Facebook – Top 100 FAVORITE Video Games: 26

26: Xenogears (PS1)
Developer: Squaresoft
Year: 1998

I was once asked to describe my experience playing Xenogears by a friend of mine who’d heard of the game and been informed of its difficulty, both comprehension- and gameplay-wise. And its true, Squaresoft’s mentally handicapped RPG epic is intolerably hard to even go into great length about, particularly in the area of the plot. So, why is it rated so highly on my list, almost being in the top 1/4th of the overall count? Probably because this game is a goddamned masterpiece.

Its hard to even really write about this monster. The plot, alone, could have books written about it (done, actually. Called Xenogears Perfect Works: http://www.google.com/search?q=xenogears+perfect+works&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&client=firefox-a&rlz=1R1GGLL_enUS403US403 ) and its characters are deep and the backstory is rich as hell. The roundabout thing about it, I guess, is that it takes place on a world with giant mechs, Gods, and corrupt governments. Aside from that, you’re best bet is to simply look up any of the fan-translated websites that lay out the plot as best they can. I mean, on my past list (in which Xenogears took the #12 spot) I only commented that the plot was overly difficult to talk about, never going into specifics. Having played the game a second time, read synopses online, and gotten older (and, thus, developed a better retention for inane details in narratives) all I can say is that its one that needs to be experienced. The number of characters, locations, terms, ships, and dates throughout the time/space faring plot is too hard for a mere five-paragraph “review” – and note, I’m spending all this time talking about how talking about the plot is too lengthy to do, and this is a huge paragraph, a waste of space, even. But its nothing in comparison to the novels people have written about their experiences with the game.

So, speaking of the game, its gotta be fun if its this high up the list, yeah? Thankfully, it is. The spiritual successor to this game – Xenosaga – copied a lot of elements from this game, namely the combat system. Turn based battles are present in every corner of every map in the world, and while those are inherently annoying in any game, in the Xenogears universe, they are a hell of a lot of fun. This is because, first and foremost, the cast is huge. This means your party in the game can, and must, change regularly. Each person has a set list of moves that are all attributed to buttons on the Playstation controller. This means: combos. The coolest part is that they all have giant mechs, too, with the same fighting style. One thing this game has on Xenosaga, by the way, is the fact that – when you need a mech – you use a mech for specialized fights. Otherwise you’re on the ground.

Beyond this combat system, everything else is a standard-level Square RPG; sprite characters in a 3D universe (with an easy to control camera system, thank god). You spend a ton of time traveling across an overworld map, visiting towns, shopping, and the like, but you spend just as much time in dungeons gaining levels, learning new tricks and spells, and managing your party to the smallest detail. The look of the world is specific for the game, if not muddy as shit by today’s standards, but serviceable. And, as an added bonus, it has fully dubbed anime cutscenes instead of CG (which Squaresoft was starting to get known for at the time). While they’re awful and the dubbing doesn’t match up at all, it was rather nice (but sparsely littered throughout the two disc game). So, to say the presentation of materials was handled well would be accurate.

All in all, Xenogears gets a kind of lazy review from me, primarily because its so insanely difficult to talk about. I think when my friend asked me about the game, I went on and on for over an hour just trying to describe how Fei was actually Id, how Graf wanted to kill God out of mercy, and how exactly that stuffed animal grew to mech size. I also tried to explain how boss fights went from cool to awesome to insanely difficult by the end of the game. I also probably went on and on about how fair the learning curve was until you get to that last dungeon. Good luck getting through that place without grinding like a stupid mother fucker, by the way.

Classic Moment:
Here’s a moment from the plot I’ll try to explain: Emeralda is a little girl with a big robot. Halfway through the game, the enemy’s “Power Ranger”-esque terrorist team kidnaps her to steal her powers. Guess what? Turns out she isn’t human at all, but a decades – if not centuries – old colony of nanomachines, a cluster of science made to benefit humans by, wait for it, the main two characters’ previous incarnations to act both as their child and as the salvation of mankind. But it gets stranger: when you find this out, for no reason at all the nanomachines decide its time for Emeralda to grow up. So, in a flash of light, she turns into a full grown, green-haired woman. By the way, she never uses weapons, but rather turns her hair into swords and shit. Because she’s a nanomachine colony.

---

Added March 31, 2017
Finished this game all of one time. Once. And it took, like, two years. I would hit a brick wall and rage-quit, only to come back months later and move on. I’m at a point in the game on my PSP where I can’t progress due to a massive difficulty spike and I think if I came back, now, I’d get further. Oy.
Also, obligatory “Rope of Robots” link:
http://whatdoesgodneedwithastarship.com/