Hello and welcome to ToriJ's Video Game Reviews. We're into the second week of May and this time I'll be playing another well known title of Squaresoft back when they knew how to make video games. I'm not bitter.
Xenogears! The game stars Fei, a villager of Lahan suffering from amnesia. Yeah, I know, if you've played enough JRPGs in the past you've heard this story a million times. Bear with it, it's worth it. Everything is right as rain until mechs (called gears) attack the village and Fei is forced to leave Lahan behind to begin a new adventure.
The game starts off with a very 1990s style animation of a spacecraft under attack that leads to the evacuation of the crew and the Captain getting blown up with the ship after activating the self-destruct sequence. This is the clip they also play if you wait at the title screen so you can watch it twice!
The scene ends with a naked woman before taking us to Lahan under attack. After that plays out we cut back to a foreshadowing scene the day before to see our hero with a picture of a fire. Two minutes in and I'm already confused as all hell.
Shame this won't be worth anything until I'm dead.
Fei's room is where we get our first feel for the controls. One of the first things I noticed is how sensitive the camera is. You can push it ever so slightly and it will still tilt farther than you want it to while trying to see something. Then they throw a bunch of obstacles in your way so you can't see anything!
There's a considerable amount of lag whenever you leave a room. Fei can even move for a good couple of seconds before the game starts to load.
I hope you like zoom ins because boy are there a lot of them! Zoom in when you leave a house, zoom in when you enter, zoom in at the end of a battle, zoom in when a clip ends, you even zoom in at the title screen! What is the deal? Why does everything have to zoom in?
You'd think with how much they love using the zoom in feature that you can use it manually for the camera, but no. You're forced to deal with an over-the-head view while trying to navigate the area around you.
On a positive note, you can jump. Yeah, an RPG where you can actually jump! You can jump on the bed! I'm playing an RPG and I am jumping on my bed!
Another thing that's annoying is when you're trying to leave and the NPC you talked to is still talking. Yeah, with lesser NPCs you still have control of your character. This wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't so many long pauses between text boxes. You think the character is done speaking only to take a couple of steps to find out that they still have something to say. Who does that?
Oh, and there are typos in the text boxes as well. Either missing words or letters screws up the flow of a sentence. Square had a lot of translation problems back then so it's no surprise and luckily it only occasionally happens.
Citan just had to live on top of a SMURfING mountain, didn't he?
Xenogears battle system puts more of an emphasis on combos instead of straightforward physical or magic attacks. Each command spends a set number of points. The stronger you get through battle, the more points you have to spend, and the more points you have to spend, the more combos you can string together for more damage.
It reminds me of Legend of Legaia with all the commands you had to punch in in that game. There's also Chi which has power attacks that affect health or status alignment. There's more animation too as the character will run right in front of the enemy before you choose which command to put in.
Fighting in the gears is mostly the same thing, only with gears you have to keep an eye on your fuel. Run out of fuel and you're smurfed. Gears also have their own health and requires new parts to upgrade them instead of just leveling up.
You can't use the same healing items on gears either so you need to find different ways to keep their HP up. There's Frame HP and Chu Chu that can help with that. Before that boost and enhancements work just fine, although boost only works for fuel.
I actually enjoy the gears battles a lot more than the regular ones and it's another thing that makes Xenogears stand out among the hundreds of other RPGs that are out there. The hunting for different parts gives me happy memories of Armored Core just without the detailed customization.
All right, time to put all that Evangelion binging to good use.
Sweet Jesus, where do I even begin with this story? Xenogears probably has the best amnesia story I've ever seen in a JRPG so far. Fei goes through several different flashbacks and we're shown clues to who he is prior to the reveal.
They aren't just ass pulls for the sake of shock value, you can actually piece this stuff together and it makes sense when the reveal happens. It then expands and the more things tie together the crazier, and crazier it gets until you reminiscent about the time Xenogears was about a small village getting ready for a wedding.
The religious symbolism in the game is really well done. The meaning behind the two one- winged angel statues you see later in the game is beautiful, and much later on ironic after you find out the truth. Just how everything came to be and the connection to the opening at the start ties together very nicely. Usually, I don't have any issues with giving spoilers, but this is one of those times where I'm not going to give too much away since it's something you really need to experience for yourself.
The characters are all likable and has several memorable villains along the way. They even have voice actors whenever the game switches to animation during some of the scenes. Though the lip synch could use some work.
Oh, I'm supposed to press X. I had so many X's in my face that I forgot.
Xenogears is the most ambitious RPG to come out of Square, and I don't think they've made anything since that comes close to it. Crazy to think that once upon a time this game could have been Final Fantasy VII. Regardless of what it's called, Xenogears is a great game worth checking out if you love the genre.
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