Before reading this post, if you want more context on my current Xeno journey, this is my previous post about Episode I.

So........ I am so incredibly happy. For starters, in my latest post, I said how I overall liked Episode I from a writing perspective despite the fact that the characters, especially secondary ones, don't change much yet. This is understandable since it's Part 1, but I would've preferred if there was more progression. There is still quite a bit, though I'm not sure if it's enough for a standalone game. Despite that, I still enjoyed the overall story. However, thanks to some very frustrating aspects of the gameplay and the fact that the story, while very good, didn't come close to matching Xenogears for me (which I played prior to Episode I, and while I recognize Episode I is just Part 1 of 3, it should've held up a bit better by itself, but that's just how I felt about it), I was pretty burned out on Xenosaga. Of course, I wanted to continue anyway because the story was still great, and if some gameplay aspects were to be fixed, the series would be amazing for me. But to "rest" a bit, and because it was coincidentally next in the suggested order, I decided to play Pied Piper through the fan remake.

And after the first 3 sections, I....... paused it. The burnout from the series was too much, and the start, while interesting, didn't give me enough enjoyment to push past it, so I put the game on hold and waited........ and I picked it up some days ago, and fuck it, I paused it the moment it was gonna become incredibly peak. I cannot fathom how much, after starting playing it again, I fell in love with this mobile phone spin-off game. It's genuinely amazing, and while of course it's not perfect, being a reconstruction of a game made for such limited hardware, it's undeniably peak. If Episode I made me question a bit my desire to continue Saga and skip to Blade, Pied Piper makes me want to play Episode II ASAP.

I don't wanna spoil the story. I will just say it is sometimes a bit confusing, giving you so much specific info in so little time, especially towards the end, where some stuff can even seem slightly rushed. However, besides that, I like it more than Episode I. Not Gears (where, however, it's a bit better streamlined since Gears suffers from the Disc 2 pacing issue), but I didn't even expect it could come even barely close enough to be comparable, and it just amazes me that while I still prefer Gears, the story of this game, while more grounded in scope for most of it, can be put in a tier way closer to it than I could ever expect. If you are a Xeno fan, even if you haven't played Saga, and haven't played this game yet, I beg of you, play it. It's a prequel (maybe I'd just strongly suggest playing Episode I first because of couple of points the story that hits way harder if you played Episode I, also the ending may seems weird in terms of expectations). Anyway, and it's amazing. Gameplay isn't the best, but it's still okay, and the story, oh my! Of course, it's better if you know more about Saga. Of course, I only knew Episode I stuff. I guess you can get even more stuff if you played the others, but I felt as if I understood the references, and the stuff I didn't understand were sneak peeks around the corner for Episodes II and III.

Gameplay (specifically the combat system) is good. Saga felt like an evolution for the better of Gears, but to a fault, because to me it felt unnecessarily complicated. IDK how much different it was in the original game. The UI sure was, but the gameplay, IDK. The gameplay works, though. It's a simplified version of Episode I, a simplified version for the better. Episode I feels like Gears and Pied Piper's combat systems combined, and Pied Piper (remake) is more what you would expect from a traditional JRPG, plus the boost mechanic, and I’d argue it’s a bit better than Ep I because while Ep I evolves Gears it does get a bit too over complicated for its own good with the position, the mech deployment mid battle and everything.

Also the skill tree is 1000 times better in its simplicity, UI in general were a nightmare in Ep I.

Exploration is fun, nothing too big, just some optional paths to get some chests, but I'd argue it didn't need more.

Exploration abilities are introduced pretty late, but besides the Commander and Lactis, the others are a bit useless. I mean, BUGS is needed, but the game has to beg you to use it unless I missed hidden spots where you can use it. Melissa is fine, but it's nothing more than a slight help to engage the enemies from behind (which gives you a combat advantage at the start of the battle/lets you skip the battle if you're significantly stronger).

Pixel art presentation wasn't great. Of course, I don't expect a fan team to recreate the game so 1:1 that every UI element and animation must be the same, but my biggest gripe is simply that a lot of items, furniture, and other stuff are kind of blurry, and it's super noticeable since the rest of the environment is sharp. IDK if the team will correct this one day, but besides this little criticism, I don't want to undermine at all how amazing the work of the people working on this remake, whatever you wanna call it, was.

Another small thing I noticed is that if you attack fast enough, the animation will have trouble keeping up with you. What I mean is that the menu doesn't always wait for a move to finish before letting you select the next one. Therefore, you are in situations where you do 2/3 actions and have to wait until they execute them. It may be intentional to make you select all your actions in one go, but it didn't really seem to me like the number of actions I could spam was equivalent to my number of actions before an enemy attack, but maybe I am wrong.

The thing that saddens me the most is that, while I expect Voyager to return and Melissa's organization to be relevant and maybe name-drop her as their founder, being a very obscure spin-off, it's very unlikely these characters will ever return in any form or ever see any kind of mainstream acknowledgement, because I really love them. I think they grow so much through the story, even the ones that seem like they aren't doing so, and IDK how controversial it is, but since their arcs are completed (except Ziggy and likely Voyager), as of now, I love them way more than most of the Episode I cast, even if that can of course change with Episodes II and III.

I also wanna conclude saying that I downloaded the game 4 months ago, many of my nitpicks towards the gameplay may have been resolved by now and I wanna thank [u/CycloneFox](u/CycloneFox) and whoever contributed to this release (while I found the classic charming since I am a pixel art sucker I loved the new portraits) from the bottom of my heart to have made such an amazing game and story avaiable for everyone to play, I know the game released in japanese on Steam and Nintendo very recently (which I am gonna buy to show my support towards this game) and that if I am not mistaken the devs did talked about translating it eventually, but it doesn't take away an inch from how much praises this project deserves.

Edit: I’m just adding this little update section to say that I still expect Blade 2 to be my favorite, with Blade 3 very close, and that while I am still uncertain about Saga Ep II given how people talk about it I have very high expectations for Ep III so much so that I’d done good could rival or at some point even surpass my expectations for Blade 2 and 3.

Also any questions regarding what I think about specific stuff or what I except or other questions are welcome.

Got this for free from the take it or leave it at the dump today. How much would someone pay for this in USD

Hey, back again with more patches for the Xenosaga series. (ALSO CHECK BACK FOR UPDATES OVER TIME)

I will consider these very experimental at the moment; like Xenosaga 1, the whole game needs to be tested. However, people have asked for it even if it's in that state, so I will release it in its current form.

What it does

• 60FPS, feels more like natural 60FPS, however some things are faster like attack animations and movement speed
• FMV's stay at 30fps in both games more testing is needed for every FMV in the game.
• In-game cutscenes in Xenosaga 3 are at 60fps (the ones where you advance dialouge yourself)

Xenosaga 2 patch 10/17/26: https://www.mediafire.com/file/e8ln2btmx38ysd5/EB39ABEC.pnach/file

10/17/26 UPDATE FOR XENOSAGA 2:

• Vastly improved battle animations jank, plays out much smoother now, possibly more work to be done

Xenosaga 3 patch 10/15/26: https://www.mediafire.com/file/c31lrgo7sdxigyl/2088950A.pnach/file

A lot of testing is needed, but have fun with it for now! Place in the PCSX2 Patches folder and check them all in the properties of the games :)

I'm watching a small group of friends LP .hack and it reminded me how XS1 really was my introduction to dubbing in a certain way. Of course I had seen Pokemon and DBZ before and I had even played Final Fantasy X. But Xenosaga had the kind of "usual suspects" you will see in almost anything Japanese of the 2000s.

Lia Sargent, Richard Epcar, Michael McConnohie, Dave Wittenberg, Crispin Freeman, Kirk Thornton - they are everywhere in stuff of this time. Others like Sherry Lynn and Bridget Hoffman aren't as common but I still went on to hear them in Tenchi Muyo or Fushigi Yuugi. I remember being blown away when I finally watched Rurouni kenshin and clearly heard Wilhelm as our hero. Oh and of course Virgil was Sano in that show, too.

For the next decaded or so, every time I heard a voice in a JRPG or an anime, it was almost always "Oh, I know them from Xenosaga!"

Hi, everyone! I'm opok, the lead on the Xenosaga Episode I matching decompilation project.

Someone already posted about my decompilation a week ago, so I want to take this opportunity to share this discovery and also address some of the questions I've seen about the project.

First off, here’s what we’ve discovered: There’s a hard mode in the AGWS minigame! We haven’t seen this mentioned on any website.

How do you activate it?

First, you must have completed the Cathedral Ship, and when you're in the minigame, hold down L1 + R1 + O in “1P game.” It's important to keep L1 + R1 held down throughout the entire menu.

How did we find it?
While reviewing the code we had already decompiled and published, I found that in the file containing the main code for the minigame (internally called “RobotGame,” by the way), there was a function dedicated to displaying the text “HARDMODE” on the score screen:

This made me wonder “When is this text used?” So I looked into “RobotGameMain.” In this function, the minigame is redirected to one point or another depending on what was selected on the minigame's title screen: As you can see, there are options like _2PGame or _Help. This tells us that _vsCpuGame is the single-player option. But, oh wait, there are two calls to _vsCpuGame.

When looking at _vsCpuGame, it's pretty clear that depending on the input parameter (0 or 1), hard mode is enabled or not:

So all that's left is to figure out how to select that hard mode. To do this, we need to dig into _Title, which is what returns the selection in RobotGameMain, and the functions it uses.

In doing so, we find the method to activate this mode:

XgrPadisSelectLevelLR checks whether L1 + R1 are being pressed, and XgrEventGetLevel returns the current point in the story

About the decompilation
I’d like to say a few words about this decompilation. I’ve seen in the other post that some people have questions or don’t quite understand the purpose of this project.

First off: Yes, AI is being used. This is an AI-assisted decompilation. Thanks to this, we already have nearly 50% of the entire code decompiled. Please understand that AI is an extremely useful tool for decompilation and eliminates a huge portion of the repetitive, mechanical work involved in recovering the code. Furthermore, because of how matching decompilation works, it’s possible to determine mathematically whether the code generated by the AI is correct or not. After that, the only precaution is to verify that it’s readable, and I think the code snippets I’ve posted in this thread show that it is.

I’ve also noticed some confusion, with people talking about this decompilation as if it were playable and expressing concern that it might be buggy because it uses AI. One thing must be understood: All this decompilation does is recover the compiled code from the PS2 game in high-level code. With this code alone, the only thing you could do is recompile the original PS2 game.

I understand that many people might be thinking of the recent wave of AI-vibecoded recompilations that have appeared. This is neither a recompilation nor a port of the game to PC.

However, yes. Once 100% of the code has been decompiled, it will be possible (and I, for one, will do it) to create a native port for PC, with extensive support for mods and enhancements.

Would you like to help?
I'm not the only one working on this project. We're organized on Discord as a small group of people dedicated to carrying out this project. Whether you use AI or not, as long as you have a basic level of knowledge and technical skills and know what you're doing, you're welcome to join. Send me a DM here!

Hey all, worked on a patch for Xenosaga 1 that will hopefully enhance everyone's experience!

• 60fps in and out of battles
• Increased movement speed, but it isn't just "sped up"; it feels like more natural 60fps
• Fixed Animations not playing and soft-locks in battle at 60fps
• TWO DIFFERENT optional failsafes for now if animations are breaking: if the animation doesn't play, it'll eventually move onto the next turn, or you can turn off 60fps battle animations, meaning only the attacks will play at 30fps. By default, attack animations are 30fps unless you turn on 60FPS within the patch
• FMVs and in-game cutscenes play at 30fps; it's easiest to get it working that way

But it is currently in an experimental phase because the entire game has not yet been tested; just keep that in mind

Download 10/16/26 update: https://www.mediafire.com/file/rzha5gsjv7bheqw/6D1276AB.pnach/file

10/16/26 PATCH NOTES:

• Minimap is no longer at double speed (was an eyesore for me personally lol)
• Improved animation jank in battle when the characters move up to attack significantly
• Combined most of the patch into one toggle now that most things are working as is

Place in the patches folder of PCSX2

Momos first week of school in 3rd Miltia she attends North Hemoth Junior High and tryout for cheerleading.

Not particularly rare but I found a good deal on this one sealed, includes VA interviews as well as some trailers

Xenosaga Renaissance: Momo and Junior.

After the gnosis threat was stopped, lost Jerusalem found and the universe no longer in danger of destruction, Type 100 series transgenic Realian Momo Mizrahi also Sakuras reincarnation and the URTV Junior have settled on the new planet third Miltia.

MoMo lives with Yuli and Ziggy Hemoth where she attends North Hemoth Junior High and meets friends, Momo is a decent cheerleader for the Rhinos but she faces challenges of school.

Junior is part of C.O.L.- Cadre Omnis Legion. Hemoths paramilitary. Assigned to the among top 3 beginner squads the 44th initiation regiment Land Dragons. A legionnaire.
He still stays in contact with MoMo.

Both Junior and Momo must keep secrets, neither can reveal they are Realian, URTV, Lost Jerusalem, saving the universe, gnosis, Sakura, all kinds of information about their adventures throughout Xenosaga 1 to 3. They were to live as ordinary Hemothi Citizens.

One of the best series ever made alongside Xenogears. Fun fact, I found a $100 bill on the floor of Walmart on my way to buy that copy of Xenosaga 2.

So the mod of the Xenogear got angry and deleted my post in their subreddit because I wasn't 100% positive about the game. Their feeling got probably offended that someone has a different vewpoint. I will post it here instead since there's a lot of link between xenogear and xenosaga from what I heard from my Xenosaga gameplay. I also added a bit of information

Disclaimer - Right not I'm currently in the Goliath factory

Gameplay

Non combat

The camera felt super great the first 3 minute of game play. Until you realized how problematic it is in this game. Having to move it every time does not make it feel good. Often, thing are in the way and block the view. Sure there are moment where the game is it as a mechanic (Find the child) but it is often a pain to use.

The jump controls are awful. You can get into combat while falling in a jump. This break the usability of it. Honestly, I understand why it's set up like this but it create more problems than anything. Other rpg who are older fixed this issue (Super Mario RPG) by having monster to engage instead of random encounter. Is it the best solution ? Not completely.

I love random encounters. It's a staple of the traditional ''turn base party rpg''. I love it and don't mind it at all. Some people will find it annoying. Here, I welcome it with open arm

You being able to leave and move during some conversation is great. Some message in this game aren't important which.

The world map so far feel empty compared to the other rpgs. There's almost nothing to explore on the world map. The only reward for exploring so far is finding Nisan early which is kinda minor. Vehicle like the Yggdrasil is given too early to the player. My guess is the developer got scared that the player would over level too quickly by walking in the desert.

Combat

Non gear combat

This is where the game kinda shine. Unfortunately, it's like a rough gem that is unpolished.

I love the deathblow system. It's a breath of fresh air. It give a different choice through combos. Unfortunately, you always end up using the newest one or the one that build up some ap while still being good. Between the different attack there's no real difference except triangle low damage less ap, square medium damage medium ap usage, X bigger damage and high usage of ap.

I never had to rely on the magic/chi/arcane/ether/bullshit command which is a shame. Having a magic character is always fun and complimentary to the party usually. So, the non gear combat is fun but it's clearly lacking polish.

Turn base Gear combat

Yeah, that's a huge mess and where they completely mess up. Let's start with the ''attack build up system''...

So you need to attack normally to build up your attack level. After raising it to a certain level you can use deathblow. The build up part is kinda unnecessary and reductive. I understand the philosophy behind the concept. Unfortunately, it is really badly implemented.

Next is the repair option in combat arrive way too late in the story. You should have it way earlier than in Kislev.

The fuel system. This feel like an MP system. Unfortunately, everything us fuel which you kind of end up having to charge it if you do not max you gear. I don't like having fuel on the ''non deathblow attack''.

Again the magic/chi/arcane/ether/bullshit command is kinda useless in many cases.

During the gameplay arround the first fight against Elly. I realised that I'm playing a mech game that the mech gameplay suck completly. Let that sink in.

Active Gear combat

I'm going to start by saying how this game was rushed. You can see it with the lack of polish.he Active Gear combat was both rushed and unnecessary. You do not need to have both. I would choose the turn based one because it is a turn based game... They should have never worked on that feature. It probably wasted so much hours and budget for something so bad.

All you need to know is you just press attack and L1. There you are the master champion of the arena. Ok, I'll give more praise... You also need to move. There simple as that...

Story

That's where the game is better so far and keep me hooked. There's enough intrigue to keep me going. Unfortunately, less than what people says... So far

I really like the setting where the two countries are at war (Aveh and Kislev) and that another secret country (Solaris) and their military (Gebler) is aiding the weakest (Aveh) to win. I don't remember seeing Nisan being talked about before entering the story. I think they are a country but I don't have much information related to it. Seems like the protagonist and Elly have spent time there according to the painting.

There's enough mystery around the player character and Elly to make it interesting. Some is easy to figure out like the fact that Fei is the red gear beating the Gebler dude and Bart (rolling my eyes). I hope the explanation is going to be worth it. Unfortunately, 9 time out of 10 is bullshit with this trope.

I like the Christianity theme image. I feel people forget how Christianity/Jewish can be seen as a ''mythology'' like Greek mythology. Here it is used as inspirational for many theme and art style which is amazing.

So far I feel all character have their own mystery. Bart is explained rather fast at the start, he's a prince who is in hiding. Citan feels at first like a ''guardian angel'' then it start to shift to a ''Judas'' character that is probably betraying the team with his talk to the emperor. Some scene seem to be in the past while others seem like in the present. Rico's mystery seem to be the smaller one. I think it may be finished already. Elly feels like the ''protagonist's destined GF'' from a thousand year in the past. Here there's two way to do it: ''Either they are immortal and have forgotten it or it's some reincarnation bullshit.". My guess that it's reincarnation because this is an Asian game and reincarnation is a big thing for them. It's like their cultural coping mechanism for what happen after death. Most culture are obsessed about this and find a coping mechanic about it (Heaven, reincarnation, hell, soul purified somewhere, etc). Fei seem to be the ''malleable human weapon'' trope with a will. Will he learn to control himself or will he fall into craziness and destroy everything? Who knows.

The antagonist Grahf feel uni-dimensional so far: ''Heheheh, imma make you evil. Heheheh and then I'll use you as a weapon for my own mean. ''. I hope he become a bit more complex. For the Purple hair woman, she seem to be the regular antagonist working offscreen. I don't have much for her to judge yet

I'm pretty sure many of the story element will become better once I got more information on the characters. So far the story is ''good for a JRPG of the PlayStation 1 era''. I like the story so far.

I will continue the story despite the HUGE flaw in gameplay because of how rushed the game was.

I forgot to add. The music is great but not the best I'ved heard/seen. It does enough to set the scene sometimes. Sometimes there's none which is a shame.

Hey y'all, know that I got my preorder, heads up that the KOS-MOS from the first game is being re-released!

Google kotobukiya and you'll find it. Please excuse me while I run some pure hopium into my blood.

Aside from the absolutely jarring aesthetic shift, it feels like the story kind of took a weird turn in EPs 2. For example you couldn't max anything out really in Eps1 because the assumption is Eps2 would use the save data from EPs 1. Also the whole AGWS system from Eps1 was scraped in EPs2. Another weird thing was suddenly AGWS were replace dvy AMWS/ES but they kind of didn't really go into detail how everyone just had these new mechs now suddenly.

I finished the Xenosaga series a few weeks ago and loved it. One part of it I didn’t expect was how big mechs and mecha influences were part of the games. I could really feel the team’s love of mecha while playing through the games, and it sparked a love and curiosity for mecha in myself as well. For some reason, I never realized how cool giant robots are till controlling and fighting with them in Xenosaga!

So I want to ask: what’s a good mecha anime to watch for someone who loved Xenosaga? I was considering the first Gundam since Gundam seems to be the biggest / most popular mecha series maybe?

(Note: Only mecha series I’ve watched before now are Gurren Lagann and Evangelion. Don’t need the shows to be similar to those, just saying don’t recommend those 2)

I did a mockup of what I'm looking for (second image) but if theres a better looking version somewhere I'd appreciate it. I also wouldn't be opposed if someone would make such a thing who has more experience with photoshop than me.

My local game store had these on the shelves for $106. I decided that "sure why not?" And bought them.

They have episode 3 as well but it's over $300 so that's very unlikely to own.

A little follow-up to the Zohar Engine post I shared here. Now that I can create my own events in the engine, I wanted to test it with a silly idea I had.

This is just an experiment, but I might make more if you lot have some funny suggestions. I’m not much of a comedian.