This is one of my favorite RPGs when I was a kid. Up there with Valkyrie Profile. Since I was like 10 back then I didn't get much of the story. So recently I went back and replayed the game. It was nothing like I remembered. Infact I was stunned at how terrible the second half was. It was still an enjoyable game with an interesting storyline though.
You start the game as Fei Fong Wong, an orphan at some mountain village. You wake up from bed at the mayor's house where you learn a bit about your history. Three years ago some masked man took you to the village all bloody and hurt. So you walk around and you realize its your two best friend's wedding. You talk to the guy he says some stuff to you pats you on the back and the girl's bratty little brother comes in and starts yelling at the guy and asks you to talk with him. You walk out the building and talk to him and he starts asking why he's marrying his sister instead of you.
On the cover art there's giant robots and even the name Xenogears depicts some kind of robots right? But there are no robots to be seen. You're going "what the heck wheres the giant robots! I don't wanna walk around some mountain village with clay houses and farms." Just be patient they're coming. Now you go and visit the girl and the sexism begins. She talks about how women born here are raised to be married off to the men and how the men have the choice to leave the town. She wishes she was a man. Then she talks to you and asks you what would have happened if you were born here instead of coming here, would things have happened differently. Suddenly the mood tenses and there's some mutual suppressed attraction going on. Then they awkwardly end the conversation and the guy has to look for a "camera" from the doctor. Wait camera? Mountain village? Wha?
So you climb the mountain to meet Doctor Uzuki, or Citan. While Fei calls him Doc for short. He's a doctor that lives far away in the village and you see him playing with a "land crab" some giant crab robot. On your way over though you get the first glimpse of combat. Its quite fun with Triangle for light hit, Square for medium hit, and X for heavy hit. Using those buttons in the right order can do "deathblows" or combos. A light hit takes 1 ap medium 2 heavy 3. There is a bar on the side that shows your ap. It starts with 3 and eventually you can get up to 7. This may seem fun at first but later on its pretty much spam all the deathblows you know. Any reason not to use deathblows is to learn new deathblows. Each hit will give you exp to learning a deathblow of that type. For example using triangle gives you 1 triangle exp. You need for example 2000 to learn a deathblow. If you use the deathblow square, x. You won't learn any triangle deathblows. So 90% of the time you are using deathblows. Kinda gets repetitive doesn't it?
Moving on after your dinner with the doc and his wife and daughter giant robots land at the village and start shooting each other. You finally see some robots. Not just see but you actually command a robot for the first time! Anyways stuff happens people start dying and you climb into an empty robot and start shooting people. Gear combat is about the same except you can only hit once per turn. Same light medium and heavy hits. Light one uses less fuel and heavy uses most fuel. Every turn you get a bonus attack level. Higher attack level stronger deathblows. This game uses both gear combat and human combat. I'll get to that later as there is a major flaw in that system. Beating the robots and watching your friends die you go berserk and blow up the village. Yay go us! Now everyone is pissed off at you for blowing up the village and you get kicked out. You're wandering around the forest when some red headed chick points a gun at you and start spouting random words. I like to point out how shitty the voice acting and the cartoon cut scenes are. You can hear the words before the mouths actually move and when they're done the mouths are still yapping. Great...
Anyways that's your main female some high ranking officer and the victim of sexism throughout the game. She gets punched by a troll in one hit and then becomes unconscious and somehow you knew her name and called out "Elly!" and you beat up two trolls with your bare fists while she gets knocked out in one hit while holding a gun. What pisses me off is the gun is gone when she joins your party! She doesn't use a gun anymore she uses a rod and whacks enemies with it. It sucks crap as she is a caster character. Anyways why would a high ranking officer get knocked out by a single hit from a troll? Is it because she is a girl? Yes according to the game it is. Fei will constantly tell her to "quit the military it doesn't suit you" because she is a girl. Then Fei turns emo and Elly yells at you to stop being a cry baby. She storms off and then gets attacked and you have to go rescue her AGAIN.
A good thing about this game is that the characters are likable. Each one with their strengths and weaknesses and also their gears have strengths and weaknesses. The only characters that have any impact on the story is Fei, Elly, and Citan. Which really sucks because I really liked Maria. Rico and Emeralda are also enjoyable characters but no, after you get them they just sit on your ship and rot away. I was really hoping they'd go back and expand on their character but they didn't. It was a huge letdown. Also the female characters are depicted as weak and fragile and needs to be protected. They're going around beating up giant shit in a robot how are they weak and fragile?
The first disc was enjoyable the story was nice lots of buildup. You're caught in between a war of two countries. The Kislev which sits on the ruins of an ancient empire so they have advanced technology. Aveh which is some crappy desert country with no technology, and the Gebler which came out of nowhere to help them. They are a branch of Solaris, which rules all over the world in a city in the sky. They call themselves the shepherds and the land-dweller lambs. As you progress though the first disc you reach a climatic end. Then you hit disc two and all your expectations were crushed.
Whats wrong with disc two? Well, its not a game anymore, its just reading what the characters did. As in there will be a chair and a character will sit down and start talking about what happened. That is the whole screen a character sitting down and words appear. I wish you can make the words to read faster but you can't so its really slow and tedious and the music was boring. Occasionally you see a picture. It was as if they ran out of time and they had to rush it. The story was completely butchered. There were so many plot holes and random things appearing, dues ex machina style. Funny because there is a god of machines called Dues in the game. Occasionally though you get a random battle out of nowhere and you kill it and the story continues and while prompting you to save.
After reading the butchered story you finally gain control of your character. Which is pretty much crap now because its the end of the game. You ride your gears in and fight, the end. What sucks is in the end, you don't even get out of your gears anymore. Everything is dependent on your gear. Gear gets different upgrades and equipment so leveling up doesn't make any difference neither does your deathblows that you spent training or the characters you spent time perfecting. What a waste. The game should've ended on the first disc. The second disc was an abomination. It should not even exist. It is there to tie up loose ends but instead it ruined everything.
Worst part is sexism was flying everywhere. Fei forced Elly to stay home because its too dangerous. Why is it too dangerous for her and not the rest of the people? Why did she have to quit the military to stay at home? She was angry at first but after spending the night together she accepts. "Men like someone to watch the home when they are fighting. They can't fight if they don't have the peace of mind that they will have somewhere to return to" I had to go vomit blood after hearing that. Really? Would you tell a military officer to stay home? If I was Fei I'd go "Lets go together!" Why not? She has combat experience and probably the best trained fighter outside of Citan. But no, she's a woman she has to stay home.
I also like to point out a giant bug in the second disc. One boss will randomly crash your game when you're fighting it. Usually within minutes of the fight. There is no way to get around it except pray it doesn't happen. If I remember correctly it took me 11 tries before I did it without crashing. Luckily there's a save before the boss, the bad part is there's a cut scene and reading before the fight.
If you can get past the sexism and the stand the second disc overall its not that bad of a game. I hate giant robots but I still found this game to be enjoyable up to the second disc. The storyline is pretty unique and I recommend it if you're wondering about existentialism. I know it's complete bogus but its a fun story.
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