Well, 58 hours or so since first slipping the disk in, I finished Xenosaga (ok, more like 70 or so hours if you count restarts). It still dumbfounds me that the game is getting so many average reviews. This is easily my third favorite PS2 game so far (1st is Ico, 2nd is FFX). Sure, there are some annoying aspects to it, but any game you play for 60 hours is going to have something that eventually starts to grate on you. But I really enjoyed the ways you could build your characters up, the mini-games, the graphics, and especially, the storyline. I’ve heard the storyline referred to as highly deriviative, but I didn’t get that. Yes, there were some scenes that were very evocative of certain scenes from various movies, but the plot, as far as I could follow it (heh) didn’t seem at all derivative to me. Well, with the caveat that certain common anime themes were included (giant robots and all that).

When I hit the end, I had enough emotionally invested in the characters that I had a few real ‘lump in the throat’ moments, which is always the mark of a good game for me.

All in all, a great game, in my opinion.