Final review for a big old series that I’ve been following for a few years now since reviewing the first game for edge magazine. It’s a good ending to a tortured series and much of my conclusion is in the undercurrent of the first paragraph. I tried a trick with the conclusion to the review that works quite well I think and gets the points across. Still, even though Takahashi’s dream was never quite fulfilled, this is about as much as one could hope for.

Please bear with this. While a review of the finale to a three-part epic J-RPG science-fiction saga might seem irredeemably tedious to all but the most unflinchingly geekish consumer,there are lessons herein that are important to the rest of gaming. Ideas that should and shouldn’t be repeated and, remarkably, beneath the rubble of this prematurely destroyed series, the pleading whisper of a good game trapped in a fallen framework.

Originally intended as a six-part run of games that would be released over no less than three console generations spanning a decade, the Xenosaga vision has been mercilessly downsized in recent times. Indeed, with declining sales as the story has progressed it was perhaps debateable as to whether we’d see any form of conclusion to this, Tetsuya Takahashi’s lovingly crafted universe. So, there’s some sense of relief for fans in this, the final (foreseeable) Xenosaga game: they at least made it to an end.

But first, a brief history of time.

You can read the rest here