Customer Reviews

Xenogears & Xenosaga - 2 Game Combo

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On November 3, 2003, I wrote a review of Xenogears and it went like this:

"Out of all the RPG fansites and magazines and such, you'll find many RPG fans adoring this particular game. Xenogears is a decent game and it's a shame that it wasn't released under a Greatest Hits collection like the horrible Chrono Cross has. Still, I find myself finding this game to be far from great. Being somewhat of an RPG fan (I use "somewhat" very loosely), I find myself disappointed but also intrigued. Read on or face the fires of Hell:

THE GOOD
This game has a REALLY good storyline, and we get a main character that's unique in the sense that he doesn't want to fight, but he knows that he must. The storyline has often been touted as the best plot an RPG ever had, and while that can be debated (I always thought Chrono Trigger had the best storyline...), it's still awesome. A futuristic tale of social class warfare with various different symbolisms... very complex. I was a bit disturbed at the game's athiest point of view, but oh well. I'll let that slide. The battle system is also quite good, featuring several different combos your characters and gears can perform. The music is top notch, and since it's the same composer of Chrono Trigger (Yasunori Mitsuda), you can expect a gold musical score here. The multiplayer feature is quite good, too, and I shun all those people who have beaten me by using Xenogears (the ultim---er, CHEATING gear *Cough Cough* Someone I know.... *Cough Cough*).

THE BAD
The unfortunate downside of this game happens to be in the presentation. This game is virtually 70% dialogue and story and 30% gameplay. I'm not kidding. I came here to play a GAME, not WATCH it! I guess the RPG fans just want to sit there in awe, but when a battle is going on, I EXPECT TO PARTICIPATE IN IT. I was vastly disappointed when it cut to one of the characters in a chair talking about the battle with the pendant in the background swaying back and forth. This happened a lot on the second disc and it's a shame. I also felt the love story, albeit far from bad, didn't quite get the boost that it needed; it just seemed to "happen." Oh well.

OVERALL
Die hard RPG fans no doubt love this game and while it's far from terrible, I do think it's overrated. A great story with interesting characters, but not nearly enough gameplay involvement. If I wanted to watch something, I'll watch a DVD. Nevertheless, I do recommend this game to any RPG fan, BUT ONLY TO THOSE WITH A LOT OF PATIENCE. I might get negatives for this, but that's just because the people that give negative votes are usually very shallow."

Seven years later, I decided to return to Xenogears. I don't play video games that often these days, but this was a game that haunted me. I gave it an average---nearly sub-average---review and as you can tell from my earlier review here, I already had bias going into it. I felt it was overrated and was really let down by the second disc, in particular. Also, being a Christian at the time, I didn't like its atheistic storyline and despite "letting it slide," I think it seeped its way into the review, nonetheless.

So, as a bit of an addendum, I am changing my review. Also, some of you complained that my reviews have spoilers. Well, this is an RPG that I'm reviewing, so therefore, consider yourself warned.

THE STORY
10,000 years before the game's story takes place, a ship called the Eldridge was flying through space. The humans onboard had dismantled "Deus," a powerful biomechanical invasion computer that was deemed too powerful. Deus had become self-aware, a la The Terminator's SkyNet, and started to take over the ship. It crash-lands with only a handful of survivors; one of them was Abel, a boy who came into contact with the Wave Existence (some sort of supernatural god-like junction...it's a bit confusing there.), and thus, many descendants and reincarnated versions of him appear at several different points of the game (in order to relentlessly stop Deus). For all intents and purposes of this review, the last incarnation is the game's main character, Fei Fong Wong.

What starts off as a Gundam-like game shifts into a very deep, very philosophical storyline. We have awesome characters like the "Doc" Citan; We have Bart, the prince and heir to the throne of Aveh; There's Rico, a physically strong prisoner originally in Nortune; Also, there's Billy Black (my favorite character, actually), a former priest who specializes in guns; and Elly, a former Gebler soldier who crosses paths with Fei not only within the current time frame of the game, but as different incarnations in the past as well (and his love interest in all incarnations). There are villains in the game, two of them having a connection with Fei; the only two I'll spoil are Krelian (who was a friend of one of Fei's past incarnations) and, of course, Deus.

What is so controversial about this story is that it takes on an atheist (or humanist) approach. Deus is worshiped as a "god" by the humans throughout the centuries and it is only revealed much later that it had malevolent intentions. Square has a lot of cajones for getting this game released; Fei essentially has to kill god! The scene that really stuck out to me was near the end of the game...Fei chases after the departing/ defeated Deus to rescue Elly and confronts Krelian, who---by this point---becomes a part of Deus. Krelian kept whining about how he thought mankind needed to return to the "beginning," when human frailties didn't exist and all there was, was God. Fei followed that with talking about the inherently good qualities of mankind, and that "we don't need a god" to understand and embrace concepts like love. This sensitive subject almost caused the game to not be released here, and probably turned away a lot of potential gamers because of its stance. I turned away for a while partially because of that reason, but I'm glad I returned.

The character Fei is also not your typical hero. I will not spoil his backstory, but you will learn that he's a very Freudian type of hero and not your typical righteous youngin' like Cecil or Crono. I also liked Citan, whose real intentions were very "behind the scenes" most of the game, and I identified with Billy's upbringing in the priest hood and then learning that it was all a cover up. Bart is your typical smartass, whip-wielding hero, who despite his rambunctious nature wants to bring a democracy to the kingdom of Aveh. There are other characters to flesh out, but I will leave it to you---the gamer---to explore the rest on your own.

GAMEPLAY
There are two different kinds of battles (well, three, if you count the one-on-one arena battles). One is with your regular people (up to only three this game) and you can perform combos. The second is your gear battles. When you're fighting in gears, it's a bit more complicated. You use fuel, so you have to learn to play smart and conserve sometimes; later in the game, you can find different accessories that allow you to "Charge" up to 500 fuel at a time, so it gets easier then. You also perform combos, but the combos can lead to higher attack levels and even into Infinity Mode. It's actually not as complicated as it may sound, but if you're expecting a button mashing RPG, you've come to the wrong place.

ANIME CUT SCENES
There are several anime cut scenes located throughout the game, especially on the second disc. They are nice, although for someone like me that just wants a good story and awesome gameplay, they're not all that necessary. More on that later.

MUSIC
The music is composed by none other than Chrono Trigger's Yasunori Mitsuda. The soundtrack is AMAZING. It was the one thing that kept me going through some of the game's rough spots, and I especially liked the vocal tracks ("Stars of Tears" did not make it into the game except as the instrumental "Emotions" world map theme, but the ending theme is still there.). His themes for Grahf, Thames, and the love relationship between Fei and Elly ("The Treasure Which Cannot Be Stolen" and "Shattering Egg of Dreams," among others.) were very well composed. Some tracks remind me of Chrono Trigger, like Bart's theme ("Bonds of Sea and Fire") and "Leftovers of the Dreams of the Strong," which sounds ironically similar to the theme of Guardia in Chrono Trigger. "The One Who is Torn Apart" (played most during the "Id" encounters and Fei's revelatory scenes) reminds me of Zeal Palace and Magus' Castle from Chrono Trigger, respectively (ambiance and everything!). My favorite track is probably "Flight," which plays during some momentous fight scenes (one of them with a giant Chu-Chu...erm, k...). The score as a whole is well-rounded and while the game could've used a couple more tracks to break up some of the monotony of the second disc, I have no complaints. Yasunori Mitsuda is the man.

NOW, ONTO SOME OF THE NEGATIVES...
Despite my newfound love for the game, it does have its drawbacks. Like many reviewers have already said, it has a LOT of dialogue. For one thing---going back to the anime cut scenes---they didn't sync up the English voice acting with the scenes at all, which may throw a lot of you off; I didn't find it to be a huge hindrance, but it was a minor distraction. Another thing with the dialogue was that once you reach the second disc, the first freaking half of it is basically a couple battles and a lot of "chair" scenes in which a particular character---for instance, Fei, Elly, or Citan---will sit in it with Fei's pendant in the background swinging, all the while said character explains what's going on. There's a particular point when you discover Solaris using dead people as medicine and food, even going so far as to reference the "Soylent Green" movie, and reading about the further explanation of that was pointless. During this time, also, is when you discover Deus is the reason some of the population starts mutating into zombies (to recollect them as part of its bio-mechanical being...yeah.), and that part I found particularly annoying (I also found it odd that Fei talks about killing the zombies off to save their souls, but when a ginormous zombie monster bursts out of nowhere to eat them, Fei's like "OH NO! We have to save them from the MONSTER!" Weren't you just discussing putting them out of their misery? Am I just a cold-hearted you-know-what from playing too much Resident Evil?). BUT, fair reader, ONCE you get to the point on Disc 2 where Fei's personality is explored, THEN it gets awesome again. So, do be patient!

One other complaint before moving on is that some of the characters are pretty much useless towards the end; I'm not going to say who, because maybe someone reading this will find (or have found) different strategies with which to beat the final hour of the game, but there were a couple that I started using at the start of their entry into the storyline, but quickly found that the later battles did not suit their fighting styles. I would like feedback on this particular part of the game.

OVERALL
So...after my rediscovery, do I highly recommend this game? Well, it is still a difficult game to rate. The pacing is a bit sluggish, which is the main drawback of this game. It throws a lot at you at once in terms of story, and believe me, the spoilers I gave you aren't even half of the game. I don't know if Square lost money during production, or they just ran out of time and couldn't smooth it over, but either way, the pacing will frustrate you for a time. Also, I could've done without the anime cut scenes, despite how beautifully they're done...and like I said before, the minimal voice acting present is off-sync with the anime cut-scenes and switches to Japanese during the fighting parts, which can be a bit distracting at first.

That being said, the game is infinitely better than I have painted it out to be before; the music's awesome AND diverse, the gameplay's addicting (when it's not sluggish), and the storyline is not only immersive, but very deep on both an emotional level and a philosophical one; its challenging of religious authority and support of the human condition deserves some commendation. I also liked the love story, which plays out well despite some unnecessary angst right when Disc 2 begins. The characters, for the most part, are very memorable; any time you actually make me CARE for the characters is a good thing! If you can get past its flaws, the game will sweep you into its narrative.

So, to put it simply, if you are a novice RPG goer, you might be turned off by it initially. But if you've played a few RPGs, especially some classics like Final Fantasy 7 and Chrono Trigger, then by all means, get a copy of this game and enjoy it!

If you're a gamer like me that was turned off by initial impression, I hope you've at least given the game a second chance. It's a must-have for any fan of RPGs, and I hereby take back my statement that it was "a mixed bag." I'm glad to finally see why Xenogears gets the status it so richly deserves.

My recommendations before/alongside this one are:
Super Mario RPG
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy IV (II on SNES)
Final Fantasy VI (III on SNES) or VII