Xenogears V FFVII

[Dreddz]

Just one of my random threads
So pick dammit, from what ive played, Xenogears is great, but still not on par with FFVII

[Aphelion]

Xenogears is way better than FFVII. But it's only my opinion, of course...

Xenogears had a deeper plot, darker characters, and it introduced an epic to thousands of gamers across the world. FFVII was just an overrated RPG, and even though it spread the RPG mania in western shores, its influence can't be compared to Xenogears' (FFVII's was bigger, but Xenogears caused much more trouble, as it was almost not translated into English, and when it did, there weren't enough copies, at least until 2001, I guess, when new copies were produced).

Again, that's only my opinion, and maybe any of these facts isn't accurate as I'd like them to be.

[raskerino]

I prefer FFVII, xenogears never caught me the same way- and I loved the materia system.

[Vyk]

They both took hold of my soul and wouldn't let go.

[Destai]

Xenogears is way better than FFVII. But it's only my opinion, of course...

Xenogears had a deeper plot, darker characters, and it introduced an epic to thousands of gamers across the world. FFVII was just an overrated RPG, and even though it spread the RPG mania in western shores, its influence can't be compared to Xenogears' (FFVII's was bigger, but Xenogears caused much more trouble, as it was almost not translated into English, and when it did, there weren't enough copies, at least until 2001, I guess, when new copies were produced).

Again, that's only my opinion, and maybe any of these facts isn't accurate as I'd like them to be.Xenogears from what I've heard was far deeper and more epic but I've also heard VII is much more fun. I know which I'd pick.

[Lord Magician]

FFVII all the way! :D

[Dreddz]

Xenogears is way better than FFVII. But it's only my opinion, of course...

Xenogears had a deeper plot, darker characters, and it introduced an epic to thousands of gamers across the world. FFVII was just an overrated RPG, and even though it spread the RPG mania in western shores, its influence can't be compared to Xenogears' (FFVII's was bigger, but Xenogears caused much more trouble, as it was almost not translated into English, and when it did, there weren't enough copies, at least until 2001, I guess, when new copies were produced).

Again, that's only my opinion, and maybe any of these facts isn't accurate as I'd like them to be.Xenogears from what I've heard was far deeper and more epic but I've also heard VII is much more fun. I know which I'd pick.
Ive only played a couple of hours into Xenogears, And the story has already hooked me. The anime scenes are really cool. And its not like thast the only reason to like Xenogears, the Battles are great too. But the graphics are plop. But FFVII is still my favourite......
You should get Breaker Pro Destai, you can play imports then......

[Destai]

Xenogears is way better than FFVII. But it's only my opinion, of course...

Xenogears had a deeper plot, darker characters, and it introduced an epic to thousands of gamers across the world. FFVII was just an overrated RPG, and even though it spread the RPG mania in western shores, its influence can't be compared to Xenogears' (FFVII's was bigger, but Xenogears caused much more trouble, as it was almost not translated into English, and when it did, there weren't enough copies, at least until 2001, I guess, when new copies were produced).

Again, that's only my opinion, and maybe any of these facts isn't accurate as I'd like them to be.Xenogears from what I've heard was far deeper and more epic but I've also heard VII is much more fun. I know which I'd pick.
Ive only played a couple of hours into Xenogears, And the story has already hooked me. The anime scenes are really cool. And its not like thast the only reason to like Xenogears, the Battles are great too. But the graphics are plop. But FFVII is still my favourite......
You should get Breaker Pro Destai, you can play imports then......Thanks for the advice *googles it*

[Captain Maxx Power]

I'd have said Xenogears, if the second disk didn't want to make me eat my own eyeballs out.

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

Xenogears is better than Final Fantasy VII on just about all levels.

Story: Xenogears is infinitely superior. Period.
Graphics: The cutscenes are about equal. FFVII has better backgrounds than Xenogears but FFVII has some of the worst standard character graphics I've ever seen (block people!?). I'd say about a tie for this.
Characters: Just about every character in Xenogears has an expansive backstory and well-defined personality. Even Chu Chu ties in to the major plot. FFVII characters were much less compelling, and sometimes downright annoying.
Villains: Again, Xenogears is infinitely superior. Jenova was a decent bad guy, of course, but she simply can't beat Grahf, Id, Ramsus, Miang, and Krellian. And Sephiroth (ignoring the fact that he was a frozen corpse in the Great Crater for a moment) really wasn't that good. He killed Aeris and burned a village to the ground and failed at crushing the planet with a big space rock. I don't care if he looks cool and has a massive sword, he doesn't hold a candle to Grahf who can take down an 18-meter gear with his BARE HANDS.
Gameplay: I honestly didn't like FFVII's system all that much. The materia was interesting, but it was nothing really special to me, and most of it was simply tried-and-true Final Fantasy format. I found the Deathblows and the Gear Combat to be far more entertaining. Also, Final Fantasy VII, as is common with most Final Fantasies, is really quite linear in where you can travel. Xenogears uses a fully 3D world that can be interacted with, and the ability to jump adds whole new dimensions to the gameplay. Final Fantasy VII could easily have been a sprite game and still played through essentially the same. It doesn't do anything new besides mess with the viewpoint a bit so it looks more 3D (which often caused laughably bad angles).
Replay Value: The sheer size of Xenogears is immense, and the extras and complexity of the story can easily make it replayable. Final Fantasy VII lacks that, it's a fairly linear storyline with very little plot twists, making it easily predictable and less fun to play through again.

In conclusion, Xenogears is far better than Final Fantasy VII.

[raskerino]

Just to start a debate I'll disagree with the above post. First off don't talk so much as if an opinion is fact. I found the sequence in midgar a fun easy way to get into FF7, while xenogears did not catch me early making it much harder to get into the game. The opening stuff with the town getting destroyed didn't matter to me because I didn't have any connection with any of the characters. Then with the scenes where you meet bart I didn't get interested due to at that point there wasn't a lot of depth to the characters imo. FFVII caught me faster, I loves the customizable materia system, so while I liked the xenogears system it wasn't as enjoyable for me. The story to xenogears is more in depth but starts slower and never caught me like FFVII's imo. I liked the character's to FFVII more. I liked the backgrounds to VII and loved the feel of the cutscenes making it for me better in that category to.

I like both games but VII worked for me in such a wonderful way that I prefer it by a decent amount.

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

Xenogears takes a lot longer to get into, which is what would be the main divisor. I don't mind a slow buildup but a lot of people don't like it. I actually prefer a slow buildup if it is done correctly, it gives more time to get into things and doesn't just throw crap at you.

In any event, to me, a story is everything. And I can say I quite honestly found FFVII's story to be more than a little weak. Also, I think Xenogears has little trouble catching a person, the village destruction might not have mattered because you didn't know the people, but what DID matter is that it happened and it happened for a reason, though at the time you don't know it. The fact that the FMV they show depicts Fei grinning maniacally before the place goes tells me that something's going on and I want to know more.

With regards to FFVII's storyline and why, exactly, I felt it was weak, was because it really had a been-there-done-that feel to it. Having played RPGs as long as I have, it was just a massive chase-sidequest-chase-sidequest deal. Certainly some interesting points along the road, but nothing really worth note.

[Lord Chainsaw]

2 things I preferred about FF7:

- Battles. Although the combo system for Xenogears was fairly creative, it didn't work out very well. It suffers from the same thing 7th Saga and Xenosaga suffer from, either you waste rounds storing your power, or you unleash little pea attacks making the battles (especially when encountering one giant enemy as opposed to a group of smaller ones) last longer than they really need to. I enjoyed the gear battles, however, the fact that they pulled a SaGa and made it so that the gears cannot level up aside from equips really restricts the enjoyment the RPG player gets from putting in effort to make their character as strong as they want so the difficulty of boss battles can be directly proportional to effort put in. Same reason I don't like Lunar SSS's battle system. FF7's is nothing special, but it works.

- Dungeon design. I'm a very strong opponent of filler puzzles in non puzzle games, explaining my dislike for a good portion of the Zelda games. Final Fantasy 7's levels are levels you explore, either straightfowardly, or branched out on your own, until you reach the end. Mind you we still have the token puzzle dungeon "the Temple of the Ancients" but the puzzles aren't nearly as rampant as they are in Xenogears. Just thinking about the Xenogears dungeons give me a headache. The damn math puzzle in the area where you fight voltron? Solaris? Kelslev? The entirity of Deus? No thanks.

2 things I preferred about Xenogears:

- The ending. Xenogears's ending seemed much more played out than Final Fantasy 7's. I enjoyed seeing that side of Krelian, and I felt a sense of completion at the end of it.

- Fei. I've always liked Cloud, but not because he was anything to deep of a character. Fei's incredible degree of schizophrenia and reincarnation made him seem like a much better character late in the game, although I'll admit I didn't like him at first. At the beginning he just seemed like another one of those "Mega Man X" type of heroes that couldn't stand fighting. Seeing him change felt good.

[Vyk]

I love a good debate between two of my favorite RPGs ever. But I have to wonder about the rules of spoilers. I know given 7s age and popularity that its not worth worrying about the miniscule percentage of people that don't know what happens in it. And Xenogears might be just about as old. But its not nearly as popular, considering it never made it to the UK and didn't sell half as good as 7 did in America. A lot of people have heard wonderful things about it and are eagerly looking forward to it even now. I worry this thread now might ruin that for those people. (Though I must admit I never did understand the concept behind spoilers. But they bother some people and I respect that. Knowing Aeris was going to die at some point, and experiencing it happening were totally different for me. But that's just me) :D

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

The rules on spoilers for games beyond 3 years old on this site are basically, you don't need tags, if someone still hasn't played it they should probably be avoiding the threads in which people are talking about it.

[raskerino]

In any event, to me, a story is everything

OK, for me (I favor FFVII in case anyone didn't read above posts) the storyline isn't everything it's the sum of what a game turns out to be. FFVII's storyline was very strong imo and it had strong characters to back it up, they were both characters I could like and connect too (all of them even Cait Sith fit the story and had interesting motives, except aeris who I dislike), and good characters make the story so, so much better imo. However what I liked by far the most about VII's storyline was something I didn't like near as much about xenogears. The timing of the story, when you learned what- how much you learned after beating jenova at the crater in early disk 2 and many other scenes that for me came at the perfect time. How the story developed so that you always knew enough to be satisfied, but there was also much more to know (a feel definitely not in xenogears for me). Also the feel of the game was somewhere I loved to be, and that wasn't only created by the storyline- the characters were very important for that, as was the timing of the story. Another part of the feel was the graphics (no I'm not a graphic whore) I like graphics based on how nicely they're done, not on how powerful the graphic engine they're using is. And I loves the backgrounds in FFVII, from the industrial midgar, to cosmo canyon, to wutai and the north crater. It was well done backgrounds that gave nicely different feels to th different places you were at. There are some side topics that come up between the characters (not that their weren't in xenogears, I'm saying why I love FFVII) for example an early, short talk between Cloud and Barret that made me think a bunch about how midgar worked that was about people living in the slums vs the plate. There were a few times like this where the game just brought up really interesting topics. And I care about the gameplay, I really enjoyed VII's gameplay. As I've said before I found the materia system amazing and I enjoy the FF type in battle fights. It all worked for me and it was truly a wonderful game. It's probably tied for my second favorite after FFVIII and tied with Shadow Hearts:Covenant.

^Above is just why I like FFVII.^

I think xenogears is a great game but the timing didn't work as well for me. And the feel wasn't as wonderful.

PS: And no I'm not a FF7 fanboy (not that anyone accused me of that, this is pre-emptive defense) I give reasons for why I love games.

PS2: And Behold the Void don't hate me and kill off my characters cause I disagree with you :p :D

[Lord Chainsaw]

I don't agree with the spoiler rule either. I think it's pretty ridiculous seeing as a gamer like me has so many games to play that I can't possibly get to them all within 3 years of them coming out.

I simply try to avoid spoilers instead of using the tags. Mind you it's pretty impossible to say what needs to be said without revealing something, I usually try to my hardest to get out what's in my mind without the annoying tags. It really isn't that difficult to do either, but I suppose the spoiler rule is meant to cater to the casual gamer who can either get through all the games they play in 3 years, or simply doesn't care too deeply about video game stories in the first place to warrant the trouble of highlighting a spoiler tag.

We're a dying breed, my brother.

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

I am trying to keep my spoilers down, but I may need to give something away, and I'm assuming everyone here has played both games, just by virtue of the fact that they're even IN this thread.

*ahem*

Basically, take what you described for FFVII, and change it to Xenogears. I have the same feeling towards Xenogears as you do towards FFVII. Frankly, I wasn't too impressed with FFVII. There were some aspects I really enjoyed (like the Cait Sith/Reeve thing), but for the most part it just wasn't that spectacular to me. I enjoyed it, but I never felt it worth playing again, nor did I feel any particular connection with it.

And as far as killing your character, I won't do that. If he loses, it's simply because his build is defeated by the opponent's build, I don't care if someone disagrees with me

[Dreddz]

never felt it worth playing again,

Funny, seems like everyone can have a different opinion, I could play FFVII all day long and never get bored......

[CloudDragon]

Xenogears > FFVII

[Sephex]

Although I prefer FFVII, I do believe that Xenogears had a deeper plot. The only thing that I felt was wrong with the game is the rushed nature of the 2nd disc. Yeah, yeah, I know that it wasn't the developers fault--Squaresoft didn't give them enough time or whatever. However, I still didn't like how rushed it was.

It was like, "Okay...now Fei and company had to go fight some robot. THEN...they had to go fight a bigger robot!"

[Vyk]

I never could understand people's complaint on that part, but I guess that's because it's derived from a gameplay standpoint. (Note however for those that don't know, its not that the game play on that disc is bad or changed in anyway, it's just few and far between). My take on RPGs is that they are the real novels of the video game world. I'm all about plot and storyline. And though I shy away from choosing between FF7 and XenoG, I will express my perspective on this choice. The developers had a choice as Square crunched their time. The second disc was maybe halfway complete or something. They could have cut the plot a bit and made it more interactive, like the first half of the game. Or they could get their WHOLE story across, but not have the player as involved. They chose to tell their whole story. And for that I am grateful. We now know almost everything they wanted to tell us in that game. Yes there was a compromise, but one I'm willing to make, because for me, in the truest sense, it is all about the story. And we got that story.

I know a lot of dialogue in games can be tedious. I've heard lots of complaints about Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door to this tune. Way too much talking. But in XenoG the narrative and dialogue of the second disc was forgivable in that it was interesting and worth reading dialogue and narrative (to me anyway). Because I think it was a captivating and very interesting and deep and original (albiet confusing) storyline. Which I'll take over jumping around and fighting ANY day.

[Sephex]

It wasn't the constant dialouge that bothered me. Like I said, I felt the game was rushed during the second disc. In fact, I'm one of the people who was baffled when people compalined about too much dialouge in Paper Mario 2.

[Shelus Enzinual]

In terms of one of the most complete storylines in the world...from Square, I would have to say Xenogears

In terms of Graphics, I liked Final Fantasy VII. It's graphics were just a little beter.

With having plenty of villians, Xenogears takes the Gold on that one.

With the leveling up system, I perfer to level up in my free time with Final Fantasy VII.

Using items and weapons. I rate the two games equally.

In truth, I can't say why I like Xenogears better, but I do, and that is good enough for me.

[Vyk]

Hee, what an awesome first post. Need more newbies like you. You just fade into the EoFF crowd like I did. Welcome aboard, mate :D

[bipper]

They both took hold of my soul and wouldn't let go.

[DJZen]

You know, there ARE other games in the universe...

[nik0tine]

Xenogears is better than FF7, tenfold. I thought FF7 had better gameplay and graphics, and although gameplay and graphics (to an extent) are important, they take a back seat to things like storyline and character developement, and in those areas Xenogears has FF7 beat a hundred times over.

[Destai]

and although gameplay and graphics (to an extent) are important, they take a back seat to things like storyline and character developement, Only in the most slective RPG's and not in general videogames. Thats probably why VII was so much more popular.

[edczxcvbnm]

Due to the length of Xenogears it has the replayability of building multiple Sears Towers. If you play as many games as I do it just takes too much time to do again. FFVII on the other hand only takes like 15 hours to beat again. Much more replayable.

[nik0tine]

Due to the length of Xenogears it has the replayability of building multiple Sears Towers. If you play as many games as I do it just takes too much time to do again. FFVII on the other hand only takes like 15 hours to beat again. Much more replayable.I disagree. Since I first played Xenogears less than a year ago, I've already played through it three times. I don't think it's that long. Hell, I completed the entire second disk in one sitting the last time I played it. Because of it's awesome story I think that Xenogears has great replay value.

[black orb]

>>> Random battles were annoying in both games, I have yet to beat Xenogears (Im playing disc 2) but from what i have seen the plot/story is by far more impressive than FF7.

[Fuzakeru]

I happen to believe Xenogears has a more impressive storyline than FF VII. All the talk of faith and belief and whether or not it held relavance to anything struck me hard and after playing it I had a lot to think about.

I prefered the graphics in Xenogears to the ones in FF VII as well. While VII looked wonderful for its time and was cracking in to more realistic graphics I enjoyed the more cell shaded ( is that what it is? I'm not sure what to call it exactly ) look. Plus, the anime cutscenes . . . oh how I love thee.

The villians in Xenogears . . . just wow. There are some incredibly wicked people in that game. Sephiroth is up there with some nasty characters but I don't think he compares.

Those are just my opinions though.

[Dreddz]

You all smell, FFVII is a squillion times better, Im on the second disc on Xenogears at this moment, I think Im near the end now, but I think FFVII is still a far superior game. I even started a new game file on it cause I was missing it while loading Xenogears....

[raskerino]

Dreddz speaks the truth :beer: :bow: :bow: :bow: :riiight:

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

I've still yet to see any convincing argument towards FFVII's story being superior to Xenogears beyond "well... it starts off with more action!" which isn't how Xenogears is meant to start off at all, given that it is supposed to establish a peaceful scenario just before all hell breaks loose.

[raskerino]

It's not better, it's different, cause this is all opinion except FF7's better (hehehehehe)

I enjoy FF7 a lot more, that's not saying it's better but it was a lot more enjoyable for me, I've said why I prefer it and it comes down to opinion, I picked up Xenogears recently again and couldn't get past the thames cause I got bored, the game doesn't interest me a ton. FF7 on the other hand I love... but my preference is based on me a lot more than the different games, they're both excellently made games, it who I am that makes me love FF7 so much more.


OK, for me (I favor FFVII in case anyone didn't read above posts) the storyline isn't everything it's the sum of what a game turns out to be. FFVII's storyline was very strong imo and it had strong characters to back it up, they were both characters I could like and connect too (all of them even Cait Sith fit the story and had interesting motives, except aeris who I dislike), and good characters make the story so, so much better imo. However what I liked by far the most about VII's storyline was something I didn't like near as much about xenogears. The timing of the story, when you learned what- how much you learned after beating jenova at the crater in early disk 2 and many other scenes that for me came at the perfect time. How the story developed so that you always knew enough to be satisfied, but there was also much more to know (a feel definitely not in xenogears for me). Also the feel of the game was somewhere I loved to be, and that wasn't only created by the storyline- the characters were very important for that, as was the timing of the story. Another part of the feel was the graphics (no I'm not a graphic whore) I like graphics based on how nicely they're done, not on how powerful the graphic engine they're using is. And I loves the backgrounds in FFVII, from the industrial midgar, to cosmo canyon, to wutai and the north crater. It was well done backgrounds that gave nicely different feels to th different places you were at. There are some side topics that come up between the characters (not that their weren't in xenogears, I'm saying why I love FFVII) for example an early, short talk between Cloud and Barret that made me think a bunch about how midgar worked that was about people living in the slums vs the plate. There were a few times like this where the game just brought up really interesting topics. And I care about the gameplay, I really enjoyed VII's gameplay. As I've said before I found the materia system amazing and I enjoy the FF type in battle fights. It all worked for me and it was truly a wonderful game. It's probably tied for my second favorite after FFVIII and tied with Shadow Hearts:Covenant.

That's why I love FF7, Xenogears doesn't have this for me, but we went through this already. FF7 is not better than Xenogears because there is no way to say preference is anything more than opinion, it's not fact, however I found FF7 to be stronger in many ways.

Edit: About how it starts off, Xenogears starts off with destuction as does FF7, it's hard to say one immediately starts off with more action. However FF7 continued to introduce characters I liked and stayed fun. The characters that showed up at that point in Xenogears seemed OK but it wasn't as fun to get into.

[Dignified Pauper]

Opinions don't matter. Gamer fact concludes that Xenogears is, in fact, better than FFVII

[Dreddz]

Opinions don't matter. Gamer fact concludes that Xenogears is, in fact, better than FFVII
FFVII, even though lots disagree, is always known as the best or one of the best RPG's, why do you think it got all these sequels...

[Destai]

Opinions don't matter. Gamer fact concludes that Xenogears is, in fact, better than FFVII:<3: