Set developed by FBernkastelKues, guide written by benit149

Hello, and welcome to my missable achievements guide for Xenosaga Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra (“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”). This is the third and last game of the PS2 Xenosaga trilogy, which was originally slated to have six entries but was drastically cut down to three. The storyline picks up from Episode II and concludes the story, resolving all of the plot threads introduced throughout the previous two games. I have written guides for Episode I and Episode II if you would like to check those out.

Once again, the format will be the same – presenting the missables in a sensible and chronological order, as well as explaining how to complete them. If you intend to master this set, you have to at least play Episode II and finish its story bosses, then make a cleared game save that Episode III will recognize. This set will be a little bit harder to categorize since nothing is actually marked as missable by current RetroAchievements standards, but I’ll do my best. FBern designed the missable achievements to be marked with a star in the badges, so I’ll be going by that logic.

There is a minigame called HaKox introduced to you starting in Fifth Jerusalem when you’re playing as Shion. You’re basically guiding characters along from a starting point to a goal by using various tricks such as moving blocks (called gimmicks), comboing multiple characters into a goal, and some strict timing of using gimmicks and summoning characters onto the field with R1. While neither GameFAQs nor YouTube have a dedicated HaKox guide, there is a guide that used to be on GameFAQs but is only accessible through the Wayback Machine now. This is what I used to get through some of the harder stages, along with loads and loads of practice. I even needed tape to help me with World 6-4 so I could free up my fingers from constantly holding down two buttons while dealing with other inputs. You’ll see what I mean if you reach it yourself.

The first five worlds are gradually unlocked as you go through the story. The last one is only accessible after completing all of the previous worlds. The rewards are as follows:

• World 1: Decoder 2 + Skill Upgrade A
• World 2: Skill Upgrade B
• World 3: Skill Upgrade C
• World 4: Ziggy’s swimsuit
• World 5: Jr.’s best gun Vaquero
• World 6: Brave Heart, a neck accessory that increases the boost gauge by 3

Although it is a frustrating minigame, getting the Brave Heart will be a massive help for the strategy involved with Requiem of the Evil, though it isn’t really needed if you have both the Union Neck and Sweet Pain. Needless to say, having all three accessories will be absolutely amazing since your boost meter will skyrocket to 8, whereas with Union Neck and Sweet Pain you’ll only get 5.

With that out of the way, let’s get into the missables. Due to heavy reliance on story triggers, there will be major spoilers involved. If you wish to enjoy the game for the first time, please stop reading here!

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MISSABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

The Beginning of the End (1)

Start the game after beating Xenosaga II

Same deal as with Swimsuit Season in Episode II. Transfer your cleared game save data from the previous game to unlock Shion’s Vector Uniform as an outfit she can wear, referencing her uniform from Episode I. This one achievement was the whole reason I played the trilogy in the first place since only Episode III is in the PS2 Launch Evergreen Event.

Mass Destruction (25)

Collect every treasure from a destructible object

AND

Going on a Treasure Hunt (25)

Collect every treasure from a treasure chest

Unlike the previous two games where chests and items from breakable objects were divided into separate areas, every single collectible item from a chest or breakable object are categorized into these two achievements. You’ll be building up towards these as you go, and there are a couple of missable areas to worry about, particularly Fifth Jerusalem, Miltia during the daytime, and the garbage dump that KOS-MOS needs to be rescued from. Be thorough and explore everywhere, and hopefully you have a comprehensive guide on hand to help you out. They aren’t always perfect though, so if you have doubts as to whether or not those destructible items are truly empty, go ahead and break them to be sure. I even had an instance of where a chest found behind some rubble during the Miltian Conflict segment wasn’t listed, and I blew it up just to be sure and discovered it.

Orcawsom was incredibly kind enough to write up a pastebin checklist for everything, categorizing them by area, then further into breakable objects or chests. I had not done so during my own run, so please send them your appreciation if you find it useful, or if you wish to have them update it with any relevant info.

Working Thru Lunch (2)

Unlock the secret menu item at the Cafe Stream and obtain your reward

This will occur on Fifth Jerusalem at the beginning of Chapter 2. You need to first finish all of the story events at the CAT Testing Grounds, then before departing for space, go to the park find an NPC named Isakios. Speak to him two times and he’ll give you a password that can be used in Cafe Stream. Speak to Oksana in the cafe and ask to see the Secret Menu, then give the password Isakios told you to unlock the Carnelian Egg Cuisine. Another NPC in the cafe named Kesar has a plate of food on his table, so destroy it, then exit and re-enter the cafe. Speak to Kesar again and he’ll reward you with a Honey Teddy, which is armor for MOMO.

She’s Coming Back (25)

Rescue KOS-MOS without alerting a guard or using a trap with less than 7 battles

Make sure you read the wording for this description correctly. It says, "in LESS THAN 7 battles," so you actually only have SIX battles to work with. This is one more from the five mandatory fights to allow for at least one additional guard to be killed if they're causing trouble for you.

Anyway, if you’re familiar with Under Cover of Night from Episode I, then here we go again. Yet another stealth section shoehorned into a JRPG not designed for stealth mechanics, and at nearly the beginning of the game too. It was so bad for me that it took me much longer to master the set than I would've liked due to this achievement. I could go on all day about the problems with this challenge, but I’ll spare you my whining. If you’re interested in giving this a go, then read further.

After Shion meets with the party in the Durandal and prepares to go back to her hotel room, Allen will stop her and explain how to unlock Skills for this game. Speak to him again and answer with “Yes” to initiate the mission. There’s a save point at the entrance to the mission, so you’re able to retry this easily. I strongly suggest you go into softcore mode and practice this with savestates until you get comfortable with the guards’ line of sight and their movement patterns. An important thing to note is that you can make your character walk by holding down the L2 button.

All of the three guard types have a pattern that can determine when it’s safe to advance. The guard in brown will raise his hand to his head to indicate he’s using his headset, which eliminates his line of sight and lets you rush past him regardless of how much noise you’re making. The black patrol bots will spin in place twice, and will not react to your character’s presence regardless of what they’re doing. The guard in blue late into the dungeon will stand still and first look left, then right. You need to walk past them on the side they’re not looking at. This will be relevant for one blue guard.

You won’t have much choice but to fight some specific battles if you want to make progress. You also need to initiate contact with an enemy whose back is facing your character so you can do a pre-emptive attack, thus preventing you from being spotted. There’s a save point near the three transporters (#4, #5 and #6), as well as another save point a little later in the dungeon. They can be used for healing, but don’t save and turn the game off while the challenge is active. It must be done in one gameplay session. I also recommend a party of Jr., chaos and Ziggy for the battles, especially against the AGWS mechs. The required fights are as follows:

1. In the first area, the soldier patrolling the thin walkway on the lower level just after the stairs to the south
2. Go north past the first orange elevator you’ll see into a room with another thin walkway and a soldier guarding a red button
3. Solve the little bridge puzzle and go into a similar room as #2
4. After releasing the giant Gnosis, you will enter a large room with two AGWSes. This will be the first mech…
5. And this is the second. You can actually run around like an idiot in front of this one and it will never be alerted

The first mech is what caused me a lot of problems because you need to rush up to it at a specific angle to make contact with its bent leg literally a hair's breath away from causing an alert. After getting off the elevator, you want to be just slightly to the right while running up to it. For the final area, when you see a guard in a blue coat and red beret very late into the dungeon, stick close to him and walk from behind to see if he’s doing one of two animations. If he’s looking back and forth, stay close to the wall on his left and walk past him while he’s looking to his right. If he turns around, quickly walk back to the starting point and try following him again. He looks left first, then right. You want to slip by him to his left. Stay in the upper portion of that particular hangar and take the upper right stairs, and you should be okay from there.

After getting this, reset and look for the items scattered throughout the dungeon. I also recommend leveling up Shion to level 12 so she learns the Ether spell Rare Steal, allowing you to pilfer some nice items from bosses.

Places of the Holy (5)

Defeat E.S. Naphtali without using Anima

This occurs in the Floating Landmass where you need to smash Geocrystals into each other to open up the path. In the ES tutorial, you would have learned about a new gameplay mechanic called Anima, which boosts every time your mech attacks and is indicated by a purple gauge next to your mechs’ HP values. The boss will mess with your Anima gauge during the battle, which makes it difficult to use in normal situations. Since you’ll be ignoring this mechanic, just stick to using standard attacks and Charge to heal. Once Naphtali’s HP is less than half, it will occasionally do Buster Launcher on a single mech for tremendous damage. If Zebulun gets hit with it and isn’t guarding, it will likely kill it even at full HP. If you’re having trouble for that reason, consider swapping Zebulun for Reuben.

On a side note, a future mech battle challenge will involve them keeping their default gear equipped. Don’t sell any starting gear yet – hang on to it until you complete the mech battle against Omega Universitas at Labyrinthos.

Obsolete (25)

Defeat T-elos at Rennes-le-Château using nothing but standard attacks (Level Limit: 20)

This one’s quite complicated, but manageable if you do the large amount of research I did. There is no information either in the forum or the achievement’s comment section about how to do this correctly, so a lot of it was trial and error for me. While you can prepare for this, it’ll also come down to RNG being nice to you.

First, get the Rejuvenator M from the chest in Rennes-le-Chateau, then return to the save point at the end of the Ancient Temple and save before going into the grave with the cross and breakable wall. Doing the story sequences here will trigger the fight with T-elos. You are only allowed to use regular attacks on T-elos, which means a lot of other abilities are banned. This includes healing spells, healing items and Rare Steal. If it’s not a regular attack, any specific Techs that I highlight below, guard, or character change, don’t use it! If you want the steal, you’ll have to reset after completing this challenge. One thing you are allowed to do is swap characters, so take one out of the party when their HP is getting low. Another incredibly annoying aspect of this fight is how often T-elos likes to either guard against or dodge your allies’ attacks, which you have zero control over.

You will want to do some pre-battle preparations for this. In particular, build up everyone’s Skill trees as high as they can go, focusing on stat boosts. Of note is Jin’s Skill A-2 node which has HP +100 and two STR +2. Anyone with HP and VIT nodes should unlock theirs to help with defense. KOS-MOS should also have the KWP-XI equipped from Segment Address No. 4 in the CAT Training Facility. This makes her attacks the highest of the party, so I like to have her on the field last to rush down T-elos during her more dangerous phase. Do some leveling to reach level 20 as well, since any and all stat boosts will be beneficial for this.

Backtrack to the blue shop plate and buy Shock Absorbers and Leather Chokers for everyone. Shock Absorbers reduce damage taken by 1/2 when guarding, and Leather Chokers increase the wearer’s Break Limit, making them less likely to become dizzied by T-elos’ attacks. There is a guarding strategy you can use where T-elos likes to harass the character with the most amount of Break Limit gauge, so constantly have them block with the Shock Absorber equipped to have them tank her attacks as much as possible before being forced to switch them out.

I did a lot of experimenting in softcore mode to figure out which Techs are allowed and which are not, and this is what I came up with:

ALLOWED

• Jin’s Armor Pierce and Skeletal Strike
• Ziggy’s Pain Killer I
• chaos’ Decaying Sun and Decaying Moon. These aren’t worth the EP cost since they do the same damage as a regular attack
• KOS-MOS’ M-BUSTER and G-BUSTER

NOT ALLOWED

• Ziggy’s Choke
• chaos’ Spirit Strike and Angel Wings I
• KOS-MOS’ CANNON I
• all of Shion’s Techs
• all of Jr.’s Techs
• I didn’t test MOMO’s Break Arrow I, so I’m assuming it’s not allowed

Therefore, a toss-up between Jin, Ziggy, chaos and KOS-MOS will be the ideal party for dealing damage. What I did to achieve this was to have Shion, Jr. and chaos at the start dealing as much damage as they could with their weaker attacks while weathering T-elos’ attacks, guarding with whoever had the highest Break Limit gauge that she decided to bully. I did lose Shion to T-elos’ most dangerous attack T-SKYLLA which can’t be guarded against, but Jr. and chaos swapped out for Ziggy and Jin to use Pain Killer I and Armor Pierce respectively, using the boost gauge to squeeze in more turns for them whenever I could. The next T-SKYLLA was on Ziggy who had enough HP to survive, allowing me to swap him for KOS-MOS who could use M-BUSTER. It was basically a DPS race from there to see who would finish off who first, and I got lucky. I never used MOMO because her damage output was the worst of all the party members.

Easy Money (2)

Win the top 3 prizes from the 777th Challenge Coupon session

While running around as Shion in Miltia at the start of Chapter 5, go to the lower right of the city’s first screen and there will be an automatic coupon vendor. Each coupon costs 100 G, and you need to choose three specific numbers in this order: 68, 37, and 12. At the beginning of Chapter 7, return to the coupon vendor to receive your reward of 80,000 G total.

Miracle Drug (5)

Complete the Seven Moons sidequest

While also playing as Shion in Miltia in Chapter 5, you need to speak to some specific NPCs to trigger a mini-quest involving a wonder drug that has dangerous side effects. You won’t be getting this achievement now, but you need to initiate this line of dialogue:

1. Speak to Andy sitting on the bench and listen to what he has to say
2. Go west from Andy into the next screen, go down the stairs, and eavesdrop on two women named Erin and Julia
3. Go north to the next screen, head all the way northeast and speak to the man facing the street, named Lodge
4. Go back to Andy and choose “Yes” twice to listen to his story
5. Talk to Lodge again
6. Speak to Andy again, who will give you a Prescription Copy. Speak to him again for him to say he cannot come along
7. Return to Lodge and ask him, “Did he know about the side effects?” Lodge decides to make the situation better, and for you to return later. Asking the wrong question will screw up this sidequest, so be sure to pick the correct one!

When Chapter 9 begins, speak to the droid named Awamori standing next to the Elsa’s three plates. You will receive a message from Lodge and the shop will upgrade with new items and weapons as the reward for this quest. One of these is KOS-MOS’ ultimate weapon, KWP-XX, which costs 300,000 G. Also buy the D Unit V1 in the armor category for another achievement. Doing this sidequest will be extremely important for Fatal Fight as well, which I’ll explain there. Needless to say, don’t miss this or you’ll screw yourself out of a lot of other missables!

Counting Every Minute (5)

Defeat Voyager in less than 7 minutes (Level limit: 25)

After defeating T-elos, you’ll be going through all of Chapters 4 and 5 before reaching Voyager at the beginning of Chapter 6. Do some leveling up to gain stats, as well as to have any characters who have access to fire-elemental magic unlock them in the Skill Line. In particular is MOMO’s Fire Bolt II in her Skill A-3 tree. Shion also has Refresh in her Skill A-3 tree which heals everyone’s status effects if an emergency comes up. Voyager will inflict the poison status frequently, so any protection from it such as Garuda Bangle and Cobra Bangles will be invaluable aside from Refresh. Equip your front line characters with Crimson Rings to apply the fire element to their attacks, since that is Voyager’s weakness. You also want to level up a character’s Special Attack so they can deal as much damage as they can. I did so with Ziggy’s Penetrate and had him use it during the fight, while the others did regular attacks or healed.

KOS-MOS will join the battle at the start and forcefully switch out the character in the middle slot, so bring your desired character back in ASAP since they have the setup you want. If you can steal a Venom Ring from Voyager, do so. From there, it’s about rushing him down and dealing as much damage as you can ASAP while weathering his attacks. At 25% health remaining, he will do Abyss Walker which renders all physical attacks useless against him. Swap in your best spellcasters, especially MOMO, and use fire-elemental magic on him. Be sure you know where everything is positioned in the various menus so you spend as little time menuing as you can. Another complication is that Voyager can cast HP Vamp, absorbing some HP from an ally to heal himself, which stretches this fight out even more.

Even with all of this preparation and my characters either level 22 or 23, it was literally down to the wire for me. Don’t be surprised if you need to attempt this a couple of times, especially if luck doesn’t go your way. I got lucky and didn’t see HP Vamp, allowing me to defeat him with literally seconds remaining. Since KOS-MOS has been out of the party for a bit, her levels may be lagging behind everyone else’s, and she’s involved in an upcoming challenge, so bring her back into the active party.

The next level limit to worry about is level 32 for Don’t Get Mad, Get Even.

Spring Cleaning (2)

Obtain 50,000G for completing the Labyrinthos puzzle on the first attempt

Pretty self-explanatory. I used Kouli’s guide to get me through it, and you should get the premise once you destroy a couple of blocks. This is more of a heads up than a major warning about anything difficult.

Steel Giant (10)

Defeat Ω Universitas using your default equipment and with no items

Remember how I told you to keep your mechs’ default equipment back in Places of the Holy? It’ll be for this. This is another mech battle, and you will want to have their default gear handy for this challenge. Swap everything back to what they had on equipped at the start of the game. If you’re not sure what everyone had equipped, these were my setups:

Asher

• Sting Ray
• G88 Assault
• AF-Scout
• G-Rox/25
• C-US1
• D-Sensor or D-Counter

Dinah

• S Sife
• Volans
• DF-V1
• G-Rox/25
• C-US1
• D-Sensor or D-Counter

Zebulun

• ST Swift
• Schwalbe
• ZF-Lithos
• G-Rox/25
• C-US1
• D-Sensor or D-Counter

I had messed up on my setup for Reuben so I don’t recall what its default equipment was. Keep it handy at all times and you should be okay.

Since items are not allowed to be used here, the only way to heal is to Charge. Omega uses the Revenge skill, allowing it to counterattack anyone who strikes it with a close-range attack. Long-range attacks like Laser and Missiles are helpful for getting around this, though the damage is a bit lower than close-range attacks. Co-op attacks can also be countered, so keep an eye on the attacker’s HP if that happens. From there, just chip away at the boss’ health while healing up. Anima attacks are allowed, and every mech except Asher should have their Level 2 Animas unlocked.

Definitely stick with a defensive strategy. When Omega uses Black Wave, which raises its physical attack, absolutely guard with everyone, although it can get its next turn in at the beginning after Black Wave is triggered. It will unleash Super Martial Ring on its next turns, doing some serious damage to one mech. This can especially be dangerous on Zebulun if it’s not guarding, so play more cautiously with that mech. It gets even worse because Omega can do another one right after! Use the Charge command like your life depends on it, and worry about attacking once you’re in better shape.

I noticed that Omega liked to target Zebulun a lot, so once I finished my opening salvo of Anima attacks, I only ever had Zebulun guard so it could act as a tank. Asher and Dinah took turns doing damage with Missiles or Laser depending on their HP. If Dinah built up enough Anima, do the Level 1 Special Attack. I didn’t bother with Level 2 Anima because the damage didn’t make the trouble of building up the meter worth it, whereas Level 1 allowed me to get in short bursts of damage. Unfortunately, this is a long, drawn-out and tedious battle, with Omega getting more dangerous as it piles on Black Wave buffs. As long as you don’t slip up or get any bad luck, you’ll come out the victor.

Ice Cream Van (1)

Save the ice cream vendor and his daughter from a grisly fate

This is a mini-quest that can be done involving the ice cream vendor in Miltia at the beginning of Chapter 7. Finish off the requirements for Easy Money, then go to the nearby ice cream truck and press the red button twice and carry on with the story. After going through Labyrinthos and exploring Miltia’s war-torn streets, return to the shop to upgrade your equipment, then head immediately right from it to find the ice cream truck. Press the button to open the shutter, and Haramiya will give you a DX Ice Cream as a reward.

Deja Vu (All Over Again) (5)

Defeat Blue Testament by recreating his original death

If you’re familiar with the story from Episode I, then you should already have a good idea of what to do. If you’re jumping into this game without playing Episode I and have absolutely no idea what’s going on, build up two boost meters and have KOS-MOS use her Special Attack G-SHOT on Blue Testament as the killing blow. Retroactive spoiler, perhaps? :/

Steal a Union Neck from him too, since that will allow the boost meter to increase to a maximum of 4. This will be important for the next challenge. There won’t be an achievement icon alerting you that there’s a challenge for this boss, so make sure to keep this in the back of your mind as you fight him. I had Shion, Jr. and MOMO for the majority of the fight because their long-range attacks won’t trigger Blue Testament’s counterattack, whereas close-range attacks will. Once he was low enough on HP, I swapped Shion for KOS-MOS and waited for the right moment to do G-SHOT.

Don’t Get Mad, Get Even (10)

Have Shion defeat all 3 27-Series Asura Realians at the same time without anyone being broken (Level limit: 32)

This is the final boss battle before switching to Disc 2. “Without anyone being broken” refers to your allies, not the enemies. Slightly vague wording there, if you ask me. You’ll want to pay attention to the red bars next to your allies’ green health bars. That is their Break meter, and if it gets full, the character will become dizzied and lose two turns. Lower the meter by casting Break Heals. You will most likely have seen this happen to your party members plenty of times. I also noticed that my characters were getting dangerously close to hitting level 33, so I ran away from any optional battles.

The best way to defeat all of the Realians at once is to first build up the boost meter to 4 prior to the boss battle. This will be thanks to the Union Neck you stole from Blue Testament. Have Shion’s Lock Shot and KOS-MOS’ X-Buster Special Attacks unlocked. When the fight starts, have them use their Specials – the order doesn’t matter. This will deal some hefty damage since they’re weak to beam attacks, of which those two Special Attacks are. After that, follow up with two Erde Kaiser casts to both quickly refill the boost meter and break the enemies ASAP. Their attacks fill up the break meter ridiculously fast, so breaking them mitigates this. There is some RNG involved with critical hits causing the Realians’ HP to become unbalanced. Use good single-target attacks before letting loose with another Lock Shot from Shion, hopefully killing all of them at once while they’re still broken.

This may take some tries due to the luck involved with said criticals, plus the enemies ganging up on a single character and breaking them right when the fight starts. Equipping Dog Tags and Red Stars, with someone wearing Union Neck, along with casting Break Heal M if needed should help you out. Another option is to have someone other than Shion unlock Offensive and cast it on the party. My party was Shion, KOS-MOS and chaos for this reason, since chaos has it in his Skill B-3 tree. Otherwise, I can’t tell you much other than to adapt to the situation and to not hesitate to go for the final Lock Shot. If it fails, it’s easy to retry.

Requiem of the Evil (10)

Defeat Dmitri Yuriev without Ω Res Novae making a move (Level limit: 50)

Before even going into this, have your mechs equipped with D-Beam and D-Kill R, which means they need to equip a C-SU7 or better to have enough slots for the disks. D-Beam reduces beam-type damage, and D-Kill R nullifies Omega’s Revenge mechanic so you can do short-range attacks without penalty. The next challenge happens immediately after this one, which is a boss battle fought in mechs. You can’t do your mech setups after clearing this, so be sure to come prepared.

Between the Realians and this fight is a very long stretch of the game covering Merkabah, Durandal, and doing all of the puzzles and fights within the four colored orbs in Abel’s Ark. This explains why the level limit between them is so high – you’re going through a lot of content in the meantime. If you’re familiar with Episode II’s final boss challenge Down With the Patriarchy, this is very similar. You’re dealing with a human enemy while a giant mech looms in the background waiting for its opportunity to attack. Both challenges are similar in premise – doing what you can to forbid the mech from activating its turn – but they’re very different in execution. In Episode II, Proto Omega’s movements were tied to Sergius’ turn. Here, Omega’s turns are independent of Yuriev’s, so the objective is to defeat Yuriev as soon as possible.

I wasn’t sure how to do this at first until I decided to see how the speedrun handles it. I went with Enel’s speedrun strategy which uses a party of Ziggy, chaos and Jin. Ziggy is going to be the MVP for this fight. Skip ahead to 3 hours 38 minutes into the video to see the pre-battle menu and what skills Enel unlocks. You want Choke and Devil Break for Ziggy; Decaying Sun, Spirit Strike II (or Spirit Strike III), Offensive and Refresh for chaos; and Assaulting Blade for Jin. Equip the Ruthless Ring on Ziggy to increase his chance for double attacks. You want to do eight Chokes, three Assaulting Blades, and one Spirit Strike II to be able to break Yuriev, which means you want your characters to be equipped with Union Neck and Sweet Pain to raise the boost meter to a maximum of 5 (if you have Brave Heart as well, it’s 8), and go into the fight with all boost meters full. Have chaos also do a Decaying Sun once in a while to lower Yuriev’s defense.

Don’t use boosts until the third turn after Yuriev shouts something about Abel. In the meantime, perform everything except one Choke on Yuriev to build up his break meter. On the third turn order, you’re looking for Ziggy’s turn to be after Yuriev’s. This is why you don’t want to cast Quick on the party. If you get a bad pattern with Yuriev’s attacks, heal Ziggy’s break meter as much as possible. Once ready, break Yuriev with the final Choke, have chaos apply Offensive, then execute five boosted Devil Breaks with Ziggy. Offensive will wear off after the fifth attack, so re-apply it with an un-boosted chaos and continue the boosted Devil Break streak for as long as you can. You will need to get in some attacks with Jin and chaos once the boost meter is exhausted, but Yuriev should still be dizzied enough for you to get the kill.

Since that strategy is for a speedrun and you have all the time in the world to level grind up to 50, this means you can farm loads of Skill Points from the enemies in Abel’s Ark to get better skills than mentioned above. I like to use the enemies in the first room inside the yellow orb, go back to the save room, return to the yellow orb to respawn the enemies, and so forth. I got Ziggy’s Master Skill for his Breaker Skill Tree which is Heartbreaker, an Ether spell that greatly increases his ability to break the enemy. I also got chaos’ Spirit Strike III, and extra strength nodes for them plus Jin.

This may need some practice attempts to get the pattern down, aside from dealing with the RNG for Yuriev’s attacks. His Telekinetic Wave does a tremendous amount of break meter damage to your entire party, which is very frustrating to deal with. Preventing Ziggy from being dizzied is the most important thing to worry about here. Get all of the strength increase nodes that you can from Ziggy and Jin’s skill trees, and be near level 50 before attempting this so you can get as many stats as you can. chaos’ strength doesn’t matter since he’s functioning as support.

If you’re still not sure what’s going on, I made a video of my successful run. This was my second attempt with this strategy since I didn’t keep boosting Ziggy’s turns, and Yuriev broke out of his dizziness faster than I thought he would, which triggered an attack from Omega. It’s not too hard once you get the pattern and invest in the right skills and stats, but there is some luck involved with protecting Ziggy from break status, as well as his damage output and how much boost meter is gained from his attacks.

Salva Nos (5)

Defeat Ω Metempsychosis without using Anima

You can use items if an emergency comes up, as well as equip the best gear available and Charge for defense when needed. Go into this with the mech gear I recommended at the beginning of Requiem of the Evil’s explanation. There’s a gimmick involved with this fight where Omega will perform a Special Attack called Ex Natio, and you would want to cancel it by using two Special Attacks of your own. This means using Anima, but you can’t do that for this challenge, meaning you’ll have to guard against Ex Natio. It comes out in a predictable manner, and doesn’t do a lot of damage as long as you’re guarding and are equipped with D-Beams. Compared to Yuriev’s challenge, this one is much simpler.

Once you’re back in the Elsa, speak to Awamori, the droid next to the three plates in the ship, and complete the Seven Moons sidequest for Miracle Drug.

The Sword of Promised Victory (10)

Defeat Erde Kaiser Σ without using any of the other Erde Kaisers (Level limit: 60)

Once you know what the trick is, this fight becomes the easiest thing in the world. Normally, you’re supposed to use the other three Erde Kaisers you find throughout the game to dispel Sigma’s shield, which nullifies all damage except for a specific element. Kaiser Shield I makes it susceptible to thunder element damage, Kaiser Shield II to ice, and Kaiser Shield III to fire. Thus, you’re going to be using a lot of offensive Ether spells to deal the damage rather than the Erde Kaisers. Be prepared to hear your characters shouting, “Ether Drive!” ad nauseum. My party for this was chaos, MOMO and KOS-MOS, with MOMO wearing Ring of Eden and KOS-MOS with The Universe to halve their EP consumption, and chaos equipping Heaven’s Door to reduce his EP consumption to 1, regardless of how expensive any spell or tech is.

Next, you need to unlock Best Ally for your chosen party. I chose chaos because he learns it naturally, while everyone else needs to unlock it for 800 SP in their Skill Lines. If you think Best Ally is too expensive, Safety also works. You need an auto-resurrect active at all times to have any chance of surviving Sigma’s attacks. You also want to unlock Thunder/Ice/Fire Bolt II or III to deal the best single-target elemental damage you can. For my party, chaos and KOS-MOS had the level II spells, while MOMO had the level III versions. As long as you have plenty of EP restoring items and pay attention to which one of Sigma’s shields is up, as well as who does or doesn’t have Safety/Best Ally active, it’s just a simple matter of slowly chipping away at Sigma. Save your boosts for your character with Heaven’s Door equipped to apply auto-resurrect in an emergency situation. There’s no hurry to deal damage. It’s far more important to stay alive, especially against Sigma’s AoE attacks.

Once Sigma is down, go to Segment Address No. 3 inside Dark Professor’s lab to gain the ability to summon Erde Kaiser Sigma, trivializing the rest of the game. Check your Segment File for a completion message if you’ve opened all of the doors, then speak to Theodore in the Elsa’s hangar to get KOS-MOS’ swimsuit.

That’s it for level restrictions! Aside from the E.S. Levi and Red Testament + Partner challenges, you’re free to defeat the last few bosses however you want. You actually want to do this before the next challenge to open up the ability to level and money grind as much as you want.

Fatal Fight (25)

Defeat E.S. Levi without any form of healing

One last major hurdle to overcome before it’s smooth sailing to the ending. All forms of healing are banned, including items and Charge, making this exceptionally difficult since you can’t guard against Levi’s powerful attacks either. Once again, I had to look up the speedrun strategy and ask around to understand how to do this. The trick is that while the mechs themselves don’t level up, their pilots do. Thus, a more powerful pilot means a more powerful mech. This is why doing the Seven Moons sidequest was so important – the shop will sell stat boosting items, so you’re able to make your pilots exceptionally strong. At the very least, invest in boosting Jin’s Luck stat so he’ll always perform critical hits. You can farm for levels and money as much as you want in Michtam, and I also worked on boosting the mechs’ Special Attack levels on the side, along with finishing the characters’ Skill Lines. The shop plates in Michtam don’t sell the stat boosters, so you’d have to backtrack to the Elsa’s shop.

Once ready, bring Reuben, Asher and Dinah to start this fight, and have all of their Anima gauges full to level 3. One of them should have a D-Sensor equipped to see Levi’s weaknesses. Also have D-Fire, D-Kill C, and D-Kill R equipped. Spend some time grinding to level up their Special Attacks. If you’ve gotten the level-restricted challenges out of the way, you’re free to grind for as long as you want, with Special Attacks reaching a maximum level of 25. It isn’t really practical to go all that way, but the option is there.

Have Reuben and Asher trigger level 3 Anima and use their Special Attacks, while Dinah uses a Down Repair or Analyze Ball to effectively skip its turn. Have Reuben and Asher spam Missiles until Levi activates Vajra Armor, which can only be broken with Special Attacks. This is why you wanted Dinah to use items to skip its turn – its next turn will be at the beginning of the new turn order, so you can start breaking the armor right away. Have Dinah activate level 1 Anima and use R-FANG three times in a row each to break the armor. Each one of Levi’s elemental resistances will weaken with each Special Attack used on it. The order the weaknesses open up is completely random, minus ice always being last due to no mech attacks having that element, so that could potentially troll you if you don’t get the desired weaknesses soon.

While opening up Levi’s weaknesses, re-build your mechs’ Anima meters to level 3 with basic attacks. Get Levi down to anywhere between 41 to 45% health, as anything below will cause it to activate Vajra Armor again, which you do not want. A visual reference I use is to have the green health bar just to the left of the L in Levi’s name. Once its health is sufficiently low and your mechs have level 3 Anima, trigger all of their level 3 Special Attacks back-to-back-to-back (you don’t want the boss to interrupt the turn order). This should melt through the rest of Levi’s remaining HP. Since that is a speedrun strategy and you’ve been leveling up like crazy, your actions during the fight may need to be adjusted, but you should have a much easier time.

Memories Back Then (1)

Obtain a piece of equipment from Red Testament and his partner

Very easy. Steal a White Shirt from Red Testament and a Research Uniform from his partner. It’s easier to forget to do this rather than actually doing it, especially considering what’s going on in the story.

CONCLUSION

Phew! What a long project this was! My goal was to master Episode III for the PS2 Launch Evergreen event, but realized I had to at least play Episode II to get The Beginning of the End, and in order to master Episode II’s set, I had to play Episode I. Furthermore, I saw how ridiculous some of the requirements were for Episode I, both from challenging achievements in that set as well as dodgy programming on Monolith Software’s part. So there you go – a trilogy of guides for a trilogy of games to cover all of the difficult parts. Of them, I enjoyed this one the most, and Episode II the least due to its difficult combat mechanics and over-tuned enemies. Episode I is somewhere in the middle, with a combat system that is easier to get into than Episode II’s, but harder to master than Episode III’s. I hope they will serve to help you along your journey into this franchise, and if you feel there are any errors or have any questions about a guide’s contents, feel free to send me a PM.

Now that I have Xenosaga fully under my belt, I can move on to other PS2 titles for the event. Expect to see more guides for JRPGs on the system in the near future. I’m deciding between Dark Cloud 1, Okage or Wild Arms 4. Until next time, eat that elephant one bite at a time, and happy cheevo hunting! Oh, and see you in 2026!

• Benit149, December 2025