Yeah he's awesome.
He does a few videogames, but not many. I do think XS is his best work. Granted, I haven't seen everything he's done, but I've seen all the "big" stuff.
The Xenosaga is worth a play, but be warned the game is 90% story (and there's lots and lots of it) and it's extremely highbrow/cerebral which is why it never went over too well. It's also filled with religious symbolism and allegory--specifically of Gnosticism and Hellenistic Judaism--so much so, in fact, that at one point Walmart wouldn't sell it in their stores.
Episode I is definitely the most popular and probably one of the best JRPGs of the last decade, but the later two weren't received as well.
They drastically changed the combat for the second one and it was one of the more radical interpretations of traditional turned-based fighting. It has a huge learning curve and with the significant increase in difficulty that comes about five hours into the game, people were just totally put-off by it. Ironically, if you did take the time to learn it, it became really easy to exploit making the remainder of the game completely face-roll easy.
However, XSII has my favorite soundtrack of all time. I was one of the very few people who was really excited to hear Yuki was taking over for Midsuda at the time and she totally delivered. Strangely, it doesn't even work that well as an actually game score. To really appreciate it, you have to listen to it in album form. It's like she composed this huge concept album and then just pasted the pieces into whatever parts of the game fit.
They tried to salvage things with the third game and just made it a Final Fantasy clone. For that reason, a lot of people think it's the best of the series. I never thought so. To be fair, it did have a very tight budget and the difference in production value from the first two is pretty noticeable. That's only compounded by the fact that it also the most story ridden of the three. The one really fun thing about it, though, is they really ramped up the Xenogears homages from the first two. They're like everywhere.
