i just started playing it... the back of the box says 80 hours of gameplay, dont tell me its becuz the chic runs slow through huge enviroments.....

Shion does run kind of slow, but the game has really long cut-scenes. Some of them take up half-hour, an hour, maybe even more. It's a good game though, in my opinion. I haven't gotten a chance to beat it yet (had to put it down), but I'm almost done with it.

"80 hours worth of gameplay" my foot. Granted, it is not a short game, but you could do all the little sidequests and easter eggs and still get done within half that time.

I think I finished it in 60. But that's what I got on Suikoden 2 and 3 as well, and some people do it in 30. Depends on how you play I guess. It's a normally long rpg though, I'd say.

Btw you can switch your on screen character to Kos-mos or whoever you want. (Although they all run at the same speed.)

lol, thanks i just started but man is this game awesome i've had it since 04 and only played it once in 05 what was i thinking!?

I cant beleive its a first gen PS2 game

It is pretty awesome, yeah. It's one of my favorite rpg's for ps2. If you enjoy a deep and complex story, you'll get plenty out of this one. Very good characters and voice acting as well, not to mention the soundtrack that's done by Matsuda (Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger) It's too bad the game only has one battle theme (besides the final battle) but luckily enough it was so good that I didn't mind.

Some tips. Try to always upgrade the speed of your techs from Low to Hi. If you do you can use techs for less AP. Also always incresse the recovery speed for them. It doesnt cost much, and can only be upgraded twice. About the power though, don't go too crazy here. You can increase the power of a skill by at least 50 levels, and it costs a lot of money. Only increase the power on those you really use. You'll get new better skills.

Btw, it's good to focus a bit on the first long range skills everyone gets. (Kos-mos R Cannon, Shions Spell Ray, etc.) You'll probably be using those for quite a while. But you'll keep getting better close range attacks for the most part.

What? Does it really say that? *grabs CD case and checks* "An epic adventure delivering over 80 hours of game play" OMG! xD That's absolutely not true. I finished the game in about 40 hours (sidequests and extra stuff included). They must have thought we'd spend another 40 hours on XenoCards or something. xP

I spent a few hours on Xenocards. It reminded me of when I used to play Magic the Gathering, and it was fun trying to build the best deck, and find new powerful cards. The strategy in facing some opponents was challenging, and I tried to build a deck that could work well against any deck.

thank u Athrum, im hooked on this game, i still cant beleive its a 2001 release

Depends on how you play the game, with the 80 hours thing. My first time through I had about 70 something hours. A friend of mine had over a hundred something I think. But he was...psychotic and leveled all of the characters to lvl 99. It can depend on how you choose to 'enjoy' the game. You can waste a lot of hours playing that card game or Xeno poker. I'm not a fan of card games since I'm retarded with understanding all of the fancy dandy rules XD. I played Xeno poker a lot though. That was easy and addicting. I'd say Xenosaga was a strong start to the PS2, I'm kind of surprised when I hear it was a pretty early PS2 game. But I can be kind of surprised with FFX since it was too, both are really well designed games.

The back of the cover might be lying but I don't think that little white lie really takes away from the game any. Its one of my favorite RPG's. Though I do admit it isn't really the strongest RPG, especially when compared with the other two Xenosaga's. It's probably the most solid of the three though. It did well with opening up those who played to the whole mythology. Plus its neat noticing a few surprising details that you aren't made aware of until Episode III. My favorite is when you play as Jr. invading the U-TIC battleship. If you look at one of the computer screens in a room it shows a a little report on a new weapon called 'T-elos'. I got a kick out of that having played Episode III previously.