Game Index

  • Persona 2
  • Xenogears
  • Xenosaga
  • Star Ocean
  • Evergrace

    • XENOGEARS

    Released in 1998, Xenogears is probably one of the most brilliant, well-constructed, JRPGs in the genre. It is nothing short of a passion project by a couple who worked in tandem with each other in order to create this expansive space opera that had so much vision behind it, there was no way in hell it was getting completed. The whole production was screwed from the start, Squaresoft was putting all it's marbles into games like Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy VII, pushing Xenogears under the rug like an unwanted child only to now fully own up to it as if they didn't essentially consider the whole thing a flop. I actually am of the opinion that Saga and her husband deserve to have the Xenogears IP for their own usage mostly because I'm so used to seeing creators having their creative works taken from them and held at a distance while they try to continue their story by their own means. This was where Xenosaga comes in but, if you want my opinions on that series, you'll have to check that page out, yourself.

    There's a lot of moving parts to Xenogears, I'm going to be honest with you, people have probably gone in-length about every ingredient that's thrown into the big stew that is this game. The thing is, unlike them, I actually read and am less...gullible than them. Before you ask, no, Xenogears was not based on Evangelion(they were actually both in production at the same time and inspired by the same cultural atmosphere around mecha anime). You also don't kill god in this. Well, not the Christian god, anyway. It's complicated. You do kill the demiurge though, if that counts for anything. These are like the main two things people always get wrong about Xenogears. If you see some article about it and they tell you either of these things, they did not play the game.

    One of the main aspects about Xenogears that really gets me is that it truly doesn't feel like a lot of JRPGs. Sure, there are a lot of storybeats that, if you squint, vaguely do draw parallels to FFVI and FFVII. But, as a whole, Xenogears doesn't seem to just fall into one category and stay there. The story feels like it exists outside the limitations of how a typical game should play out. The main character is amnesiac, sure; he also has an extremely complex relationship with the world around him to the point that you, yourself, will ask if it's even smart to allow him to continue to exist in it. It can be fun and goofy at times and heartbreaking at others yet it never feels as if it's undercutting the player. You don't feel manipulated to feel one way or another about anything, you also don't get spoken down to like a child. You're fully able to take in the story as it goes along and make your own conclusions, yourself. That said, the story also seems to move at it's own pace. You'll spend hours upon hours at someone's base, in a peaceful break from the typical gameplay. The story will then slowly unfold around you as you take your time soaking in the world. Before you know it, you're thrown back into the fray again.

    If I could sum Xenogears up in one word, I'd say it's 'expansive'. Seeing as they have an actual chart showing off how much of this story they wanted to do(Xenogears, itself, covering only two parts). The ideas put into this are so varied and so big, the game feels almost too full for it's own good, threatening to tip over but never actually doing so. There is really no part of Xenogears that feels overdone. In fact, once you reach disc 2, the limitations of what was planned and what they had to reflect onscreen begin to show. They knew at that point that they would never be able to make the next installment so they rushed to try to get as much of this story out as they could and I could never fault them for that.

    Gameplay-wise, Xenogears honestly feels like no other. The fighting game-like combos, the way the mechs work, having to calculate fuel usage over attacks, outfitting your mech; there are games that come close but never as refined as what Xenogears had managed to capture. The basis of using various combos in order to learn special moves but to also have specific special moves locked behind a level cap is a pretty brilliant way of rewarding the player while also keeping you from cheesing the game like crazy. The fact that your mech then learns a variation of that move is brilliant.

    If you want, Majulaar did a fantastic video over Xenogears which you can find here(although warning, it does virtually spoil every aspect of Xenogears, itself).