The age of lost media is, more or less, coming to a close when it comes to video games, as the rise of remasters, digital storefronts, and a bigger market has led to even the most obscure RPGs being preserved for eternity. Of course, there’s something to be said about the death of live service titles and how their server closures render them extinct. However, for the most part, video games persevere, whether it’s a humble indie on Steam or the next AAA endeavor (or AAAA, if you’re Ubisoft).
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This wasn’t always the case. If you want to pick up the best and brightest from the PS1 or PS2 era, you’re out of luck. Not only is the hardware no longer mass-produced for obvious reasons, but the physical discs required to play the games now cost a pretty penny. This is the case for Xenosaga, a once-beloved JRPG that has all but faded into obscurity, despite the talent behind it having gone on to create one of the most successful JRPG series of all time. Not only is it unplayable in the UK and other regions outside North America, but it may also be forgotten entirely due to legal complications.
Xenosaga Is An Unplayable JRPG Masterpiece
Xenosaga is the second attempt from visionary Tetsuya Takahashi to tell an endlessly complex, beautifully emotional, and effortlessly epic narrative that’s far too ambitious for the time and budget he gets. He’d previously made Xenogears under the stewardship of SquareSoft (now known as Square Enix), before going on to found Monolith Soft, arguably Nintendo’s best first-party studio and the folks behind one of the best JRPG series of all time, Xenoblade Chronicles. However, much like Xenogears, Saga never really managed to hit the mainstream, nor was it truly finished.
Xenosaga got three mainline games, as well as a bunch of spin-offs and extended media (there’s an anime series that’s not really worth watching). However, it was always intended to be six games. It wasn’t until Takahashi stepped down as the lead and handed the reins to younger developers that Monolith Soft realized six games were a tad too ambitious. Unfortunately, even with the project’s scale being reduced significantly, Xenosaga underperformed. This meant it didn’t get a widespread release outside of Japan and North America, with only the second game being released in the UK.
Alas, if you live outside of the US and are keen on exploring Monolith Soft’s extensive and storied legacy like me, then you’re completely out of luck. While the second game was bundled in with a film covering the first game’s events (it still managed to miss out crucial details), the third release, which concludes the whole story, never saw the light of day across the pond. Even in the US, copies are hard to come by, and digital versions were never released. Worse still, a remaster almost happened, but Bandai Namco quashed it at the last minute.
Xenosaga May Never Get A True Remaster
At one point, Bandai Namco (which published Xenosaga and owns the IP) had allegedly considered a remastered trilogy, but ultimately voted against it. This is according to Tekken legend and former general manager at Bandai Namco, Katsuhiro Harada, who, back in 2019, explained on X (formerly Twitter), that the idea “actually progressed to the remaster’s plan, but failed in a profitable market analysis.” He went on to state that “this plan will be difficult to resurface,” more or less confirming that fans’ hopes and dreams of getting Xenosaga on current-gen systems are over.
For fans of Takahashi’s work and, indeed, the Xeno series as a whole, this will feel all too familiar. With Square Enix wasting Xenogears and Bandai Namco lacking faith in a remaster of Xenosaga, despite Xenoblade’s critical and commercial success, fans will likely never see these projects reemerge. It’s also completely out of Monolith Soft’s hands, and Nintendo’s by extension, as it doesn’t own the IP for either title. It is a genuinely huge shame, especially considering just how phenomenal Xenosaga is and how deserving of a renewal it is.
Xenosaga Deserves Another Chance
Xenosaga is a very special series that absolutely deserves another chance. It has all the flair, ambition, complexity, beauty, and tearjerking moments of its predecessor and successor, just not the same level of acclaim. Its soundtrack will make you jump with joy, hype you up, and cry for hours on end (seriously, check out Xenosaga 3’s ending theme, Maybe Tomorrow), and, while somewhat dated visually, its cinematics are filled with all the philosophical action you’d expect from a Takahashi experience.
Xenosaga, for all its flaws and restricted ambition, is worth not just the remaster treatment but also being shared across the world. The fact that this 22-year-old JRPG from one of the greatest and most consistent developers currently in the industry remains unplayable in most countries is frankly ridiculous, and something that needs to be rectified as soon as possible. Xenosaga may not be the best JRPG series to rival Final Fantasy, nor will it ever draw as much money as it. However, there are enough of us out there who want to experience it all over again, play it for the first time, or just see why the series’ protagonist KOS-MOS is so beloved. Seriously, she’s great.
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