This review contains spoilers
In reality this game is more like Xenosaga 4 because between 2 and this game you have to play Pied Piper (Japanese only mobile game for which only the script is available in English) and watch A Missing Year (free flash movie originally only released in Japanese but at least there is a full fan translation) and only then can you (maybe) understand what is happening in this game!
Probably the biggest issue with the narrative is that Shion is downright insufferable throughout this entire game. Her irrational and erratic actions are what end up driving the plot for basically the entire old Miltia section and when she insists on going back to her ex-boyfriend whom had been shown to be an evil manipulator and little else. Beyond that she is also insanely rude to all her allies for no reason while they're risking their lives trying to save her dumbass while also giving her no pushback whatsoever.
All of this resulted in me really not caring about the character or her "happy" ending, Allen deserved better....
Because of the series shrunk down nature (and Xenosaga 2 barely developing the overall story), 3 is left with the herculean task of having to explain everything and resolving this gargantuan story and naturally this does result in some issues.
The pacing on disc 2 is the obvious one.
The series 2 main antagonists, Yuriev and Wilhelm, who were shrouded in mystery for the first 2 games, pretty much get dealt with immediately as they step into the spotlight.
Yuriev, for one, overall ended up being a very one dimensional character and his death was just kind of anticlimactic especially when Albedo randomly shows up reincarnated as a Testament only to die again 30 seconds later.
Wilhelm ends up being the big bad string puller who is really behind EVERYTHING but he only reveals his cards in the last hour where he gives you a 30 minute mega info dump which is downright impossible to comprehend due to how much stuff is being unveiled. Once you wrap your head around it after reading the wiki/Xenosaga III Perfect Guide for an hour, it is pretty cool. :)
While you're going through the final planet, Michtam, all of the series' minor antagonist conveniently come flying at you 1 by 1 wanting to fight you to the death (even Hermann and Richard show up lol). It ends up feeling a bit too forced especially when Margulis and Pellegri have no reason to fight you anymore after Willhelm told them the truth.
Some aspects of the story are also just outright dropped, Jin's backstory with Margulis and Pellegri, for one, is never elaborated on despite it being heavily teased throughout episode 2 and 3. Maybe they were planning to make another pied pipper type game idk.
Considering it was initially planned to be a 6 game series, this is probably the best they could've wrapped it up.
The game's presentation ends up being both visually and audibly the peak of the series.
After both 1 and 2 made some rather questionable stylistic decisions in regards to character designs, 3 really nails it with a more expressive stylized approach than 2 while not looking as nightmare inducing as 1. The addition of character portraits to ingame cutscene textboxes also allows them to better communicate emotions however due to budget/hardware limitations the game will often abruptly swap between pre-rendered and ingame cutscenes mid scene via an awkward fade to black transition load screen. The most jarring instance of this is during the final pre-boss cutscene where it ends up swapping back and forth every ~30 seconds and it ends up kinda killing the tension of the scene.
A bunch of voice actors change once again, some returning from 1, some new and it again reinforces what a massive downgrade 2's cast was.
The OST also has by far the most amount of memorable tracks on it.
Another game another combat rework!
And it is passable...
Erde Kaiser just runs the game (even the first version which is very easy to get)
Random encounters amount to just Erde Kaiser -> get boost gauge -> aoe special to finish enemies for bonus points!
Erde Kaiser breaks pretty much everything and the EP cost is irrelevant because the game gives you so many ways of regaining it. Its so efficient that past a certain point you're better off having a character with low EATK use Erde Kaiser so it doesn't outright kill the enemies. Doing anything else just ends up feeling silly especially when the enemies do hurt and can break your characters within ~2/3 hits IF they are given the chance to attack.
At least there is no more roulette wheel and the random encounters don't last minutes like they did in 2, so i guess its an improvement!
The boss fights aren't great either, they all follow the same pattern of doing literally nothing until they're ~25% hp where they get mad and if you're not careful, straight up 1-shot a character/the entire party (if you have higher tiers of Erde Kaiser, which are not hard to get, you can completely ignore bosses).
The mech fights however are definitely the best they've been and while that's kind of a low bar to clear, after Lv3 anima and getting ample energy for attacks, I ended up preferring it over the on-foot combat. The customization ends up being really impactful and some of the later fights can at least get somewhat engaging.
Ultimately Xenosaga as a series is marred by Unfulfilled Potential. Over-ambition and creative ideas meet the harsh reality of budgets and hardware limitations (and a few silly design mistakes).
Probably the biggest issue with the narrative is that Shion is downright insufferable throughout this entire game. Her irrational and erratic actions are what end up driving the plot for basically the entire old Miltia section and when she insists on going back to her ex-boyfriend whom had been shown to be an evil manipulator and little else. Beyond that she is also insanely rude to all her allies for no reason while they're risking their lives trying to save her dumbass while also giving her no pushback whatsoever.
All of this resulted in me really not caring about the character or her "happy" ending, Allen deserved better....
Because of the series shrunk down nature (and Xenosaga 2 barely developing the overall story), 3 is left with the herculean task of having to explain everything and resolving this gargantuan story and naturally this does result in some issues.
The pacing on disc 2 is the obvious one.
The series 2 main antagonists, Yuriev and Wilhelm, who were shrouded in mystery for the first 2 games, pretty much get dealt with immediately as they step into the spotlight.
Yuriev, for one, overall ended up being a very one dimensional character and his death was just kind of anticlimactic especially when Albedo randomly shows up reincarnated as a Testament only to die again 30 seconds later.
Wilhelm ends up being the big bad string puller who is really behind EVERYTHING but he only reveals his cards in the last hour where he gives you a 30 minute mega info dump which is downright impossible to comprehend due to how much stuff is being unveiled. Once you wrap your head around it after reading the wiki/Xenosaga III Perfect Guide for an hour, it is pretty cool. :)
While you're going through the final planet, Michtam, all of the series' minor antagonist conveniently come flying at you 1 by 1 wanting to fight you to the death (even Hermann and Richard show up lol). It ends up feeling a bit too forced especially when Margulis and Pellegri have no reason to fight you anymore after Willhelm told them the truth.
Some aspects of the story are also just outright dropped, Jin's backstory with Margulis and Pellegri, for one, is never elaborated on despite it being heavily teased throughout episode 2 and 3. Maybe they were planning to make another pied pipper type game idk.
Considering it was initially planned to be a 6 game series, this is probably the best they could've wrapped it up.
The game's presentation ends up being both visually and audibly the peak of the series.
After both 1 and 2 made some rather questionable stylistic decisions in regards to character designs, 3 really nails it with a more expressive stylized approach than 2 while not looking as nightmare inducing as 1. The addition of character portraits to ingame cutscene textboxes also allows them to better communicate emotions however due to budget/hardware limitations the game will often abruptly swap between pre-rendered and ingame cutscenes mid scene via an awkward fade to black transition load screen. The most jarring instance of this is during the final pre-boss cutscene where it ends up swapping back and forth every ~30 seconds and it ends up kinda killing the tension of the scene.
A bunch of voice actors change once again, some returning from 1, some new and it again reinforces what a massive downgrade 2's cast was.
The OST also has by far the most amount of memorable tracks on it.
Another game another combat rework!
And it is passable...
Erde Kaiser just runs the game (even the first version which is very easy to get)
Random encounters amount to just Erde Kaiser -> get boost gauge -> aoe special to finish enemies for bonus points!
Erde Kaiser breaks pretty much everything and the EP cost is irrelevant because the game gives you so many ways of regaining it. Its so efficient that past a certain point you're better off having a character with low EATK use Erde Kaiser so it doesn't outright kill the enemies. Doing anything else just ends up feeling silly especially when the enemies do hurt and can break your characters within ~2/3 hits IF they are given the chance to attack.
At least there is no more roulette wheel and the random encounters don't last minutes like they did in 2, so i guess its an improvement!
The boss fights aren't great either, they all follow the same pattern of doing literally nothing until they're ~25% hp where they get mad and if you're not careful, straight up 1-shot a character/the entire party (if you have higher tiers of Erde Kaiser, which are not hard to get, you can completely ignore bosses).
The mech fights however are definitely the best they've been and while that's kind of a low bar to clear, after Lv3 anima and getting ample energy for attacks, I ended up preferring it over the on-foot combat. The customization ends up being really impactful and some of the later fights can at least get somewhat engaging.
Ultimately Xenosaga as a series is marred by Unfulfilled Potential. Over-ambition and creative ideas meet the harsh reality of budgets and hardware limitations (and a few silly design mistakes).