Have You Played Any Xeno Games?

[Pumpkin]

As far as I know, there is Xenogears, Xenosaga I-III, and Xenoblade, but feel free to mark any down if I forgot any :monster:

I have played all of those games although I only played Xenogears very shortly

[metagloria]

I have played them all. Xenogears much later than most folks, but so glad I tried it. The stories in all of these games are top-notch.

[NeoCracker]

I have played and completed them all, outside of the Pied Piper Cell Phone game that was a Xenosaga Spin off, though I did read the story translation and it was excellent.

Gears was, as some of you know, my least favorite. :p

[arenzi]

All except Xenoblade.

[Ayen]

I played Xenosaga Episode I and a demo of Xenogears. I purchased a digital copy of Xenogears on PSN not too long ago so I plan to play the full version at some point in the future.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I've only completed Gears and the first Saga, but I've played at least some of the the second Saga and Blade.

[Vermachtnis]

I've played them all and beaten all but Blade.

[Wolf Kanno]

Played and finished them all. I adore Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga and really wish they hadn't left Square. I am also looking forward to Xenoblade Chronicles X for the Wii U.

[Quindiana Jones]

I know absolutely nothing about these games. Like, nothing.

[Uchu]

Haven't played any before, but i'm quite interested in Xenoblade Chronicles X. Also wouldn't mind giving the original ago. Didn't that one come about due to many of the ideas being rejected for FINAL FANTASY VII?

[Wolf Kanno]

Haven't played any before, but I'm quite interested in Xenoblade Chronicles X. Also wouldn't mind giving the original ago. Didn't that one come about due to many of the ideas being rejected for FINAL FANTASY VII?

It was originally pitched as FFVII but was rejected for being too dark for an FF game it was also considered at one time to be a sequel to Chrono Trigger which is much more obvious in the plot. Finally it turned into a multi-part series but Square chose not to pick it up and so the development team left after finishing Chrono Cross and formed Monolith Soft.

Xenosaga is basically a reboot/re-imagining of the franchise but due to executive meddling and poor management, the series was cut short. Later Nintendo bought out Monolith Soft and they became a Second Party developer for them. Xenoblade Chronicles was originally called Monado: Birth of the World but was changed by Nintendo into a Xeno title to honor Tetsuya Takahashi (creator and director of the Xeno titles) though I expect it was more for marketing recognition cause the Xeno games are such cult favorites it would increase interest.

One interesting thing about Xenoblade Chronicles is that it was apparently a test run of different game play and world mechanics for the project the team really wanted to do which is Xenoblade Chronicles X.

The Xenogears and Xenosaga are most (in)famous for their heavy character and story narratives. In fact Xenogears' Second Disc and Xenosaga Episode 1 have both been criticized for their lopsided story/cutscene to gameplay ratios and the term interactive movie gets thrown around a lot, despite this issue, most people agree the story is good so they don't quite get the same flak as other games guilty of this. Amusingly, FFXIII actually borrows a ton of game design elements from Episode 2 of Xenosaga such as a battle system focused on breaking an opponents guard before you can do more damage and trying to remove the dungeon-town-dungeon formula with very mixed results.

Xenoblade Chronicles on the other hand is Takahashi learning from his mistake of focusing purely on plot and cutscenes, instead he decided to make a game based first on gameplay and then wrote the plot afterwards.

[DMKA]

I played Xenogears a few times. One of my favorite PS1 era RPGs.

I played Xenosaga Episode 1 and got bored after the first five or so hours of cutscenes and gave up on it. :p

Never played any of the others.

[Vyk]

Absolutely fell in love with Xenogears and still can't get enough of that game some days. Only ever played through it to completion once though since it's so huge, and I have a life now, the last few attempts always found me distracted by life events for too long to get back into it properly

Sadly Xenoblade Chronicles keeps getting the same fate, and I've yet to beat that game even once. I still love it though. But I've restarted it twice lol

I think I beat Xenosaga 1, but wasn't really impressed with it, and had no interest in following it into its 2 sequels. I've debated on replaying it through the DS release of 1 and 2 and see how that goes, and then maybe play 3 on PS2 since that one is everyone's favorites, but that would all depend on how improved the DS version is. Which sounds almost like an impossibility so I don't hold my breath

But I guess that's it. I played on in each franchise

[Slothy]

I've only played/beaten Xenosaga episode 1. It's not a bad movie, but it's a pretty awful game.

[Bolivar]

I only played Xenogears. In many ways, it was the best and worst JRPG I've ever played. See Vivi's commentary on Xenosaga above.

One of the best EoFF threads was NeoCracker's let's play of Xenogears 2 or 3 years ago. Some of the finest internet trolling I've ever seen.

[Pumpkin]

I want to see this thread!

[Forsaken Lover]

http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/145654-Will-a-playthrough-of-Xenogears-revive-the-Enix-forum!

There ya go.

As for this thread, I've beaten all except Blade.

A short history because I like to talk about myself:

Back when Episode 1 first came out here in the US, I was just becoming a JRPG fan. FFVII was already quite old by that time and while I had played 7, 8, 9 and 10 (all without very much success since I was even dumber when i was that young), VIi would be the one that I went back to and beat.

And I loved it to pieces. I started looking up my first ever fanfiction online and everything because I wanted to see continuations of the story, to read more about the characters I adored.

Around this time I also used my VCR to record Adult Swim for my Inuyasha fix. At least I think it was for IY this time... In any event, I had my VCR set to record something and during one of the commercial breaks it recorded, there was this commercial.
MjVzzX7_Pl8

In retrospect it really isn't much but I was riding high on FFVII mania and maybe it was also my growing interest in Japanese fiction that lured me in as well. In any event, I saw this commercial, I heard that song, and I said "I gotta get that."

And I did. I loved Episode 1 then and i still love it now. I've replayed it several times. Interestingly, I know jack-all about its sidequests and many of its game features because it was just the story and characters that enthralled me. I never bothered with anything else.

So anyone who played Episode 1 back in the day (and enjoyed it) must know how I felt when I heard of the upcoming Episode II. EP1 left us with SO MANY QUESTIONS that I was dying for a sequel. I wanted to learn more about what U-TIC was up to and this Zohar thing and Miltia and all the other myriad mysteries that needed answers.

Episode 2 I was convinced would be Episode 1 + all the answers I craved.

What I got was something that was as unlike Episode 1 as possible. Different gameplay, different voice-actors, different graphics, different perspective, different music.... EVERYTHING WAS DIFFERENT!!! And in a really bad, bad way. Like, even people who don't enjoy Episode 1 recognize 2 was a crushing disappointment. Everything was inferior, there were no improvements at all on Episode 1.

It was sometime after Episode 2 that I went and got a copy of Xenogears from a local GameStop. I'll always remember it was 2005 when I first played XG because I joined a forum in that year named Final Fantasy Online. I used the username of "The Anti-Existence" as a nod to Xenogears. (I was big into pretentious titles back then. I was basically saying I was the Devil) I believe i got the game on the high recommendation of an online friend of mine who also convinced me to play Baten Kaitos. You should all go play that too, it's a great game.

I loved Xenogears. It was amazing and wonderful and at the time I didn't even really notice the crappy dungeons. Except Babel Tower...goddam you Babel Tower. Even to this day that dungeon makes my stomach seize up and I'm almost dread replaying the game just because of that level.

Anyway, after Episode 2's crushing my soul with its crappiness, I was still hopeful for Episode 3. What's more, i was active online by this time and posted regularly on a forum called RPGDreamers. It had a very good Xeno community and we were all hyped for Episode 3; not least because it was announced it would be the final game in the series. EP3 was one of like, 3 games I've pre-ordered in my life.

Episode 3 completely blew me away. Sure it was different from Episode 1 but not in the bad ways like Episode 2. They made sure to get Lia Sargent and Bridge Hoffman back so someone at Namco USA or whatever knew what they were doing. The game looked great and sounded great and it completely satisfied me. It tied together all the loose-ends and left me a very happy person.

In more recent years I've come to resent its comparative popularity. A lot of people say EP3 was "the only good Xenosaga game" and that's BS. Why even like XSIII if you didn't like XSI? I wouldn't have given a second thought to Episode III if Episode I hadn't so thoroughly captivated me. And it's not like XSIII had a great battle system...it was rather generic in fact. No, the story, the music, the presentation, the voice-acting and the characters - these are what made Episode 3 great and it was due to Episode 1 laying the foundations.

And then I played Xenoblade for five minutes and didn't care about it.

The End

[Vyk]

What turned you off to Xenoblade so badly? I haven't beaten it, so I have no right or interest to push it on anyone, but I'm curious, especially since you seemed to enjoy their other games quite a bit (barring Ep2)

[Forsaken Lover]

I'm really not sure why i didn't like it so much... It might have had more to do with IRL stuff at the time than the actual game. Money issues and the like ya know? So I just couldn't focus or care about a new video game.

It really didn't look or play or sound that bad or anything. It just didn't interest me much but it's been a while since I tried it and I can't even remember why exactly i stopped.

[Vyk]

Totally understandable. I was actually dealing with the aftermath of a house fire when I got into it and I'm surprised the stress and situation didn't pull me away sooner. It was actually the moving back into my old home part a few months later that finally pulled me away from the game long enough to need to later restart it. And I still haven't played through, so I'll need to restart again here soon

[Wolf Kanno]

Xenoblade is a bit less heavy handed in its plot than previous Xeno titles. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, it was the game where the director chose to focus on the game first and the story second so I understand how if you're playing only for story that Xenoblade is a slow burn. It does eventually become pretty... um "Xeno-y" about halfway through but the game's selling point was really its gameplay.

[Pumpkin]

I watched sharky play the intro part of Xenoblade and I'll be honest, it didn't interest me in the least bit. The beginning was not, to me, impressive at all. But I tried it myself and after exploring Colony 9, the game really picked up

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

I played and beat Xenogears as well as the Xenosaga trilogy. I absolutely love those games. I want to play Xenoblade but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. It may be a while as well, with the price it's going for at the moment.

I've always wanted a copy of Xenosaga Freaks, the Japan only short story/mini game release.

59505

[The Man]

I have played but not finished Xenogears and the first Xenosaga. One of these days I'll probably play them through to completion. I also want to play Xenoblade. Maybe when the remake comes out.

[Bright Shield]

One of the best EoFF threads was NeoCracker's let's play of Xenogears 2 or 3 years ago. Some of the finest internet trolling I've ever seen.

That wasn't trolling. It was legitimate criticism.

[Forsaken Lover]

Ironically, at the moment, I own not a single Xeno title. At one point I owed every single one of them but I moved to Texas and sold some of them off and left the rest.

I needed a new copy of Episode 1 anyway. Mine sucked. I doubt I'll ever bother with a new copy of Episode 2 but I definitely need to get Gears, EP1 and EP3.

[Spuuky]

X2 isn't actually that bad the second time through. Still far inferior to the great first and third games, though. I would honestly consider killing a man for the 4th game.

[NeoCracker]

Oddly enough, the only Xeno game I technically own right now is Xenogears. The only one of the entire set I don't' like.


And the only trolling in my xeno play through was the negative comparisons of Xeno in relation to FF XIII to poke at Wolf. :p

[Forsaken Lover]

We all know Takahashi is no Toriyama. Lightning would bitcshalp Elly and tell her to stop being a sissy bitch.

[Vyk]

Lightning would bitcshalp Elly and tell her to stop being a sissy bitch.And yet I don't find her to be a better character. Who I would only imagine had far better writing and character development

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Forgot to mention:

Even though it's not video game related, I own the Xenosaga anime. Has anyone else seen that?

[Sephex]

Hey, what do you call people that don't like games like this?

Xenophobic.

(USER HAS BEEN BANNED FOR THIS POST)

[Vyk]

Forgot to mention:

Even though it's not video game related, I own the Xenosaga anime. Has anyone else seen that?
I downloaded a fansub long ago. I remember enjoying it to an extent. But I don't remember much of an impression. Much like the game itself. I enjoyed Xenosaga. But overall it was fairly meh. Not bad. Just not memorable or impressionable on me

[Fynn]

Played Xenogears and I have this love-hate relationship with it. I loved the overall story and mythos, but at the same time the game had some needless padding that was sometimes braindead-stupid and only served to make an incredibly long game even longer. I also did no enjoy the gear battles as much as those on foot, so it was a shame the game was basically a marathon of those nearing the end.

Being European, Xenosaga was this elusive thing for me. I managed to play XSI using swap magic and I dug it. I liked spotting how it connects to Gears and overall, the story was really interesting. And then I bought II and I just couldn't being myself to beat it. I still liked tge story and characters. Funnily enough, it was the music that made me quit. I loved the Kajiura part of the soundtrack. The rest made my ears bleed.

And then came Xenoblade. I've already praised this game a lot here. Needless to say, it's one of my favorite (perhaps even no. 1) games of all time. The story, characters, world - everything works just so well together.