The Xenosaga Topic of 2013

[NeoCracker]

I did love Grahf a lot. I just felt his end lacked. It didn't feel at all impactful to me. Then again, the text dumps had worn me out by that point, so I may not be the fairest judge. :P

I do agree with Wolf on a point with Xenosaga, mostly the lack of presence Wilhelm had. I do think a lot of his scenes helped make him to be a good villain, and I think he is one of the most unique villains in all gaming, but to an extent he suffered the same curse as The Council due to lack of interactions with your party. However, he's still very relevant and nescessary, so that helped to counter balance it for me.

But yeah, Dmitri was probably the games best villain.

Also, I thought Miang was alright, but not amazing.

[Forsaken Lover]

I loved Yuriev too. I was never wild about the URTV Subplot but he really shined in Episode 3. It helps that Yuriev and Grahf have a lot in common thematically I suppose.

Speaking of Wilhelm and Yuriev though, this is one of my favorite lines in the whole series.
Xenosaga III - 116 - Chapter 8 - The True Form of the Ark - YouTube

And don't forget this scene.
Xenosaga III - 127 - Chapter 9 - The Truth Behind Ormus - YouTube

As a fan of Margulis since Episode 1, I really love this scene. i feel the emotion in it is just palpable as you see Margulis, pretty much a paragon of confidence and righteousness, lose himself. It makes you hate Wilhelm a lot. Well, for me it did.

Even still, this line is great:
Margulis: Then all we've done so far...all we've worked for was meaningless?
Wilhelm: It wasn't meaningless as long as you, yourself, believe it wasn't meaningless.

It might seem like he's snubbing Margulis but I don't think so. I think it's neat view of life in general.

[NeoCracker]

I saw, in a way, Wilhelm being what Krellian was intended to be. A line about Krellian after you finish the game says something along the lines of 'he has more love in his heart then anyone' yet at no point in the game does he give off that vibe.

Wilhelm shows a lot of scenes where you get the feeling that at his heart, he's not a bad guy. Just that he has a very skewed, although I feel wholly understandable, view.

I think the first time he started showing this was in Episode 1 when speaking of Albedo. I am probably off on the quote, as usual, but here goes. "His will shines with a most beautiful light. Its sad he is little more then a key."

Again, had he had some more interaction with the party, rather then feeling like a distant entity entirely, I think he could have been one of gaming's best villains.

[tony12]

A lot of the things I immidiately came across and bitched about were either me just poking fun, (The stupidity of the 'I seek power, do you doesire power line' for example) or things that were legitamately dumb (Tim being in the second round of the tournament, Vanderkaum's outrageious stupidity), none of my real issues with the game came until pretty much near the end.

You had quite a few things that the plot just plain drops. Things like Rico's entire story. There are things that serve nor purpose, either symbolic or story wise, that were the dropped entirely nothing would change in game. The worst example of this is the council. I loved the council, they were great. But why were they really nescessary to anything? You get a lot of scenes with them, but it does nothing to help the overall plot. The slightly complex relationship between them, Krellian, and Cain was great at first, but due to a lack of any real interaction with the Council, it becomes moot. If it was just Krellian needing to subvert Cain, who stopped the activation of The Key, not one thing about the story would change.

The reason this bothers me so much is you have a lot of things going on that are completely pointless, yet disc 2 is nothing but a giant exposition dumb, as if they didn't have time to finish everything. All the important details are told in absurdly lengthy text dumps, yet there is all of this you do play through that is largely irrelevant and pointless.

Not to mention the shear stupidity of that smurfing fluffy thing, whose name escapes my mind. It kills the tension of Marie's scene where she goes to fight that giant mech. Not to mention the imagery of all the Gears being strung up to crosses is at best laughable when you see the giant crucified bunny man.

And while the Xeno-Redisigns did bother me, those designs were pretty much just cosmetic. The characters themselves remained pretty damned consistant from game to game. And I argue that even without the database, Xenosaga is by far the more ambitious plot of the two games, and did a hell of a lot better in terms of characters. At no point does anyone in your party feel like they really don't need to be there, a problem that happens with about half of your Xenogears cast. (Rico, Pupu, and Esmaralda could have been dropped entirely and you'd probably never notice the difference.)

And outside of story, Xenogears has some of the worst Dungeon designs I have ever experienced in an RPG. Effectively FF XIII being one giant hallway, beginning to end of the game, is about the only worse offender of bad Dungeon design.

Xenogears ended up being a ball of wasted potential, and some serious taxation on ones suspension of disbelief.

Edit: I know you have a response WOfly, but hold off. I want to have this argument with fresh blood.

Honestly if you didn't have a lot to complain about until the end then you must not of found much to complain about. What did you expect them to do in the second disc? Slice and dice the story all up like they did in Xenosaga or eliminate some of the gameplay and dungeons. I personally am glad the second disc ended up being the way it did. For starters the game was long enough already and they kept the story intact. If gameplay and dungeons is so important to you then you shouldn't be playing the Xeno games to begin with.

The purpose of the council was to give the player an idea of what the overall plot is during the course of the game. It's hard to figure that out because you really don't know what they are talking about during the middle of the game but towards the end and then in the second play through everything they say starts falling into place and you realize what they are referring to.

The Chu Chu race was the only beings on the planet prior to the Eldridge crashing. The council were the minds of the original people Miang/Deuss created and they were being saved on a super computer. Chu Chu isn't any less retarted then all the other comic relief characters we have in any other rpg.

I really think you could of used a second play through to piece more of the puzzle together. I think you went in looking for things to complain about and started griping about anything that immediately didn't make sense to you. It's hard to place all the pieces together in the first play through because the scope of the story is so vast.

Xenogears will always be supperior to Xenosaga. Xenogears was Takahashi's original idea and it came much closer to being what his original vision intended it to be then Xenosaga did. Xenosaga was only half of what it was originally intended to be.

[Ultima Shadow]

I'm too lazy to read everything and get involved in the argument (plus I just got Xenoblade which will soon distract me from absolutely everything else ). BUT...

If gameplay and dungeons is so important to you then you shouldn't be playing the Xeno games to begin with.

Wait, wait, wait... what? Gameplay is important as long as there is any. Even if you play a game for its story and character design, you will still have to make it through the "gameplay parts". If you have to spend, say, a total of 12 hours making it from boring point A's to boring point B's and button mashing X to make it through boring battles that have no impact on you, then that's certainly just bad for the game as a whole. On the other hand, exploring interesting places and enjoying intense and interesting battles will always be a great plus. A good story and good character design does not automatically mean any and all gameplay flaws are forgiven.

...this is, for example, the sole reason I really didn't like Xenosaga 2. I could accept the new character models after a while, but the terrible battle system just killed it for me. I did, however, love both Xenosaga 1 and 3. Because I found both of their battle systems totally fun and awesome. So yes, that "small" difference in gameplay was the deciding factor that made me love 1 and 3, but not 2. If you are playing a "game", then the gameplay will matter. A lot.


------------------------------

...anyhow, the best track from the Xenosaga series is obviously Promised Pain. It's so epic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv7c0si2AEo

[NeoCracker]

A lot of the things I immidiately came across and bitched about were either me just poking fun, (The stupidity of the 'I seek power, do you doesire power line' for example) or things that were legitamately dumb (Tim being in the second round of the tournament, Vanderkaum's outrageious stupidity), none of my real issues with the game came until pretty much near the end.

You had quite a few things that the plot just plain drops. Things like Rico's entire story. There are things that serve nor purpose, either symbolic or story wise, that were the dropped entirely nothing would change in game. The worst example of this is the council. I loved the council, they were great. But why were they really nescessary to anything? You get a lot of scenes with them, but it does nothing to help the overall plot. The slightly complex relationship between them, Krellian, and Cain was great at first, but due to a lack of any real interaction with the Council, it becomes moot. If it was just Krellian needing to subvert Cain, who stopped the activation of The Key, not one thing about the story would change.

The reason this bothers me so much is you have a lot of things going on that are completely pointless, yet disc 2 is nothing but a giant exposition dumb, as if they didn't have time to finish everything. All the important details are told in absurdly lengthy text dumps, yet there is all of this you do play through that is largely irrelevant and pointless.

Not to mention the shear stupidity of that smurfing fluffy thing, whose name escapes my mind. It kills the tension of Marie's scene where she goes to fight that giant mech. Not to mention the imagery of all the Gears being strung up to crosses is at best laughable when you see the giant crucified bunny man.

And while the Xeno-Redisigns did bother me, those designs were pretty much just cosmetic. The characters themselves remained pretty damned consistant from game to game. And I argue that even without the database, Xenosaga is by far the more ambitious plot of the two games, and did a hell of a lot better in terms of characters. At no point does anyone in your party feel like they really don't need to be there, a problem that happens with about half of your Xenogears cast. (Rico, Pupu, and Esmaralda could have been dropped entirely and you'd probably never notice the difference.)

And outside of story, Xenogears has some of the worst Dungeon designs I have ever experienced in an RPG. Effectively FF XIII being one giant hallway, beginning to end of the game, is about the only worse offender of bad Dungeon design.

Xenogears ended up being a ball of wasted potential, and some serious taxation on ones suspension of disbelief.

Edit: I know you have a response WOfly, but hold off. I want to have this argument with fresh blood.

Honestly if you didn't have a lot to complain about until the end then you must not of found much to complain about. What did you expect them to do in the second disc? Slice and dice the story all up like they did in Xenosaga or eliminate some of the gameplay and dungeons. I personally am glad the second disc ended up being the way it did. For starters the game was long enough already and they kept the story intact. If gameplay and dungeons is so important to you then you shouldn't be playing the Xeno games to begin with.

The purpose of the council was to give the player an idea of what the overall plot is during the course of the game. It's hard to figure that out because you really don't know what they are talking about during the middle of the game but towards the end and then in the second play through everything they say starts falling into place and you realize what they are referring to.

The Chu Chu race was the only beings on the planet prior to the Eldridge crashing. The council were the minds of the original people Miang/Deuss created and they were being saved on a super computer. Chu Chu isn't any less retarted then all the other comic relief characters we have in any other rpg.

I really think you could of used a second play through to piece more of the puzzle together. I think you went in looking for things to complain about and started griping about anything that immediately didn't make sense to you. It's hard to place all the pieces together in the first play through because the scope of the story is so vast.

Xenogears will always be supperior to Xenosaga. Xenogears was Takahashi's original idea and it came much closer to being what his original vision intended it to be then Xenosaga did. Xenosaga was only half of what it was originally intended to be.

I fully understand who the council were. Their identities aren't the issue. The issue is they didn't need to be there. We already had Krellian and Cain who could have showed us the plot, as well as Gharf and that one Solarian General, I forget his name of the top of my head.

And the Chuchu Race is just something esle thats there and doesn't even add to the story at all. Chu Chu is probably the most retarded comic Side relief character I have ever scene, hell look to their latest game, Xenoblade. Riki is amazing as your comic side relief character.

The actual plot of the game doesn't confuse me at all. I get it, I really do. It's not as complex as a lot of people have made it out to be in the past. Hell, the actual plot I don't mind. What I do mind is the game is riddled with a lot of badly executed scenes, dropped plots, and a second disc that cuts out any kind of gameplay as well as giving you a condensed version of the plot. Doing that kills any real chance at character development or moments when all you get is the cliff notes.

And no, I did not go into this game looking solely to bitch. I loved Xenosaga, 3 was one of my favorite games. I love playing RPG's I missed out on when I was younger. Hell, I didn't play Lufia 1 or Breath of Fire 1 until well into the PS2's life cycle, and I enjoyed them.

I went into Xenogears thinking I would have a solid game, because the people behind the game are very talented and I love the team. I had good hopes it would turn out well, especially since, regardless of our bickering, me and Wolf have some fairly similar game tastes. I went in expecting a slightly dated game that was still fun.

I honestly don't see how Xenogears possibly could have been so close to the original intent when so much stuff was blatently cut out during production.

And Shads basically covered Gameplay for me.

[tony12]

NeoCracker I think you need to read up on the history of the Xeno series. Takahashi was originally with Square when him and his team started work on Xenogears. They had an elaborate overall story which spanded thousands of years. The game of Xenogears was only one part of that story. Square however decided against finishing the rest of the games so the Takahashi could no longer continue the series under Square.


He left Square and created Monolith soft mainly for the direct purpose of finishing his story. He couldn't pick up the story where he left off though because Square still owned the rights to it so he instead had to start the series over with a new (albeit simililar) plot. That new plot ended up being Xenosaga.


Xenogears was indeed the first incarnation of the Xeno story. Like it or not it was a much more complete version than Xenosaga ever was.

[NeoCracker]

I'm also fairly aware of the history of the company. This is completely irrelevant.

And the only reason it was "Complete' as it were, was massive text dumps to tell us what happened. Being complete, and as originally intended, are not the same thing.

The example I am using here is from Breath of Fire 2 back on the SNES.

You go the to the Colosseum to fight Kat. You find out that Argus, the Curator of the Colluseam, is an evil bastard. You approach Katt to find out she's a bit stubborn, and refuses to believe you, violently throwing you out of her room. Rand shows up, and while he's unsure as well, decides to help you to ease your mind and prevent a possible poisoning. WHen you are proven right, an enraged Rand helps you take down Argus.

The intent here was to establish Argus as a dick, present Katt as a stubborn and fairly un-intellectual idividual, yet at the same time give you reason to sympathise with her. It also establishes Rand as a character.

The Xenogears text dump version of this is 'Ryu shows up to the collosuem, and with Rands helps saves Katt and beats Argus.'

That is very complete and accurate, but in no way reflects any of the original intent.

If the Xenogears text dump was the original intent, however, then the original intent was god aweful, as it missed any reason to make one care about what is going on, and any kind of build up as shown in my example. Its hard for me to buy someone as obviously talented as Takahashi would have willingly missed all of that opportunity. True, from my understanding that happened due to a lot of time restraints Square dropped on them, but it's still abundantly clear massive chunks of Xenogears got cut to make it out on time.

Of course, in the end, does original intent even matter? Whats important is the Final Product. What we, the consumer, actually get out of it. No amount of history knowledge on the games creation will change any of that. The Xenogears, and even Xenosaga's, behind the scenes tom foolery changes anything.

[tony12]

You know NeoCracker you really need to get over your text dump complaints. They were running out of time to complete the game and made a decision to tell the full story and scrap the gameplay in order to tell the full story. It was a smart move considering the main purpose for playing Xenogears was for the story. And besides like I said before. The game was long enough already.

You know what I think was dumb about Xenosaga. The fact that they started out with this grand story to tell. Found out that they did not have the backing in order to complete that story so ended up slashing the story to bits. Making Episode II for the most part irrelevent and basically taking three games to tell a story that they originally wanted to tell in one. And then to make it worse completely dropping the rest of the series all together without giving any indications of what was supposed to originally happen and just having the series end being very incomplete.


At least with the Xenogears text dumps they gave you an indication of what the whole story was supposed to be about. They didn't even come close to doing that in Xenosaga's case.

[NeoCracker]

No, I don't need to get over the text dump complaints. That was the games single worst aspect. The entire point of playing through a game is to experience the story, not be told it. This was exactly the same way the smurfed up in FF XIII, is rather then experiencing it, Barthadalous dumps about 60% of the games plot points on you at the very end.

And even if you are playing a game for the story, the text dumps are still aweful. A story is more then just the plot. It's the characters reactions to it, the little events that lead up to the climaxes, the atmosphere of the different areas. Feelings and emotions that happen along the way, character developement.

All of this is completely lost in the text dumps.

And I know what the whole story of Xenosaga is about,I found they did an amazing job at wrapping everything up they had started. (Well, the Realins were kind of shafted by the end, which was sad.)

I really don't see where that complaint is coming from.

Edit: I admit it was troutty that Xenogears didn't have time to finish, as I think it would have turned out great otherwise. However, sad as it is, it didn't finish. They made the same mistake with Xenosaga, in that they tried to put to much into a game that just didn't have the time to finish properly.

[tony12]

No, I don't need to get over the text dump complaints. That was the games single worst aspect. The entire point of playing through a game is to experience the story, not be told it. This was exactly the same way the smurfed up in FF XIII, is rather then experiencing it, Barthadalous dumps about 60% of the games plot points on you at the very end.

And even if you are playing a game for the story, the text dumps are still aweful. A story is more then just the plot. It's the characters reactions to it, the little events that lead up to the climaxes, the atmosphere of the different areas. Feelings and emotions that happen along the way, character developement.

All of this is completely lost in the text dumps.

And I know what the whole story of Xenosaga is about,I found they did an amazing job at wrapping everything up they had started. (Well, the Realins were kind of shafted by the end, which was sad.)

I really don't see where that complaint is coming from.

Edit: I admit it was troutty that Xenogears didn't have time to finish, as I think it would have turned out great otherwise. However, sad as it is, it didn't finish. They made the same mistake with Xenosaga, in that they tried to put to much into a game that just didn't have the time to finish properly.

Your argument is irrelevent then. Even if you didn't like the text dumps the text dumps still gave you a good overall vision of what the entire story was supposed to be about. Xenosaga should of had text dumps instead of the 1/6th version that they ended up getting. I could understand your argument in a way if you were actually arguing in favor of a game that actually was more complete than Xenogears. But in no way shape or form was Xenosga more complete than Xenogears.

If you think Xenosaga did a good job of wrapping everything up then you obviously don't have any clue what Xenosaga was originally supposed to be. You probably have never even heard of Perfect Works.

[NeoCracker]

No, I don't need to get over the text dump complaints. That was the games single worst aspect. The entire point of playing through a game is to experience the story, not be told it. This was exactly the same way the smurfed up in FF XIII, is rather then experiencing it, Barthadalous dumps about 60% of the games plot points on you at the very end.

And even if you are playing a game for the story, the text dumps are still aweful. A story is more then just the plot. It's the characters reactions to it, the little events that lead up to the climaxes, the atmosphere of the different areas. Feelings and emotions that happen along the way, character developement.

All of this is completely lost in the text dumps.

And I know what the whole story of Xenosaga is about,I found they did an amazing job at wrapping everything up they had started. (Well, the Realins were kind of shafted by the end, which was sad.)

I really don't see where that complaint is coming from.

Edit: I admit it was troutty that Xenogears didn't have time to finish, as I think it would have turned out great otherwise. However, sad as it is, it didn't finish. They made the same mistake with Xenosaga, in that they tried to put to much into a game that just didn't have the time to finish properly.

Your argument is irrelevent then. Even if you didn't like the text dumps the text dumps still gave you a good overall vision of what the entire story was supposed to be about. Xenosaga should of had text dumps instead of the 1/6th version that they ended up getting. I could understand your argument in a way if you were actually arguing in favor of a game that actually was more complete than Xenogears. But in no way shape or form was Xenosga more complete than Xenogears.

If you think Xenosaga did a good job of wrapping everything up then you obviously don't have any clue what Xenosaga was originally supposed to be. You probably have never even heard of Perfect Works.

Vaguely I know of Perfect works, I just don't care.

And again, what Xenosaga was 'suppose to be' was irrelevant. Maybe it didn't end up the way it intended, I don't care. What I care about is what did happen. What I care about is what actually was released.

And again, it doesn't matter if the text dumps serve as a good synapsis, because a synapsis will never surpass the story as intended with all of it's nuisances.

All of these things that happened behind the scenes have little to no impact to me. It's intersting to learn about, I'll give you that. But in terms of game quality it's largely a pointless thing to bring up, and at best makes certain things forgivable. But it only covers for so much.

[tony12]

No, I don't need to get over the text dump complaints. That was the games single worst aspect. The entire point of playing through a game is to experience the story, not be told it. This was exactly the same way the smurfed up in FF XIII, is rather then experiencing it, Barthadalous dumps about 60% of the games plot points on you at the very end.

And even if you are playing a game for the story, the text dumps are still aweful. A story is more then just the plot. It's the characters reactions to it, the little events that lead up to the climaxes, the atmosphere of the different areas. Feelings and emotions that happen along the way, character developement.

All of this is completely lost in the text dumps.

And I know what the whole story of Xenosaga is about,I found they did an amazing job at wrapping everything up they had started. (Well, the Realins were kind of shafted by the end, which was sad.)

I really don't see where that complaint is coming from.

Edit: I admit it was troutty that Xenogears didn't have time to finish, as I think it would have turned out great otherwise. However, sad as it is, it didn't finish. They made the same mistake with Xenosaga, in that they tried to put to much into a game that just didn't have the time to finish properly.

Your argument is irrelevent then. Even if you didn't like the text dumps the text dumps still gave you a good overall vision of what the entire story was supposed to be about. Xenosaga should of had text dumps instead of the 1/6th version that they ended up getting. I could understand your argument in a way if you were actually arguing in favor of a game that actually was more complete than Xenogears. But in no way shape or form was Xenosga more complete than Xenogears.

If you think Xenosaga did a good job of wrapping everything up then you obviously don't have any clue what Xenosaga was originally supposed to be. You probably have never even heard of Perfect Works.

Vaguely I know of Perfect works, I just don't care.

And again, what Xenosaga was 'suppose to be' was irrelevant. Maybe it didn't end up the way it intended, I don't care. What I care about is what did happen. What I care about is what actually was released.

And again, it doesn't matter if the text dumps serve as a good synapsis, because a synapsis will never surpass the story as intended with all of it's nuisances.

All of these things that happened behind the scenes have little to no impact to me. It's intersting to learn about, I'll give you that. But in terms of game quality it's largely a pointless thing to bring up, and at best makes certain things forgivable. But it only covers for so much.

Lol, you are just talking nonsense now. Your lack of knowledge about the Xeno franchise is really showing at this point. As someone who did play Xenogears and did read perfect works and knows what Takahashi originally wanted to tell for Xenosaga I can tell you what ended up getting released is a hacked up incomplete version of what was originally intended.

You, who doesn't seem to have any clue what was originally intended, are quite naive on this matter. But the reason most Xenogears fans have a hard time accepting Xenosaga as an equal to Xenogears is because they know what the story actually was. They know that Takahashi leaving Square and starting Monolith Soft was because he wanted to tell that full story. And quite frankly Xenosaga ended up being a piss poor hacked up version of that full story.

[NeoCracker]

No, I don't need to get over the text dump complaints. That was the games single worst aspect. The entire point of playing through a game is to experience the story, not be told it. This was exactly the same way the smurfed up in FF XIII, is rather then experiencing it, Barthadalous dumps about 60% of the games plot points on you at the very end.

And even if you are playing a game for the story, the text dumps are still aweful. A story is more then just the plot. It's the characters reactions to it, the little events that lead up to the climaxes, the atmosphere of the different areas. Feelings and emotions that happen along the way, character developement.

All of this is completely lost in the text dumps.

And I know what the whole story of Xenosaga is about,I found they did an amazing job at wrapping everything up they had started. (Well, the Realins were kind of shafted by the end, which was sad.)

I really don't see where that complaint is coming from.

Edit: I admit it was troutty that Xenogears didn't have time to finish, as I think it would have turned out great otherwise. However, sad as it is, it didn't finish. They made the same mistake with Xenosaga, in that they tried to put to much into a game that just didn't have the time to finish properly.

Your argument is irrelevent then. Even if you didn't like the text dumps the text dumps still gave you a good overall vision of what the entire story was supposed to be about. Xenosaga should of had text dumps instead of the 1/6th version that they ended up getting. I could understand your argument in a way if you were actually arguing in favor of a game that actually was more complete than Xenogears. But in no way shape or form was Xenosga more complete than Xenogears.

If you think Xenosaga did a good job of wrapping everything up then you obviously don't have any clue what Xenosaga was originally supposed to be. You probably have never even heard of Perfect Works.

Vaguely I know of Perfect works, I just don't care.

And again, what Xenosaga was 'suppose to be' was irrelevant. Maybe it didn't end up the way it intended, I don't care. What I care about is what did happen. What I care about is what actually was released.

And again, it doesn't matter if the text dumps serve as a good synapsis, because a synapsis will never surpass the story as intended with all of it's nuisances.

All of these things that happened behind the scenes have little to no impact to me. It's intersting to learn about, I'll give you that. But in terms of game quality it's largely a pointless thing to bring up, and at best makes certain things forgivable. But it only covers for so much.

Lol, you are just talking nonsense now. Your lack of knowledge about the Xeno franchise is really showing at this point. As someone who did play Xenogears and did read perfect works and know what Takahashi originally wanted to tell for Xenosaga I can tell you what ended up getting released is a hacked up incomplete version of what was originally intended.

You, who doesn't seem to have any clue what was originally intended, are quite naive on this matter. But the reason most Xenogears fans have a hard time accepting Xenosaga as an equal to Xenogears is because they know what the story actually was. They know that Takahashi leaving Square and starting Monolith Soft was because he wanted to tell that full story. And quite frankly Xenosaga ended up being a piss poor hacked up version of that full story.

Once again, I don't care what the original intent was. Why should I?

I judge the game on it's own merits. And under that view, the games are great (Well, 2 isn't, but we've been over that. )

No matter how much closer to the original intent Xenogears was to Xenosaga, that doesn't excuse any of it's problems either.

[tony12]

No, I don't need to get over the text dump complaints. That was the games single worst aspect. The entire point of playing through a game is to experience the story, not be told it. This was exactly the same way the smurfed up in FF XIII, is rather then experiencing it, Barthadalous dumps about 60% of the games plot points on you at the very end.

And even if you are playing a game for the story, the text dumps are still aweful. A story is more then just the plot. It's the characters reactions to it, the little events that lead up to the climaxes, the atmosphere of the different areas. Feelings and emotions that happen along the way, character developement.

All of this is completely lost in the text dumps.

And I know what the whole story of Xenosaga is about,I found they did an amazing job at wrapping everything up they had started. (Well, the Realins were kind of shafted by the end, which was sad.)

I really don't see where that complaint is coming from.

Edit: I admit it was troutty that Xenogears didn't have time to finish, as I think it would have turned out great otherwise. However, sad as it is, it didn't finish. They made the same mistake with Xenosaga, in that they tried to put to much into a game that just didn't have the time to finish properly.

Your argument is irrelevent then. Even if you didn't like the text dumps the text dumps still gave you a good overall vision of what the entire story was supposed to be about. Xenosaga should of had text dumps instead of the 1/6th version that they ended up getting. I could understand your argument in a way if you were actually arguing in favor of a game that actually was more complete than Xenogears. But in no way shape or form was Xenosga more complete than Xenogears.

If you think Xenosaga did a good job of wrapping everything up then you obviously don't have any clue what Xenosaga was originally supposed to be. You probably have never even heard of Perfect Works.

Vaguely I know of Perfect works, I just don't care.

And again, what Xenosaga was 'suppose to be' was irrelevant. Maybe it didn't end up the way it intended, I don't care. What I care about is what did happen. What I care about is what actually was released.

And again, it doesn't matter if the text dumps serve as a good synapsis, because a synapsis will never surpass the story as intended with all of it's nuisances.

All of these things that happened behind the scenes have little to no impact to me. It's intersting to learn about, I'll give you that. But in terms of game quality it's largely a pointless thing to bring up, and at best makes certain things forgivable. But it only covers for so much.

Lol, you are just talking nonsense now. Your lack of knowledge about the Xeno franchise is really showing at this point. As someone who did play Xenogears and did read perfect works and know what Takahashi originally wanted to tell for Xenosaga I can tell you what ended up getting released is a hacked up incomplete version of what was originally intended.

You, who doesn't seem to have any clue what was originally intended, are quite naive on this matter. But the reason most Xenogears fans have a hard time accepting Xenosaga as an equal to Xenogears is because they know what the story actually was. They know that Takahashi leaving Square and starting Monolith Soft was because he wanted to tell that full story. And quite frankly Xenosaga ended up being a piss poor hacked up version of that full story.

Once again, I don't care what the original intent was. Why should I?

I judge the game on it's own merits. And under that view, the games are great (Well, 2 isn't, but we've been over that. )

No matter how much closer to the original intent Xenogears was to Xenosaga, that doesn't excuse any of it's problems either.

Well don't care then. But that still doesn't change the fact that you are largely naive on the matter. Again the fact that you didn't know all that history probably helped you enjoy Xenosaga more. But for those that did know all that history that is a big reason why they think less of the Xenosaga series.