A look back at: Xenogears

Oh Xenogears, you are certainly a game I thought would be absolutely excellent given your potentially amazing storyline and your amazing music. God, I loved Knight of Fire and Steel Giant, and was excited to hear them as battle music along with lots of other music. Plus tons of memorable characters. But do I often focus on storyline all the time?

Yes, I'm actually surprisingly not a fan of the gameplay as much as I was led to believe. The gear combat and the on-foot combat have their ups and downs, with the numerous abilities actually being quite taxing, especially when concerning gear combat and fuel. The game has its hands full with actually annoying dungeons, such as the Tower of Babel, the Shevat staircases, and possibly the worst of all, the Kislev sewers. Add to it really annoying random encounters and this game was a grind in its own right. Add to that the annoying bosses, such as Ramsus in a lot of places, and that evil bastard Redrum, and wow, I just find so many reasons to hate this game. On the plus side, having different button combos for deathblows and combo attacks is nice, and the gear combat minigame, albeit required, is actually quite fun.

So yes, the plot. This game absolutely loved the idea of several philosophies, which naturally is NOT my field of expertise. You look at Fei's freudian personalities, and how they are quite screwed up. You look at how characters like Rico and Billy have very interesting side plots that are quite tragic in a number of ways, but afterwards they are forgotten rather quickly. You look at how Fei and Elly have been reincarnated as multiple reincarnations of a couple, and then get confused when Grahf not only is one of those incarnations, but also inhabits the body of the current Fei's father. You look at how Citan is a traitor/non-traitor in a vein that makes Lando Calrissian look like an amateur. You wonder how Big Joe always likes to show up in random places. You get tired of recurring fights, such as the Gebler guys, the Elements, and Ramsus. You get very confused at this Gazel Ministry and how you never see who they are or what they do, as well as Krelian in general. You gloat over Disc 2 and how it all apparently was rushed, with characters just sitting on a chair narrating things.

And yet somehow, Xenogears still manages to be interesting. There's some nice pride in the Yggdrasil submarine and all it gets capable of doing. There's nice fights where you are controlling characters other than Fei (obviously because he transforms into Id or is otherwise incapacitated). The whole beginning of the game is a fantastic deconstruction of the destroyed hometown attribute, where a friend who is brutally murdered ends up triggering Fei's bad side and completely destroying the village he was in. There's Elly's apparent switch of sides, Bart and Sigurd's connection of their missing eyes, and the whole monstrosity that is humans turning into Wels. It's all very interesting stuff. Between all the philosophies and mixed gameplay, Xenogears is worth at least one play. But given how long it is, given how convoluted the plot actually becomes, and considering how it is the fifth of an apparent non-existent series that unfortunately never really saw the light of day, I really want to know more. Even if I don't want to play this a second time, there's always something interesting to find in Xenogears that prevents it from being absolutely horrible.