I haven't played any of the xenosaga games, but from what I understand it was basically an uninvolved 'reimagining' rather than part of the same series.

Monk Ed: Eh, don't worry, I can completely relate. I gave up on Disc 2 during my first playthrough because the confusion ratio had escalated so significantly -- and I suppose, unlike NGE, I didn't find the presentation compelling enough to persevere. It was Googling game spoilers years later that convinced me to give it another shot.

Monk Ed wrote:What happened to this story to keep it from being told? Why could even Xenosaga not complete the tale?

These incredibly detailed and fascinating articles cover it better than I could ever hope to.

Now I'm wondering if I should play through the entire available series again -- not sure in what order, and I've never played eps 2 or 3 -- while asking questions along the way in here to clarify the story. And I think this time I'll just cheat the fuck out of the gameplay to keep my pace up so I can focus on the story and not get bogged down like I did the first times around.

Definitely start with Xenogears. I'm sure any questions you ask would help clarify the story for myself, as well. I haven't played Saga yet, but want to. I kind of like the idea of doing a roughly synchronized playthrough and discussing the fucked-up storyline along the way.

Longtime bump, but first time I've visited this forum since these posts were made :P Glad to hear you finally were able to complete the game, Reichu. For those interested in the franchise, Xenoblade Chronicles X has finally been released in the US within the last week or so. Unconnected storywise with Xenogears and Xenosaga, but from the same production team and they brought back the original character designer who I think has been absent after Xenosaga episode I.

Yeah, saw it at Gamestop the other day. Didn't pick it up because I haven't even gotten around to playing the original Xenoblade, and if I don't like that one what's the point? Hopefully the powers that be at least learned from last time and there won't be ridiculous supply issues...

Was gonna ask if anyone here's been playing Xenoblade X. I have; it's... interesting. I have a lot of thoughts on it but not really the time to get into them right now. Like Tetsuya Takahashi's older projects, it's a very ambitious and very flawed game, but this time it's flawed in a totally different way than the old ones, and ambitious in a different way as well. (I still haven't played the original Xenoblade, even though I've played all the others.)

There's a Nopon in X voiced by Spike Spencer.

I completely dropped Xenoblade Chronicles! But I am playing another game that starts with X. It's all the same. Right? Right?!

Maybe I should go ahead and buy X even before I beat Xenoblade (which I've barely even started). Wouldn't want to delay too long and find it's become rare and expensive...

X and Xenoblade's plots are not in any way connected, if anyone is unclear about that

They both borrow general themes and motifs from the previous Xeno games but that's about it.