A look back at: Popful Mail

So I've reviewed The Guardian Legend, Crusader of Centy, Startropics, Golvellius, and even Illusion of Gaia, and not a single one of these I considered to be RPG based on the mechanics they had. Crusader of Centy was a Zelda clone, Startropics had it's own array of items and health system, but also a lives system. Golvellius was that but way worse. The Guardian Legend threw me in a hybrid of rail shooter and Zelda-like navigation but no real RPG elements. Illusion of Gaia was closest because it definitely emphasized adventure and multitudes of attacks, but abandoned the formulas that Soul Blazer and later Terranigma followed.

So when I played Popful Mail, I had to straddle the line. RPG or no? I say it ought to be based on a few things. Actual shops, cashing in enemy rewards to get gold and better equips, and the ability to change characters each with different abilities. While there's no level up system and the game plays exactly like a Metroidvania, I say this game feels like a good example of a Metroidvania/action RPG hybrid. Of course, it's painfully forgettable plot sort of ruins it, especially if you were like me and played a non-translated SNES version, but I bet even if you get the translated version it would still not be too pretty. The game also times you based on how long it takes, which I think factors in what ending you get, and it could get difficult, usually par for the course for any Metroidvania-type game. The anime-like presentations are okay but aren't too exciting. Gameplay is very much what matters most in Popful Mail.

A look back at: Ys II

The action RPG mantra definitely hits its curves, and there's usually not a single game in this genre that is easy. I've played Odin Sphere, Vagrant Story, Hydlide, and the first Ys, and they are all difficult. Ys II honestly is the easiest so far but still manages to be somewhat hard. It's kinda interesting really, you could perhaps combine both of the first two Ys games together (some ports actually do this) but both games are relatively short, can grind up to certain levels, and the running into enemies to damage means you can exploit them fairly easily.

The plot and the progression are better than before, it's not as easy to get lost as it was in the first game. But it's still a bit annoying with the backtracking and using key items, which is blatant in the Demon Shrine portion, the final area of the game. By then the game isn't that hard save for a few enemies, and the final boss is actually a Nintendo Hard kind. Speaking of bosses, most are immune to contact damage but given you can spam A on bosses with the fire spell equipped and kill them in one go it seems equal enough to go ahead and make the final boss significantly tougher. And I was on max level if you wanna know. Still though, the Ys games just seem fairly mild and not too amazing.

A look back at: Robotrek

Got to admit, I'm so glad Quintet games are pretty short. If this game were any longer, I'd probably keel from exhaustion because of how boring its combat is and how lame its story is.

It's yet another one of those "good on the premise" ordeals, the game allows the player to create and customize robots for battle in an active-time battle system, as well as create, combine, and recycle items. But it barely does much plotwise. I mean, get your kidnapped father back from evil hacker dudes who brainwash people or turn them into mice or use science in some weird way. And then time travel comes into play and it gets even more convoluted. Boom! Past! Oh wait, now the whole thing was a dream? Now all of a sudden, this person you met in the past seems to have recognized you. Oh yeah, there's space travel, a space princess, and an evil fortress. The embarassing thing is this is the one part of the plot I can actually remember, and if I can remember the cliches more than any surprising twists, than really this game isn't that good plotwise.

And to potentially insult players further, the thing that got me was an excessive amount of backtracking. This may be because of the guide I used when playing, but even without it, there's a lot of "get in this dungeon, find thing, go out the long way, go back and fight boss". This added the boredom factor. Part of me wanted to get many of the dungeons over with, and really I would include those dungeons on a "worst dungeons" list because of the backtracking alone. I get this game definitely got the customization aspect going with the robots and items, but to really make a good game you need a good lot of everything.

A look back at: The World Ends With You

Well done me, I just finally reviewed my 100th RPG and done some post game stuff, and what do you know, I picked a good RPG for my 100th. Amidst the sea of turn-based RPGs, active-time RPGs, and most other action RPGs, The World Ends With You does something you probably wouldn't have expected Square Enix to actually do. See, they've got quite a few controversial releases, particularly the Lufia 2 remake as well as the Final Fantasy III and IV remakes which I still can't figure out. But TWEWY? Original, fun, innovative, quite difficult but quite rewarding at the same time. And it's even got memes.

Controlling both top screen and bottom screen is key to victory, but damn near difficult. Square, being the tutorial gurus they are after numerous Final Fantasy tutorials, at least make these ones count, since the game perplexes me on a lot of things here. Eventually, I'd learn, then I'd conquer every fight I get into. The completionist in me gave up trying to master every pin, since the drop rates are difficult with the higher difficulties, but I did get the secret reports, Another Day, and all of the jazz and pig noises. Rough, rough times were had here and there, but prevailing through much of the meat is what I live for. Speaking of meat, the food system is quite the difference, as is the outfit system (not that any NPC notices what people wear though, due to plot circumstances).

And then we get the story that evokes shades of It's a Wonderful Life (the game actually was titled that in the Japanese version), but with loads of twists. Who'd think? Brainwashing a whole city using pins from a much earlier day? Circumstances of death? The big bad Composer being one of your three partners and at odds with the Conductor? Another Day completely rewriting character roles for a poor man's Beyblade? God this game went crazy. And I enjoyed the craziness. Helping matters was a fantastic soundtrack too. This ends up being a Top 5 game for me. And guess what? I'm gonna be ranking my RPGs in a future post. Keep posted, folks.

All the aggravating things about Xenogears: Part 3

Final part of this long-ass multi-item rant.

230. Welcome to Disc 2, where a good chunk of s*** has been rushed and many thing will not be explored. Instead, you'll be treated to characters sitting on a wooden chair with a black void with various text and screenshots explaining things that would actually be more fun to experience in-game.

231. In fact, the first two instances of a character sitting in a chair are back-to-back, with pretty much the exact same dialogue with Fei and Elly and their past incarnations as Lacan and Sophia in flashbacks like we didn't have enough of these things already.

232. Now we cut to a scene of our hero naked in a vat with his eyes open. Rather unsettling segue there.

233. Id is now a gameplay mechanic, way to ruin some good-ass suspense there Taura. Also Limiters again.

234. What mobile weapons does Solaris even have at this point? The whole city has been completely compromised after Id destroyed it.

235. Also Citan had an Omnigear the whole time. I'm guessing it must have been on Solaris and escaped via remote mind control as Solaris was being cleaved.

236. Weltall on steroids.

237. Grahf is Lacan and a huge teleporting jerkass who is simultaneously not a jerkass and also seems to know everyone.

238. Unnecessary narration before a seventh showdown with Ramsus, culminating in his sixth failure. Hell, Ramsus gets no dialogue this entire scene, and now he's gone back to actually being trash.

239. Guess what folks? That Mass Driver facility? You'll never get to experience it. All this so we can shoot some Jesus laser into the sky to fix problems for humans on land.
240. So Nisan has gear battalions all of a sudden for a church town.
241. What the heck even is Ft. Hurricane supposed to even be? It looks like a giant metal asterisk! It's also a complete ass pull for Solaris given that the entire nation is pretty much f***ed and without any resources now apart from some reserves.
242. Also Bart taking the so-called Yggdrasil IV pretty much ensures that Kislev is out of power for its main amenities.
243. Said Jesus laser mentioned earlier removes the Limiters from everyone, but at the same time allows for those incredibly unlucky to undergo painful transformations. It's complete luck that absolutely no one with a character portrait succumbs to this.
244. So you're telling me the Wels are the true form of humans? Everyone's true form is zombies?
245. Another location never visited -- the Soylent System. Not necessarily related to the same one in Krelian's lab either.
246. Why did a bio-monster decide to show up all of a sudden? No reason given!
247. Elly's cutting of her hand to drop blood in the monster's mouth was utterly futile and unnecessary. I get the monster could be sentient at this time but clearly nothing was gained from this.
248. Elly being a reincarnation of Sophia ends up being a Mother Teresa clone.
249. Really would love to not see more scenes of Gazel Ministry talking s*** no one knows or cares about.
250. Of all the s*** that ends up being playable, the Omnigear subquests get interrupted by the last we see of recurring characters, starting with two fights against the Elements, the gear fight is stupid enough because apparently the four share one control stick in their combined gear.
251. In a scene on the villain side, Ramsus still thinks he's the only one to beat Fei despite having lost six times.
252. Ramsus decides to use Elly as bait yet again, and we even see the Gebler Five who are clearly on Elly's side and of course no one wants any of Ramsus' s*** since the guy he seeks is clearly not at Nisan. But he still continues to dick around until he finds his arch-nemesis.
253. Seeing the flashbacks involving Ramsus is just painful. And then we see more of the Gazel Ministry's insults and the reason he exists, which as complex as it is he's a character Square decides to make you feel bad for.
254. The puzzles in the second Anima dungeon are just too stupid.
255. Of course Rico is the next in line to be the Kaiser, what other connection do you guys even need besides the whole "Rico trying to assassinate him earlier" deal because Sigmund easily recognized who that guy even is!
256. I can't tell who's a villain at this point although I know Cain obviously isn't one. Also the spinning image world where Cain is ceases to exist, but both Ramsus and Krelian are okay afterwards.
257. Dan, Joseph, Gad, Hyuga's Asher, Ramsus' Zebulun, Krelian's Judah, Sophia's Dinah, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Grahf's Naphtali, what the f*** am I even reading?
258. So now this key makes more people turn into zombies and mutants, but this time for a brand new Rapture. You guys might as well be destroying the world physically instead.
259. Again, it's pretty much luck by lottery that no one with a character portrait is afflicted by this.
260. Square loves the floating evil continent cliche.
261. Immediately the game segues into a bombshell where Elly now has to stay behind. No excuse for this part except for Fei to be a huge dick to her. And then to really even the score he flat out bones her.
262. Clearly what Grahf meant when he said destroy God was destroy its Latin incarnation known as Deus. This doesn't really imply that the world of Ignas is monotheistic, since we have Nisan and the Ethos believing in other gods. Ignas is polytheistic!
263. Jesus how many weapons and starships do our enemies even have?
264. Citan thinks he's just fine while Fei and his partner try to defeat Grahf and all. Surprisingly he's never targeted at all during this ordeal.
265. The Gebler Five know that Elly's mission is suicide, but she still goes!
266. That's not Elly's Omnigear, that's Sophia's Omnigear! Are they even the same thing?
267. The "men" that Krelian are with are Executioner clones, and the Executioner was female.
268. Cutscene boss fight that actually would have been much more fun if we actually could play it.
269. Grahf then shows up after Elly gets taken in order to just insult Fei. You could just end him there like you wanted to earlier.
270. The villain ball is getting so ridiculous at this point that Krelian just wants to stay ahead, at least we won't have to worry about a whole bunch of f***ing pronouns from the Gazel Ministry anymore.
271. Wiseman also shows up to be Mr. Demotivator.
272. It apparently takes two weeks for the group to find where Elly is despite Krelian could have done basically anything to her at any time during that period.
273. The two statues appear again for no discernable reason.
274. Seventh battle with Ramsus, the hardest, but thankfully the last. Poor guy gets back to that flashback and how he's trash and you guys just have to rub it in.
275. So Miang decides to go for Round 2 after beating her but uses the power of unfair cutscene abilities to basically liquefy and eat the Anima Relics.
276. We interrupt a boring exposition act to bring you Ramsus chopping down two former subordinates, because apparently being considered trash for so long flat out ruins his freaking mind. Predictable.
277. Although Krelian somehow survives being sliced by Ramsus long enough to say some stuff, and Ramsus and the others are clearly in cutscene PTSD for the exposition to continue.
278. Perhaps this is the most convoluted exposition in any game ever. So Miang, now in Elly's body, is the Mother of all humans, and she and Krelian need to go with Deus. How exactly can we even follow this stuff even if we've been trying to follow it for the last eighty or so hours.
279. Merkava just decides to nuke places for no good reason.
280. For the third time, it's a complete luck of the draw that no one important to the plot gets raptured.
281. And Shevat once again tries to take out Fei with the carbonite freezing because they are so scared s***less of Id.
282. Boatload of flashback exposition about the past lives of Fei and Elly, mostly dealing with Sophia kamikaze bombing during a war. This will be pretty much the extent of Disc 2 stuff at this point until the final dungeon.
283. Follow up with an "in the mind" cutscene with Fei's inner personas. Apparently there's a fourth, even though that's gonna be proven false later on.
284. Lacan was an artist in his time! Who else saw that coming!
285. Roni and Rene show a lack of originality on Square's part by taking the middle names of Edgar and Sabin from Final Fantasy VI and shoving them into flashback characters no one really cares about.
286. Sophia is still named Elly for some reason. And she's also "playing the role" of Sophia which for all we know is just a Mother Teresa role in the middle of some Middle East-style conflict that has airships and giant robots.
287. Krelian was friendzoned back then. And of course that was pretty much the reason he's a villain.
288. So you would create god with your own hands, Krelian? Why not just do what Kefka did?
289. Miang then pulls Lacan in like Emperor Palpatine did to Anakin, after somehow taking a ghost apparition of Sophia's appearance.
290. You thought you saw the last of Dan huh? Just putting him in to rub Fei in after all. Also there's no prison guards down here.
291. Of course Id's awakening is gonna break out of the carbonite. Shevat can't keep up with the times.
292. Buckle up for Fei trying to reason with his inner conscious as we see more blue void scenes.
293. So Id decides to suck up a boatload of power for being in an embryo with no explanation? Also Zohar does nothing but watch.
294. Fei's father was a workaholic while his mother ended up being a bitch later on in life and did some probing. No wonder Id was created.
295. Also young Fei apparently survives whatever experiments he had been tested on, but other test subjects die?
296. Fei's family is so complicated. For Miang to show up, basically any woman could be Miang as it was with Elly, but not only does Miang's conscious migrate to another woman like it did after Ramsus stabbed the other Miang, it also makes them go into a smug bitch mode. Also Fei's father is Wiseman although we'll be seeing more f***ery later.
297. It also makes no sense that Grahf, a previous incarnation of Fei who was Lacan, shows up in front of Fei.
298. Also Super Saiyan mode and blame shifting as to who killed mother.
299. Major flashbacks to Fei's other previous lives where he and his Elly incarnations still die.
300. We then get a major exposition cutscene and mission statement from a mysterious green blob that won't be seen again.
301. Okay I am SO confused. Why was Fei in his father's gear all of a sudden after the mounds of cutscenes? And now his father, who was Wiseman, is also somehow Grahf too? Despite all the cutscenes of the two fighting it out? Is Fei his own father? None of this adds up!
302. Fei then uses god abilities to go back to his own gear, never doing this again for the rest of the game.
303. True Weltall? Original Weltall? I give up.
304. Oh wow, so Fei was the sole survivor of the ship from the prologue? And he's the one monologuing all of this scene.
305. Shevat never thought to use the Excalibur against Solaris at all during this time period.
306. Our heroes are just the worst at everything it seems. Overdoing it normally isn't even a problem but somehow it is in this game.
307. Now Deus is gonna pull a Galcian from Skies of Arcadia and do the Rains of Destruction.
308. A sort of classic cliche at work here. Ramsus thinks he sucks ass but then his main support was with him all along. Although all I can gather from this is potential fanfiction of Ramsus banging the Elements.
309. Hahaha no, no "miracles" please. Those miracles clearly only happen due to the hopelessness of everyone who isn't a party member.
310. Duneman Isle subquest is populated by Tusken Raiders as if this game cannot rip off Star Wars any more.
311. The movie in the Zeboim culture smells of 1940s WWII propaganda movie stuff. Fei also talks exposition during this thing and even points out who Miang is.
312. The Kim flashback is more cringeworthy than it looks. Nice city, nice stuff, Kim bitches about people like Fei's present incarnation did in the forest so long ago. This basically leads to the creation of nanomachine Emeralda like a complete ass pull.
313. So you're telling me Emeralda apparently hits robot puberty right after that flashback? She's made of nanomachines and can shapeshift into basically anything! Why can't she just do that any time?
314. Just getting inside Deus immediately gives us a map, which I guess proves helpful, but already you can tell a sense of dread from having to deal with a long-ass final dungeon for a long-ass game.
315. Dropping down a tunnel of lasers makes me want to play Star Fox or some other rail shooter instead of Xenogears.
316. Four mini-bosses before big boss cliche.
317. Also after defeating the boss, there's yet another moment of hopelessness until Fei's chosen one gimmick comes in.
318. Also Zohar is the power source for every Gear. Imagine that.
319. Prepare yourselves for a naked biblical Adam and Eve epilogue! Also more exposition from ghostly Krelian before one final boss fight with a mutated Miang like we really needed it.
320. So wait, Krelian is a good guy now? I can't follow this after what we've seen with the whole Soylent Green s*** and all his actual villainy.
321. Why does Elly even trip? Why does Fei even do a love tackle? None of this makes sense!
322. Cam Clarke really didn't get much to voice on in Xenogears given just how few scenes in the game even had anime cutscenes with voiceovers.
323. Let's not forget, despite potentially "dying" here, Krelian manages to "die" happy since he got exactly what he freaking wanted, to walk with God. He's no Kefka, but still, he gets away with all the s*** he did.
324. For whatever reason, despite being trapped in some other dimensional place, Elly and Fei also make it out to meet the crew.
325. Doesn't Chuchu speak English? It shouldn't be saying its name over and over like that in the ending.
326. Episode V? What were the previous episodes?

Total aggravation count: 326

Yeah, this game is long, aggravating, and just all-around messy with so much crap in it. So memorable for what it's got.

All the aggravating things about Xenogears: Part 2

Continued from Part 1...

109. Alright I legit love the Thames as a location and all, but wow, no real regulations on drinking. These people are the real pirates, not those fakers on the Yggdrasil.
110. Also the dramatic clashes of "Men! Of the sea!" can only get so cool until it suddenly just isn't cool anymore.
111. Coincidence Yggdrasil under attack followed by coincidence reunion of separated characters who join in battle. Also major coincidence that Vierge and Weltall got their repairs just in time.
112. So, Elly and her former five cohorts are considered Shepherds or -Abel-, while anyone not on Solaris and on the continents below are the surface-dwellers or -Lambs-, meaning they are under both Solarians and Shepherds. Yet Dominia decides to be offensive by saying both -Abel- and -Lambs- are the exact same. As if we needed enough offensiveism in this already confusing game.
113. More cutscene crap follows where villain manages to take female lead character even after beating the boss.
114. I often question why Bart would consider himself "Bart the Immortal" but then I remember he gets s*** dumped on him no less than three times already and it won't be the last.
115. Also just how did there end up being an almost exact replica of the Yggdrasil underneath some cave system after the first Yggdrasil sank? And then they made it into a real submarine? I can't follow any of this.
116. Miang can do Jedi mind tricks to confuse someone under her to just shut up.
117. We also have the whole "eyes" cliche which is just so f***ing annoying.
118. Hypnotized Elly uses the same trick Rico pulled off last time and just tells an engineer a superior wants to see him while not actually questioning why a random woman is in the engine room unauthorized.
119. Ramsus is defeated for the third time, although this one happens in cutscene but not before critically injuring Fei in the same manner.
120. The world of Xenogears isn't entirely that marred in fantasy, more with the sci-fi stuff. So quite frankly, the fact that Jessie has to go shopping with Primera on the Thames in the middle of the ocean means he's limiting his options rather oddly. Also he's clearly from Solaris like Citan so naturally he would have had quite a few supplies from up there too.
121. I'm pretty sure Bart has the capabilities of piloting the Yggdrasil at any point in time, so why oh why do we need to fetch a drinking Sigurd to get his ass back there?
122. Squaresoft once again puts in tutorials for stuff that isn't really all that necessary. For Billy we just have to watch his ammo counts.
123. Now we go to the Billy arc of Xenogears, starting with a flashback involving his mother's death, Primera being mute, Jessie being a general jackass and of course it gets worse from there. But still, flashback again.
124. I wonder how an entire orphanage full of kids manage to allow Billy to remote-operate Renmazuo without at least one kind of accident. Also think of the potential bills and repair costs of using that thing.
125. Really? A cape?
126. Wels are like these zombie things that are basically humanoid as we will eventually see in Disc 2 when people start mutating inexplicably. So what's the deal with the so-called Giant Wels? Is it some humongous demi-human that is about the size of a gear? And what the heck is with the Ether attacks enlarging it? This is yet another thing that is never really explored.
127. Church has civil disputes and ends up being corrupt with your token priest friend discovering the truth cliche.
128. "In short, it's like this" Elly then proceeds to talk about something that isn't short and is barely worth remembering until the plot demands it.
129. Verlaine somehow makes an even bigger monologue that players will snore through.
130. And so does Bishop Stone. I'd rather have people start shooting already, but due to the obvious fact it's a cutscene, you don't see bullets fly unless they hit non-important people. So Jessie doesn't even get to shoot the bishop then and there.
131. You just had to shoot the Thames, didn't you? Also the dumb fishbowl airship and the Gazel Ministry rambling...hey what's this? Another villain being introduced? My god, like we needed more of them already.
132. The most useless Grahf scene, him just sitting in the ocean with his gear. Totally unnecessary and Grahf doesn't even have a line.
133. Bringing Elly to Zeboim will naturally give her a PTSD moment with her own blood being on the floor and her muttering s***.
134. Yet another moment of sheer cutscene retardation, Your group reaches the troll doll thing first, Bishop Stone soonafter, then they just sort of let the bad guys take the troll doll without any fighting.
135. Clearly all of the Elements are nothing but anime girl-cliches all wrapped in four characters.
136. I would love to point out that Stone clearly had what Id wants back, but apparently trying to ask who the diabolical maniac is is somehow more offensive and leads to a completely unnecessary fight with Id, even though Stone was more a primary target in all cases.
137. Stone still runs away with the damn troll doll.
138. We never see Id thrashing Wiseman and his gear so we all know he survives this.
139. Another hammy Grahf scene. Also Stone apparently received a "body" from Krelian in what can only be some sort of botched way to "cure" humanity, note the quotes. That never works out and should honestly stop being such a villainous motive. Even Grahf notes that the body is clearly fake and wants none of it even if he grants power to Alkanshel.
140. Another flashback, bonus points for being in the middle of a boss battle. Major dick move to have one there.
141. With all the gun control debates over tragedies in the past few years, it's pretty clear that Jessie and his son are divided on that issue. But it's not like that gets explored.
142. So the Gazel Ministry people are just basically like Arnim Zola then. This...doesn't really explain anything worthwhile.
143. Remember that gears can fly? With thrusters? Come on Xenogears, there's no excuse for a platforming tower dungeon.
144. Also clearly the prologue apparently decided to be relevant again for just a minute before fading into obscurity thereafter.
145. Fourth times a charm right? Not for Ramsus. Dude just needs to retire already at this point. Also Shevat ex machina.
146. You would think that none of the machines inside the prologue ship, which is now the Babel Tower, would stay operational after lots and lots of years.
147. One of the most dastardly things about Maria and Seibzehn is that Maria is never in the cockpit of that particular gear. She's always standing outside on its head. Even in battle. How does Maria not get knocked off the outside of the gear is beyond me.
148. Omnigears start getting mentioned as Elly apparently has the first Omnigear. But this is not even seen at any point in the game hereonafter despite multiple mentions.
149. Remember the spider web item from Lahan? Apparently it's strong enough to be used, of all things, to fish.
150. Square really did want to have a whole room full of furry creatures and have an expository one among them for really no good reason whatsoever.
151. Wiseman's diary apparently had Chuchu as his pet, not to mention all the moping about humanity. And you think he'd be a wonderfully good mysterious person.
152. Xenogears takes the whole carbonite freezing thing straight out of Star Wars.
153. So many things wrong with the Shevat dungeon, all monsters are gimmicks (one is even called a Gimmick), Maria is a required party member, and so many stairs, hallways, and random encounters. Square clearly wanted people to hate them with this one.
154. Oh for god's sake, another monologue, this time to set up Maria's actually boring arc.
155. Clearly Chuchu has suicidal overconfidence in order to fight the enemies all the adults want to fight.
156. Nikolai's introduction is stupid and hammy.
157. Achtzein does absolutely nothing while four gears try to defend four Shevat generators.
158. Oh, so it actually has an "anti-Gear Psycho Jammer". Which he could have used at any point while the other gears were fighting.
159. I'm pretty sure there isn't a single person who played Xenogears who didn't go "what the f***?" the moment Chuchu grew to a gear's size.
160. Nikolai then proceeds to say that Chuchu deserves to be a guinea pig for experiments, even after the boss fight.
161. Midori apparently runs to Maria, both children who for some reason are looking at the big bad Achtzehn just a few kilometers away from them that could decide to hurt them at any time. Then, Maria makes her way all the way back to where Seibzehn is located without any hitches along the way and just in time for the next boss fight.
162. Mercy kill cliche.
163. Plot then decides to detour from the invasion of Solaris to deal with a yellow bald guy who wants to invade the main church town, just to remind us that unfinished villains exist. I wouldn't be blaming players if they completely forgot about Shakhan either.
164. Elly's Omnigear mentioned, even though players won't see it.
165. What even is the whole deal with Limiters anyways? Oh so humans in Xenogears are all capable of doing completely inhumane stunts so we need to limit their abilities because we're elitists up in the sky Nazi town of Solaris. Heck, if they had more security on the Limiters so that some sage like Gaspar doesn't remove them, they'd pretty much curb-stomp our heroes flat.
166. Bart once again can't come up with any decent names and decides to go with Roman numerals.
167. Liberating Nisan is a mix of exposition and just killing Aveh soldiers, with most of it exposition. We're really only concerned because the villain thinks about tearing out some dead woman's eyes.
168. Even though the shopkeeps are out of town due to the whole invasion thing, Fei still leaves money on the table in any particular case they come back. While they do, quite frankly it isn't as necessary as it should be.
169. The tomb itself has a s***load of stairs! My god! Do you think that anyone who is unable to climb up or even down these stairs can make it?
170. Of course villain waits for the heroes to reach the main treasure trove first before deciding to make his timely move.
171. Sheer cutscene retardation moment, Margie runs right past Shakhan and his goons even though the party has been surrounded on both sides. There should be no reason she made it past those guys.
172. So is Sigurd all of a sudden related to Bart now? Is everyone on the Yggdrasil gonna be related to him at some point? I get the eyepatches are nice signatures to the equation but still, things are weird.
173. Margie's leg got shot between scenes but she's obviously gonna make it out alive. I wonder who locked the Fatima Jasper thing though. Must've been her in efforts to get the Omnigear alone, but where the Omnigear is located is also where Shakhan had made his entrance before, so really there's no reason it should have been locked in the first place and Margie just had to haul ass to the Omnigear to get rid of everything before any of the bad guys got to her.
174. Elly's Omnigear mentioned once again, even though we never see it. Also Citan's big idea that the Omnigear is piloted with mind-control. This is just super silly and pretty much negates all aspects of actually piloting a robotic gear.
175. Fighting off the Neo-Etones actually would have been a lot more fun with just Andvari alone to be honest.
176. According to the translation, Fei and the gang have been in the Ignas Gate Cave before, so they act like they have just seen something there that wasn't there.
177. Shakhan's plan is so obviously not worthwhile. Nice cord dude, no way you can even bother getting a good hit in when your plug is so short. Have a feeling this is Squaresoft taking the piss once again on a minor character.
178. Grahf's power up abilities honestly feel more like death knells for the people he uses them on. Oh cool, power, doesn't really mean jack s*** when the party beats them anyways.
179. Accordingly it was Bart's father who wished that upon taking the throne, Bart has the dissolve the kingdom of Aveh and create a Republic. He's still got a boatload of crap to handle as the head honcho of Aveh and he never does any of it, instead helping Fei with Solaris and crap.
180. Bart asks Sigurd about his origins, may have dropped a slight ball, but it doesn't get mentioned ever again for the rest of the game.
181. Another wild theory from Citan, deflect a beam off of Babel Tower fired from Fort Jasper, and also that people who were at Babel Tower knew about such beam from Jasper and had that mirror in case of an extreme emergency attack.
182. Gazel Ministry does not just do confusing exposition, they also trash-talk Ramsus for failing over and over instead of deciding to kill him or replace him with someone better.
183. Uh yeah, that mirror's too damn small to work with. Also I'm pretty sure the beam that's supposed to go across the continent would just shatter the thing and cleave the tower in half.
184. Even Tolone knows the plan to reflect a beam is outrageous, and would have been worth a point off if it weren't for Seraphita talking about pull-ups for no real reason.
185. The rematch against the 2x2 Elements is cheap and there should be no reason they have healed up for a second bout. Or for that matter, our own gears not healing up for the rematch.
186. All of a sudden, Yggdrasil III cannot go into the deep ocean even though its previous incarnation was one. Come to think of it, that thing never even submerged once in the game.
187. Rattan has no significance in this entire plot.
188. After beating Crescens and unlocking the final Gate, the place blows up, but everyone still survives.
189. Emeralda is clearly on caffeine for the next scene and won't shut up.
190. Hahahahahaha, that's what Solaris looks like? A huge rod stuck in the ocean with a thin pole stretching well into the sky to some sky city that's supposedly bigger than Nortune and Shevat combined? This will certainly end well.
191. Maria would suffer asphyxiation from standing outside the gear all that time as it ascends higher up. Seriously, where is the cockpit on Maria's gear?
192. Skies of Arcadia did a much better job at an upside-down location and did it for much longer.
193. Fei then decides to do what Claude did at the beginning of Star Ocean 2 and get sucked in something and stuck for the next few minutes.
194. It's so obvious this is a Nazi city, where laborers have to work for their lives or they will die in a rather unique way. Also doesn't that guy technically fall upside down? What happens if he leaves Solaris' anti-gravity deal? Does he just splat on the hatch that opens and closes?
195. While he may look like Timothy, he isn't. What bothers me is that this Samson guy apparently knows Fei from the Aveh tournament yet there's not a single Timothy-looking dude there.
196. Also A New Hope gets ripped off when Samson impersonates a guard. Clearly he must've knocked one out when nobody's looking.
197. The security "cubes" which are actually guitar picks, are supposed to be using deadly force against any sort of renegade. But if caught in the stealth section, they simply are like the Hyrule Castle guards in Ocarina of Time.
198. Underground tech doesn't work, who would have thought?
199. Yeah, like bashing a machine with martial arts is gonna work. Alternatively, you could technically climb around the side, or just apparently stay really close to someone with a perfectly good ID? I don't follow any of this.
200. Seeing Krelian in public gives Fei a flashback to his previous life when Krelian's hair was blue.
201. Fei has the friendship mantle in his head and doesn't want to see his captured friends die so he throws a s*** fit in public over it.
202. Elly decides to unwind once the duo reaches her house. You know, in dire situations, you wouldn't be taking a shower scene. At least I won't complain about a shower being in the middle of the room with a opaqueness thing preventing people from looking. This is the future world after all.
203. What a nice and easy password for Elly to hack into her dad's computer. Yeah, the full name of your daughter backwards.
204. Erich somehow sees Fei's chivalry in protecting Elly so much that he decides to let him go.
205. In Elly's flashback, she takes advantage of cutscene retardation to run away from home despite all the Imperial Guards there.
206. You knew this was coming, Citan does absolutely nothing to tell either Elly or Fei about what they decide to eat until it was too late. Fei even gets a brief flashback out of the ordeal.
207. Oh goody gracious, now save points are being justified in the plot. What isn't at this point. My brain perhaps?
208. What is a gear doing in an Olympic swimming pool? Why do they even have that pool? And also what is with mentioning Elly's Omnigear in Shevat yet again?
209. Yeah, convert well and healthy creatures who are deemed lowest on the caste system into utter zombies. Although you technically brainswash upper-class citizens with Dedication ceremonies earlier.
210. How does Citan get no comments on his hologram? He has been on the opposing side of Solaris for quite some time, helping Fei every which way in order to get to Solaris, involving destruction of gates and beating down any Solaris supporters? He ought to be as much as a target as Fei is at this point.
211. Clearly Citan is Lando, even of course the numerous things I described earlier, but he has to take the way that makes him so Lando-ish.
212. S***loads of exposition folks! Lots of talking and helplessness! Also the Ministry doesn't seem to mind what Citan had been doing against them.
213. Elly's end of exposition involving Krelian makes even less sense.
214. Ramsus then comes in and obsesses over Fei in the wrong room.
215. Further Lando-ing along, Citan pretty much gets help from Bart and Billy, both of whom are in the same scene all of a sudden and not locked in a cage or in some trash dump. How did they get there I wonder? And what's this about a Limiter-you know what I'm not gonna bother following that.
216. Now is also the time when Citan decides to use a sword, but not now also because he leaves the party yet again.
217. Just say the magic word Fei to give Ramsus an aneurysm. Also he stays at the reactor as it blows up and survives.
218. There just so happened to be a random waiting room completely safe from Solaris protocol so the heroes and allies can just wait around in.
219. Oh but of course, when Xenogears decides that it just doesn't have enough villains, Hammer decides to be one. But he's far too delusional and a rookie to even consider working with Krelian.
220. Billy, Maria, to a lesser extent Rico and Bart, now Elly has to go through a drama bomb with people she cares about dying.
221. Also the Executioner apparently makes such short work of that gear which is completely different than how she deals with the party in the previous boss fight.
222. Ramsus loses and survives for the fifth time.
223. Again I must bitch about Etrenank's architectural design. It's a surprise how the damn thing manages to be sturdy enough for what it holds against anything with a metric ton of force.
224. Also despite Solaris exploding, pretty much every character with a picture will survive this.
225. Id goes down with the power of love.
226. Major flashback to explain the Fei/Id connection. Clearly Citan wanted answers without any bloodshed. At least this psychology lesson is more understandable to players, but players get bored with psychology.
227. Because of Id, Shevat goes delusional and is scheduling a full-blown Han Solo moment to out Fei without any way of compromise. Elly then proceeds to pull a Leia before the carbonite freezing, not before.
228. Oh so now the Gazel Ministry figures out Citan moled them? Come on guys.
229. Disc 1 finally ends on a pity party for Ramsus as he scores his first and only win. Also he clearly doesn't care that much about superior officials to him and only his own superiority complex.

To be continued in Part 3