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.
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.
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