Xenosaga/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alas, Poor Villain: Albedo's death at the end of Episode II.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Hinted at by Word of God. Big Bad Wilhelm's plot involves resetting time over and over again to avoid the universe's eventual destruction. The characters argue that endlessly repeating the same thing simply for the sake of existence is meaningless, and put a stop to it. At this point Wilhelm may seem like a Well-Intentioned Extremist at best and a Complete Monster at worst (he's directly or indirectly responsible for pretty much everything that happens in the series, including each character's individual traumas), but the post-game database suggests that the party's rejection of his plan was actually what he wanted, and that by continually resetting the universe he was actually "training" the collective consciousness of humanity to move on and find a way to avoid the universe's destruction, putting him in a much more positive light.
  • Broken Base: The fanbase is broken into 3 parts with each episode. The drama with Episode II's changes was so bad, the admin of the fansite Zenosaga.com (who was the biggest fansite at the time) would ban anyone on the forums if that person defended the game.
  • Catharsis Factor: If Shion's behavior through the series is a source of frustration to you, you get the chance to work your issues out on her face late in the third game. Enjoy.
  • Complete Monster: There's no denying that Voyager and Dmitri Yuriev belong somewhere near the top of the list.
  • Contested Sequel: Episode II to Episode I. Also, Xenosaga in general, in comparison to Xenogears.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Albedo is an unquestionably horrifying, sadistic, Ax Crazy pedophile who enjoys terrorizing and murdering small robot girls - but he has white hair, so he's probably just misunderstood. May also count as Faux Affably Evil; he takes Ax Crazy and sadomasochism to new heights but god, he does it with such hamminess.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Orgulla, a schizophrenic fundamentalist cyborg boss from Episode II that is never heard from again after the fight with her.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Well, sexier if you compare T-elos to KOS-MOS.
  • Fan Disservice: Albedo plays Evil Is Sexy to the hilt...usually for the benefit of preteen-looking Realians and his own brother, all while crossing one Moral Event Horizon after another. In a sillier example, in the latter two games, everyone, not just the more-or-less humans, gets an optional swimsuit. Including Ziggy. It's an unflattering Speedo and ridiculous man-bra of a rebreather harness. In purple. With swim fins. Less justifiably, some gamers, apparently fearful of Wardrobe Malfunctions, would list Jin's fundoshi as well. Allen's 50's style single piece swimsuit could almost count, and there's chaos'...bulge in the first game. He lost it in the subsequent games, thankfully.
    • To be fair, Ziggy only has that hideous eyesore of a swimsuit in the third game. His second game's swimsuit is much better, looking for the most part like his normal outfit but green and he has a snorkeling mask.
  • Foe Yay:
    • Albedo and Jr.'s rather intense, uh, battling.
    • Margulis challenging Jin to 'taste his blade'.

"It's been far too long, Uzuki! This feeling...of exhilaration!"

    • KOS-MOS and T-elos.
    • Voyager and Ziggy.

"I wanted to spend my eternal life with you"

  • Freud Was Right: Albedo's main desire is to "reunite" with Jr. since they were originally conjoined twins.
  • Fridge Brilliance:
    • Jr.'s best weapon in I was the Blood M9, which becomes his first weapon in III because there is no equipment changing in II.
    • Why is Wilhelm such a good Chessmaster? Because he's already successfully implemented his cosmic reset plan at least ten and possibly hundreds of times. This means that he either knows what's going to happen (if events repeat closely/exactly) or he knows how to manipulate people to get the correct outcome (through millions of years of accumulated Batman Gambit-ing experience).
    • At the beginning of Episode I, it's mentioned how Virgil has a condition stemming from the consumption of Realian Tissue. At the time, you're told this is treated like a kind of drug to some people, and Shion is horrified at the implications. Later, you discover that the Realian Febronia donated some of her organs to him to save his life, and then suddenly everything clicks into place.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Every iteration of Erde Kaiser. It is so powerful its a wonder the game disc in the PlayStation 2 can even stay in one piece when it's summoned.
    • Xenosaga I had the Bravesoul and Golden Dice items which both increased attack power as the equipper's HP got lower, letting the player get a maximum of about 200% damage. The drawback of dying in one hit could be controlled with Safety Limit, which guarantees survival with 1 HP once per cast. Jr. in particular makes a joke out of every boss in the game partly due to his exclusive Dandyism, which stacks with Safety Limit and has a similar effect, but also due to the items only working with physical attacks, which he packs more of than any other character in the game.
    • Xenosaga III's ES battles became exponentially easier once you got your hands on the Level II Anima Awakenings, which hit most if not all Mooks on the screen for ridiculous damage. You could simply charge these by walking into a battle and retreating over and over again, then firing off your BFG (or BFS) once full. Also a great way to grind for money and skill points later on.
    • Xenosaga III also brought you Blood Dancer, which let KOS-MOS and MOMO turn red. Then take down the final incarnation of aforementioned Erde Kaiser, itself a game breaker, singlehandedly. The reward, Erde Kaiser Sigma, who, when summoned by someone under the influence of MOMO's Magic-Attack buff, can One-Hit Kill the FINAL BOSS.
    • Xenosaga III tends to be filled with these. Jr. and Shion can essentially become invincible for a couple of turns via Phantom Fly, a Master Skill that allows them to evade essentially every attack in the game. While it is normally tempered by an absurdly high EP cost, there's an accessory that you can get with a relatively easy sidequest near the end of the game that reduces SP cost to 1. Add the two together, and you get either Jr. who can support with the best of them, or Shion, who can inflict reasonable damage, break, and heal. And are invincible.
  • Genius Bonus: There's a few of them littered throughout the trilogy, the most obvious being that Sellers is a not-so-subtle Captain Ersatz of Dr. Strangelove, who was played by Peter Sellers.
  • God Mode Sue: KOS-MOS has been accused of being this.
  • Hell Is That Noise: Albedo's laugh.
  • Ho Yay: Albedo stuck his hand inside Rubedo for God's sake. And sniffed his hair. Crispin Freeman's voice acting helps, too.
  • HSQ: Off the charts in the scene where Shion finds out that she made contact with the Zohar and summoned the Gnosis, leading to her Heroic BSOD.
  • Hype Aversion: The original was billed as the Final Fantasy X killer and might have been as such if such a big deal wasn't made about it.
  • Large Ham: Many of the antagonists have the obligatory loud and dramatic speechifying on the topics of power and order in the Universe (Margulis, The Ormus Patriarch). However, Albedo takes the Large Ham cake, smears himself with the frosting, lops off body parts with the serving spatula for emphasis, and then hands it off to the protagonists demanding that they HURT HIM MORE.
  • Les Yay: Shion and KOS-MOS (it doesn't help that the latter is a Robot Girl with the combat capabilities of a battleship... though it doesn't hurt it either.)
  • Love Makes You Evil: Keven could be a good example. All of the things he does: Killing himself, helping destroy Old Miltia, destroying KOS-MOS, and mentally ruin Shion just to save her life from the same thing her mom died of. Before Shion, he was willing to do it to bring back his mom.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Albedo, easily. And Wilhelm, of course.
  • Manipulative Bastard: This game has plenty of them. Kevin outdoes them all, however.
  • Memetic Molester: Albedo is a little too fond with MOMO and Jr.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • You will not be able to hang around Xenosaga forums or watch Xenosaga videos for very long without hearing "SHION. MY APPEARANCE IS DOWN 5%. I NEED TO BE CLEANED." You just won't.
    • Helmer's "UUUUUUUUUUUU-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" line from Episode I has gotten a lot of this, particularly in LPs.
    • A good chunk of Albedo's dialog, with Ma Belle Peche being to most notable.
  • Moral Event Horizon: While it has been trampled to bits by the many villains of the series, the most obvious and earliest example takes place for the character Virgil. When you meet him in the first game, he hates Realians with a passion and has even eaten their flesh in the past. He crosses the Horizon when he decides, in order to protect himself from an oncoming swarm of Gnosis, to input the Override code into some nearby Realians and then self destructs them.
    • Yuriev crosses it irrevocably when he uses his appearance as Gaignun to get close to Mary - and shoot her in the gut.
      • He crosses it again when we find out he ordered Nigredo to kill all the URTVs who survived the upcoming Miltian conflict, especially URTV 666 (Rubedo, aka Jr.) because his Red Dragon mode posed a threat to Dmitri. Not to mention him planning to send all the URTVs except Nigredo into the conflict in the first place knowing that it was extremely likely to cause a reaction that would incinerate the entire surface of the planet (killing all of his URTV children as well as every living thing on the planet) and was callously planning to use that to further his own political position.
      • Better: his reaction to being questioned that it was worth it to destroy Miltia if it got rid of U-DO? Yes.
      • And let's not forget him ordering the murder of every man, woman, child, and realian on the Durandel save the four people who were useful to him.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Episode III: Can you people say anything besides "Ether Drive!?" Especially annoying considering each had their own saying when using spells and special attacks in I and II.
    • Ep. II: Mystic powers, grant me a miracle!
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • The infamous Mind Rape scene between MOMO and Albedo.
    • The 27 Series Asura Realians themselves count, but go over the top when they kill Shion's parents right in front of her eyes when she was a child.
    • The concept of the Cosmic Horror, U-Do, itself: An alien being (he's actually God, sent into the Heroes' realm as a child and later, a flying Ark) that spies on the whole of humanity, even though he does it for scientific reasons more than anything.
    • At the end of Episode III, chaos' consciousness resides within the dilapidated remains of Kos-Mos and is floating in space; considering that he has lived at least 7000 years already, he doesn't seem to mind that much]].
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The Stock system in Episode II.
  • Stoic Woobie: Jin truly has a sucktacular life, on par with Shion's but keeps it all to himself. Implied to be because he doesn't want to 'burden' Shion with his own problems, as he feels partly responsible for not being able to help Shion with hers.
  • Tear Jerker: The series has racked up several moments during its run.
    • The whole Febronia/Virgil story in Episode III.
    • Shion seeing her dead parents, and trying to put the blood back in her mother.
    • Albedo's second death in Episode II, when Jr. is begging him not to go.
    • Sakura's sad story, and her budding romance with Jr., and her death.
    • KOS-MOS' fate during the ending of Episode III. More specifically, it's how the cutscene and narrative sets up and describes it.
    • Jin's death, made more poignant with his Famous Last Words.
  • The Untwist: The identities of the Red and White Testaments, Kevin and Albedo, are foreshadowed with numerous heavy-handed hints and are both blindingly obvious by the end of Episode II. To smash the point home, their Episode III character art shows them both unmasked, obliterating any residual shock that would have come from The Reveal in the game itself.
  • The Woobie: Momo. Later, Shion, as a more annoying variant.
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