Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra

A-freaking-men, brother.

Released on august 29th. Turns out it's a PS2 release. Can't wait...

Hoorah!

Now, to scrape up the money to afford a copy...

I picked up this game and played it this week.

Most of the game was relatively easy to get through, which is fine by me, since I play RPGs more for the story than for the gameplay. Without giving any spoilers, this third and final installment wrapped up most of the loose ends in the story and had a very dramatic ending.

I highly recommend playing through the first and second games in the series before playing part three; while there are summaries that explain everything that happens in the story so far, it doesn't deliver the story in quite the same way that playing through the games does.

A word of caution, though: if you are easily annoyed by very long cut-scenes -- there are plenty of them -- this series probably is not for you. If you like a good, deep plot and memorable characters, then get this game. It's a fantastic story with a dramatic ending.

It took about 40 hours to complete because I was stuck at the final boss and had to do some power-leveling. The game is challenging, though, if you're relatively new to this type of game, but it's not so hard that you'll be likely to get frustrated. Some of the bosses do require a whole lot of patience -- a few of them took over an hour of battle time to defeat!

I won't bother to rate it since I'm biased towards the whole Xenogears / Xenosaga series.

*edit* - The soundtrack is awesome.

I meant to post earlier, but I'm still playing it... Almost done, just stuck on that stupid puzzle dungeon with the sliding walls near the end. You're right about the cutscenes, once you get to the point of actually playing the game instead of just watching it, it gets a lot better. Margulis has to be one of the best boss fights in recent memory though.

Nitro, anything in particular to watch for with the final boss?