Quote Originally Posted by Scotty_ffgamer View Post
The big standout series for me was Xenosaga though. I didn’t know what to expect, but I loved the characters and the story. I was actually all for the super long cutscenes. It was also the start of me disliking game preorders as I preordered Xenosaga 2 through Gamestop pretty much as soon as I could. I was so excited for the game despite the weird changes to character design, and I was really anticipating the promised preorder bonus of a dvd that contained cutscenes and (I think) begins the scenes stuff from the first game. Gamestop told me they didn’t have the disk though, and that I could check the one across the street. That Gamestop said they did have disks but it didn’t matter because they only had enough for the people that preordered and kind of hinted that the employees may have just taken the bonus disks for themselves if they ran out. I didn’t shop at Gamestop again for years after that.
Oh man, I loved Xenosaga. Cutscenes and all. I played all three pretty much back to back. I was invested in that world for so long, I really embraced the characters and the setting was so believable to me. In the first game when they're flying around on a ship surrounded by nothing but space, I genuinely felt the isolation. I love when games make me feel immersed in the universe.

I played Xenosaga before Xenogears and various Gundam games, so I think this is my first game where characters could fight not only as themselves but giant robots. I remember accidentally getting into fights where I was too small and getting crushed easily.

You're really able to empathize with the villains by the end. To this day Virgil may be one of my favorite video game characters. I heard there was originally going to be more games, but that got cut short so they had to fit a lot in Episode III.

I also got invested in the symbolism and started reading Nietzsche afterwards.

Don't even get me started on the amazing soundtracks.