zackeriah's Full Review: Xenogears for PlayStation 1
Brilliant, Brilliant, BRILLIANT. Those three words best describe Square's almost 18 month old RPG, Xenogears.
Don't know much about it? No surprise really. Xenogears was released with absolutely no hype at all. This was due in part to the touchy religious subject matter, which towards the end of the game, might start to get offensive to the more religious gamer. Another reason why Square was so hush hush about this game, is because I honestly think they thought "we wouldn't get it." It has, by far, the most complex, compelling story of any RPG in the U.S. I cannot elaborate, simply because I could not even begin to explain the entirety of the story without leaking out major spoilers. All I can tell you is that you MUST experience this game yourself.
The battle system gets the job done. When you battle using just your characters, there are three different attack levels; weak attacks, medium attacks, and strong attacks. Why not just use the strong attack each time? Well, this brings me to the AP system. You start the game out with only being able to use 3 AP per attack. Of course, you get more AP as you gain more levels. As you may have already guessed, the weak attack takes only 1 AP, while the strong attack takes 3 AP, so as you can imagine, you can pull off some pretty interesting combos. A little later into the game, you acquire skills called "Deathblow Moves". This is where you pull off a very powerful combo by pressing certain button combinations. It is kind of fun trying to learn new deathblow moves by trying different button combinations, and if it weren't for this, the battle system would probably be extremely boring. The Gear battles on the other hand are quite fun. Gear battles are similar to character battles in that there are weak attacks, medium attacks, and strong attacks. There isn't much more to it than that, but Gear battles are surprisingly more fun.
The graphics feature beautiful 3D polygonal settings and amazing anime-style Full Motion Video. The characters are made of pretty well detailed sprites, although they have awkward animations. Character battles are smooth and have some good lighting effects, while Gear battles are absolutely breath-taking in more ways than one. Not only are the gears extremely detailed and well animated, they also move at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second.
The music is yet another highlight in Xenogears. Nearly all the songs are memorable, and I honestly think it has the best world map music in any RPG. It's definitely worth buying the soundtrack if you can find it.
So is there anything bad about Xenogears? That all depends on what kind of RPG gamer you are. To some, the story may move too slow. To others, there may be too much text. And believe me, there is a lot of text; more than four times that of your average RPG. Then there's the game length, which is very long. This is a two disc game, and the first disc alone is about 50 hours! That's longer than the entire game of Final Fantasy 7! And finally, I bring you to the most complained about part of the game... the second disc. The truth is that if you are not interested in the story or characters by the time you reach the second disc, then you probably won't like it. Luckily, if you are a sane RPGer, you probably will have already been captivated by the stunning story and great characters, so for you, the second disc will be a delight.
So, when all is said and done, you absolutely must buy this game. You will have to buy it used though, as it has been discontinued from retail stores. It has been about three weeks since I completed Xenogears, and it holds my most fond RPG memories. It's better than any of the Final Fantasies, it puts Lunar to shame, and it even rises above the beloved Chrono Trigger. Get ready, people! Once you play Xenogears, you'll never look at RPGs in the same way again.
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