any enemy in one of the previous games in one hit. 12,000 damage, woot!!

[Wise Dragon]

12,000 damage? Cool. I loved how in xenogears you could bust out 35-40,000 damage without even using a special ability in the last part of the game.

[Rocketshipper]

yeah, that was awesome. Of course all the enemies usually had sky high HP so you still couldn't defeat them that quickly. The level 3 anima attacks in this game can do like 60,000 damage.

I'm almost done with the game, I'm right before the final dungeon and I'm going around completing all the side quests first, so I'll have all the ultimate attacks, weapons, accessorys, etc. before taking on the last boss (I heard that the Erde Kaiser Sigma summon can kill the last boss in two hits ^^)

[jon_jinn]

man. i got the first game for christmas like three years ago cause it only costed like 15$ and i played it for like five hours. then i stopped cause the cutscenes were too long and i didn't really get how it worked and the enemies were too strong. maybe, if i have a LOT of time, i'll start on it again when i get a little older.