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At any rate, for me the peak of my RPG enjoyment comes from none other than Squaresoft and a little (all right, big) game called Xenogears. I believe most are familiar with this Playstation ****, but for those who are not here's a brief rundown. You, the player, control protagonist Fei Fong Wong from the beginning of the game collecting party members and exploring the world in a mostly traditional way. Fei suffers from amnesia and has no knowledge of his past. A war rages on the planet (possibly Earth) between two super powers and Fei's tiny village is spared any confrontation until one day when a gear, which is the game's term for Gundam-styled mechs or mobile suits, crashes nearby bringing a battle along with it. Fei, wishing to save his friends, climbs into the empty gear and promptly goes beserk, killing nearly everyone friend and foe alike. Fei is forced to leave and eventually meets one of the enemy, Elly, and the two are forced to work together to survive. Other characters come and go along the way, each with his or her own respective gear as mysteries are unraveled. The narrative gets rather confusing and sometimes preachy but always remains interesting. The game was highly controversial at the time as it's revealed early on in the game that the gear Fei ends up piloting, Weltall, is destined to destroy god (they're always careful to make sure god is lowercase, I assume to distance the game's version of god from the Christian one). The plot deals with past lives, socials castes, technology and morality and of course spirituality. At worst the plot is interesting but I could understand if it made people uncomfortable.
The gameplay is similar to that of a traditional Final Fantasy game. The 2D character sprites move around a map (in 3D) and are subjected to random battles that are turn-based in nature. Where Xenogears distances itself from it's more popular cousin is in how those battles unfold. Battles can take place with the characters on foot or in their respective gears. There's a maximum to three characters per party and at the beginning of a character's turn they are alloted a set amount of attack points, or AP. These points are used to attack in three tiers; weak, strong, and fierce. Each attack level corresponds to a button and is assigned a value. Weak (triangle) uses 1 AP, Strong (square) 2 and Fierce (X) 3. This allows the player to mix their attacks up and for some characters different attack strengths will have different elemental properties. At the end of a battle, the player is rewarded experience which goes towards leveling up the character and towards learning combo moves called Deathblows. Once a character performs, for example, a triangle, triangle, x attack enough times he or she learns the corresponding deathblow. Upon input of the deathblow, the name of the attach is displayed and the character goes into a special animation and delivers greater damage. Characters can also stockpile AP to unleash a string a deathblow attacks at once, simply referred to as Combos. Characters also have access to magic, usually referred to as Ether, and can also defend, use items, or flee from battle on any given turn.
In gears, combat is similar but with a couple changes. The AP system is gone and is replaced with a level system that starts at zero and can go as high as 4 (called Infinity). At level 0 the character can attack once using triangle, square, or x. The attacks again weak to fierce, but now cost fuel (10 for weak, 30 for fierce). After attacking one round, the gear moves up to level 1. At level 1, a gear deathblow can be used (triangle-triangle or triangle-square) or the gear can use a normal attack and move to level 2, where strong deathblows can be used. After using a deathblow the gear's level returns to 0 unless the gear is in infinity mode. At level 3, any normal non-deathblow attack has a chance to send the gear into infinity mode which last three turns. From here, the gear has access to 3 ultra-powered deathblows or can re-charge its fuel at an increased rate. The other options available to gear combat are the charge command (restores 30 fuel), Ether (usually the same spells for the character, with some differences), Booster (increase fuel consumption for added speed), and Special Options. Special Options varies from gear to gear. Some have character specific attacks, and if a gear is equipped with a frame HP item it can restore a potion of it's hit points at the expense of fuel. Gear battles become a game of resource management as fuel determines if the gear can attack or heal itself. And since healing a gear is rather expensive in terms of fuel cost, it also gives the player incentive to win battles decisively. The player also needs to recognize when lower tiered deathblows are appropriate and when it becomes necessary to use level 2 or 3 attacks or try for infinity. The better deathblows also aren't available from the get-go and depend on the level of the character so the game doesn't overload the player early on.
Ultimately, it's the gear/character dynamic that draws me in. It keeps combat fresh as you move from gear-based scenarios to character-based scenarios and some that are mixed. The cast is also strong with a lot of characters having different strengths and weaknesses leading to a variety of approaches one could take. There's a non-gear character named Chu-Chu, that is a ridiculous looking pink furry thing that appears to have no good use but she has one very useful skill. She is the only character that can use healing spells on gears, so for those willing to put the time into using her it can be very rewarding (I can't get past the stupidness of the character to use her).
There's a lot of things Xenogears does well but it's not a perfect game. The visuals have not aged all that well as the sprite-based character models are heavily pixelated. The textures on the three-dimensional backdrops are muddy and the camera is cumbersome. Gears are fully three-dimensional polygons and actually most still look pretty good, all things considered. There are a couple of CG scenes to move the story along, and there's some anime sequences as well. The voice acting is minimal, but is very much hit and miss. The voices don't match the mouth flaps, at all, and it is pretty distracting. Most of the time though, the story is advanced using the game's engine and liberal amounts of text. If you hate to read, don't play this game. During the game's development it went over-budget, way over budget. As a result, the developers were forced to cut corners. Planned scenarios were removed and replaced with narration and still images. Often, this narration is done by Fei and the game just displays him sitting on a chair with a spotlight on him with a black backdrop. These go on for long stretches of time, with the longest exceeding a half hour. Some people complain about the Metal Gear Solid franchise and the long amounts of time spent watching as opposed to playing, but at least there the player is watching, here the player is reading. And all of this takes place on disc 2 and hits the player almost all at once. It really messes with the pacing of the game and feels extremely restrictive as the player no longer has free reign to level-up or partake in any side quests during this time.
In the end, the game feels like an incomplete vision. In a world littered with sequels and re-makes, it seems absurd to want another, but I would love to see a Xenogears re-make. The game, as it stands, will take most between 60 and 70 hours to complete on an initial play through, so it seems almost further absurd to want additional content. Fully spoken cut-scenes would move things along though, and certainly some fat could be trimmed. The script is insanely wordy and lacks subtlety. Remove some of the cliches and unnecessary explanation and that would cut down on the play-time. I would even be fine with a download only episodic structured release as long as the price was right. I'm not asking for a brand new game engine with cutting edge graphics, but just something with a cleaned up image. Unfortunately, pretty much all of the key contributors on the game have left Square so there's likely little push to do something. The game is available on the Playstation Store in Japan, but no plans have been announced to bring it state-side. And since the spiritual successor to the game, Xenosaga, was a commercial disappointment for Namco, there seems to be little interest in reviving the franchise (though a new game fir Wii pays homage with its title, Xenoblade, which has yet to be released in the US). It's a shame, because as good as Xenogears is, it could be so much more. I'll continue to revisit the game from time to time but I'll always be left to wonder what could have been?
# 1
videlsports @ Aug 9
I HAD THAT GAME, THE MAIN CHARACTER WAS FEI RIGHT. I LOVED THE MARTIAL ARTS COMBOS, MORE THAN FIGHTING IN THE MECHS. Sorry for the caps I'm just as passionate as you. those were the days, ps2 has the most games.
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