Xenosaga: Pied Piper is a role-playing video game co-developed by Monolith Soft, Namco Mobile, and Tom Create. The game was published by Namco in 2004 for mobile devices. The game was only released in Japan, originally in 2004 as 6 Vodafone apps, starting on July 14th and fully released on October 13th. They were available as 3 chapter purchases, each split into 2 parts released within weeks of each other. The game was made available for i-mode devices on July 6th 2006, through Namco's monthly subscription service.
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Under similar circumstances as Xenosaga II to III: A Missing Year, the rating that I give here does not really mean anything. This game is basically impossible to access today in any means and the only way I was able to access this in any form whatsoever is through translation by ValakTurtle of a playthrough by 桂樹 (shoutouts to these guys.... seriously they deserves kudos as without them, no person on this Earth would see this story).
Xenosaga Pied Piper is a Japan exclusive game for flipphones I think??? I can't really recall which phones or whatever had this game because this is such an obscure piece of media, in fact it is lost media in all but this playthrough with no way of emulating this game. It follows the story of Jan Sauer and his subordinates as they try to search for a prolific killer, Voyager who has been killing people utilising the UMN.
I am not going to spoil the writing here at all as that is the only real thing the game has going for it but it is so good. Like A Missing Year, this should have been made into an another game since it had no budget. If you want to watch Pied Piper yourself, here is the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo2yfd3EU8_5wY7vso-kGBRpZhXZSiZCL
Definitely worth a watch, especially in the leadup to Xenosaga Episode 3.
Xenosaga Pied Piper is a Japan exclusive game for flipphones I think??? I can't really recall which phones or whatever had this game because this is such an obscure piece of media, in fact it is lost media in all but this playthrough with no way of emulating this game. It follows the story of Jan Sauer and his subordinates as they try to search for a prolific killer, Voyager who has been killing people utilising the UMN.
I am not going to spoil the writing here at all as that is the only real thing the game has going for it but it is so good. Like A Missing Year, this should have been made into an another game since it had no budget. If you want to watch Pied Piper yourself, here is the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo2yfd3EU8_5wY7vso-kGBRpZhXZSiZCL
Definitely worth a watch, especially in the leadup to Xenosaga Episode 3.
So, look I didn't actually play this game but PEAK. The story is very good is all you need to know. Thank Valak Turtle for the YT vids
Shoutouts to ValakTurtles on Youtube for uploading a captioned playthrough of this game.
Xenosaga Pied Piper is a short side-story released for the Vodafone 6 and written by Kaori Tanaka (Takahashi's wife an co-creator of the Xenoseries). It dives into the backstory of Ziggy at the time he was known as Jan Sauer, a police officer specialized in investigating crime related to the U.M.N Network (the virtual reality space which serves as both the Internet and the main mean of interdimensional travel in the universe of the series).
Since the game was released for a now defunct platform and no dump of the game has been uploaded online, it is effectively lost media and will probably remain as such for a long time unless someone manage to archive it.
Thus I had to resolve to watching a playthrough of the game with subtitles, however from the looks of it, it seems to attempt to translate the gameplay system of Xenosaga 1 on a mobile device and they seem to have done more than a commandable work at it even with the limited presentation which looks like something that could've come out of RPG Maker 2003.
Ziggy is a character that I already liked in the main games and the main series only partially hinted at his past and what might've caused him to commit suicide and eventually get recycled as a cyborg. This game is meant to tell that story in a more direct manner and as such does a really decent job at establishing Ziggy's backstory and the traumatic events that transpired here as well as his relationship to the mysterious "Voyager" a hooded figure who showed up briefly at the end of Xenosaga 2 and which Ziggy to have a vendetta against.
The script of the game is really good as it is to be expected by Kaori Tanaka's excellent work on the main series, however it kinda falls short as a mystery game. The identity of Voyager is way too obvious if you saw his design in Xenosaga 2 and can manage to put 2 and 2 together, so a lot of the plot become kinda sluggish certainly not helped by both the shoddy presentation which makes a lot of the more emotional bit of the game fall a bit flat.
The OST in particular sounds like the Arabic Nokia Tune which was probably to be expected given the platform this was published on but it really takes away from some of the scenes in the game.
I still enjoyed it in the end however, especially as a deep dive into the past events of the series as well as to complete Ziggy's character arc that I'm sure will conclude in an interesting manner in Xenosaga 3 (as he seem to have found another family with Momo and her mom which is a situation reminiscent of what he went through in that game).
I'm not gonna give a score to this one seeing as I haven't actually played the game but it's a neat little curiosity and company piece to the trilogy that I wish could be playable in some way in the future, it's nonetheless impressive how solid the game seems to be, an RPG on mobile phone is pretty damn impressive all things considered especially one taking place in a setting as rich and dense as the one from Xenosaga.
But still... getting stuck on mobile is some grade A Nomura bullshit
Ziggy isn't a step dad, he's the dad who stepped up !
Xenosaga Pied Piper is a short side-story released for the Vodafone 6 and written by Kaori Tanaka (Takahashi's wife an co-creator of the Xenoseries). It dives into the backstory of Ziggy at the time he was known as Jan Sauer, a police officer specialized in investigating crime related to the U.M.N Network (the virtual reality space which serves as both the Internet and the main mean of interdimensional travel in the universe of the series).
Since the game was released for a now defunct platform and no dump of the game has been uploaded online, it is effectively lost media and will probably remain as such for a long time unless someone manage to archive it.
Thus I had to resolve to watching a playthrough of the game with subtitles, however from the looks of it, it seems to attempt to translate the gameplay system of Xenosaga 1 on a mobile device and they seem to have done more than a commandable work at it even with the limited presentation which looks like something that could've come out of RPG Maker 2003.
Ziggy is a character that I already liked in the main games and the main series only partially hinted at his past and what might've caused him to commit suicide and eventually get recycled as a cyborg. This game is meant to tell that story in a more direct manner and as such does a really decent job at establishing Ziggy's backstory and the traumatic events that transpired here as well as his relationship to the mysterious "Voyager" a hooded figure who showed up briefly at the end of Xenosaga 2 and which Ziggy to have a vendetta against.
The script of the game is really good as it is to be expected by Kaori Tanaka's excellent work on the main series, however it kinda falls short as a mystery game. The identity of Voyager is way too obvious if you saw his design in Xenosaga 2 and can manage to put 2 and 2 together, so a lot of the plot become kinda sluggish certainly not helped by both the shoddy presentation which makes a lot of the more emotional bit of the game fall a bit flat.
The OST in particular sounds like the Arabic Nokia Tune which was probably to be expected given the platform this was published on but it really takes away from some of the scenes in the game.
I still enjoyed it in the end however, especially as a deep dive into the past events of the series as well as to complete Ziggy's character arc that I'm sure will conclude in an interesting manner in Xenosaga 3 (as he seem to have found another family with Momo and her mom which is a situation reminiscent of what he went through in that game).
I'm not gonna give a score to this one seeing as I haven't actually played the game but it's a neat little curiosity and company piece to the trilogy that I wish could be playable in some way in the future, it's nonetheless impressive how solid the game seems to be, an RPG on mobile phone is pretty damn impressive all things considered especially one taking place in a setting as rich and dense as the one from Xenosaga.
But still... getting stuck on mobile is some grade A Nomura bullshit
Ziggy isn't a step dad, he's the dad who stepped up !
Watched the playthrough translated by ValakTurtle on Youtube since this game is functionally lost media at this point. Regardless, it's a shame that this never got a rerelease or localization. Has every bit the soul that is present in the work of Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga despite its belying nature as a mobile game. Ziggy was already a great character in the trilogy but Pied Piper gave me the context I needed to fully be able to appreciate him. Really wish I had fully watched this instead of listening to a summary before I played episode III because goddamn it's solid.
I really want to cry, no one in the game deserved any of this