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I haven't played Xenoblade, but between Xenogears and Xenosaga, the answer is easy. Xenogears.

Xenosaga 1 had a great story and while it had a linear world, the overall environments in the game are well done. The combat in the game is just flat out awful.

Xenosaga 2 had better graphics than the first, but a worse storyline that could be skipped overall. It mainly tells about Jr, Albedo, and Nigredo's past, but you can easily pick up all that on the third one without even playing the second. The combat to the second one is better than the first, but you will be doing one strategy and one strategy alone. Stocking. Each character can hold three stock charges and you'll max out every characters stock, then go all out with a long combo. You won't get anywhere if you don't, even on random enemies who have HP levels that require this tactic, and not just bosses. Certain characters do more damage to an enemy when they're up in the air, some do more damage when the enemy is knocked down on the ground, so you'll basically figure out a combo set up that will allow you to take high amounts of damage and repeat it endlessly.

Xenosaga 3 is the only game in the series that actually has equally good story and gameplay. The story may or may not be as good as the first one but it's good and it's definitely better than the second. One thing I don't like about the storyline is that the camera angle never changes in a lot of the scenes and the characters are just standing their static speaking their lines. This happens in long scenes, short scenes, etc. As someone mentioned before in another thread it was probably budget and they didn't have the time to do that, but it really did effect the presentation. There are a lot of scenes that have cinematic camera angles and characters expressions change, so it's not all of the game, but a decent amount of parts.

The combat to Xenosaga 3 is actually better than Xenogears combat. In Xenogears, you pretty much just use your best combo over and over unless it's an elemental combo then you have to hit the enemy with an element that doesn't cure them. On Xenosaga 3, you've got your basic attacks and break attacks. The game actually gives you two paths to level up each character and while you can get all of the skills after a lot of grinding, you'll probably only have one path and a very small amount of another path end game. Xenosaga 3 can be played normally without break techniques for any character, but if you have some characters go on break paths, then you'll be able to kill enemies a little bit quicker because you'll take more damage when breaking them.
  

Xenogears storyline, music, and world make up for its gameplay not even bad, more like okay gameplay. Even though you do just the most powerful attack per character, gameplay really doesn't get boring because battles are quick, except bosses. Mechs play in a different way and it's pretty much booster, attack, then use charge attacks.In Xenogears world, there's a lot of exploration, and it's not just simple roaming around halways and such, the game's world is a mixture of platforming and JRPG exploration.  Some people bash the platforming of the game, I like it though.