Xenogears

[Elcura]

I liked the second disc as well. When I first played it I wasn't sure why the flow had changed, I chalked it up to design. It seems a lot better when you don't know it was due to budget they had to do that.

It was kinda like that colour film that suddened turned into a B/W movie, critics said it was a genius move when really the director had just run out of colour film lol

Still, even though you didn't get to travel from place to place did it really make a difference? In the long run all you would be able to do is go to towns you've been already and talk to NPCs with nothing interesting to say. All the did was cut out the travelling but they still kept in the whole dungeon bit with the story. It's also like the story got kicked up a notch and became that much more serious...

[Xavier]

Not knowing it was due to budget def. makes it seem like a really powerful artistic choice. Praise be to the Gears.

[Kross]

Xenogears is a game that you need to complete a couple times before catching every detail of the story; just like a good complex movie.

Enjoy the ride

[Slayzer]

When Xenosaga first came out, like when it was supposed to be a 6 episode deal, it was supposed to either tie in or rewrite xenogears into the saga storyline. If you've played saga you can see the similarities with certain characters and such. saga 3 is full of nods to xenogears, like optional fights and what not (hai 2 u Id)

I loved gears, its a great game, and is actually somewhat difficult.

[Exoduso]

Xenogears is a game that you need to complete a couple times before catching every detail of the story; just like a good complex movie.

Enjoy the ride

Saga is the same... had to replay the entire series all over again after beating 3 before I understood everything. (#3 had so many plot twists, it was insane..)

[Kainstryder]

So I just started playing this game about a week ago and it seems pretty nice so far. I just got to the Thames today.

I'm just curious, does the whole storyline pan out? Does everything get wrapped up by the end, like the opening sequence with the spaceship. Before I got the game, I read around on the internet that the game falls apart on Disc 2. I can already see the dialogue and events getting kinda choppy. Should I prepare myself for a disappointment, or is it all good in the end?

Please, little to no spoilers. If you must, at least wait a few posts after the initial responses, so I know not to come back to this topic for awhile.

Everything more or less gets explained, but you may wanna read the Perfect Works translation FAQ over on GameFAQs AFTER you complete the game. Gives a solid overview and explains everything vividly. You're gonna get confused to fuck at certain parts...maybe...but yeah. Disc 1 is godly, like people said and Disc 2 is kind of a disappointment and maybe like...10% of what disc 1 was. Apparently they ran out of funds for the game and time; there was going to be another playable character as well a few new characters on the Yggdrasil for disc 2.

All in all, no you won't be disappointed. Where you are now, it's going to just keep getting better. It may seem zzzzz at the moment, but give it a few more hours, it's really going to heat up.

[Kaylia]

So I just started playing this game about a week ago and it seems pretty nice so far. I just got to the Thames today.

I'm just curious, does the whole storyline pan out? Does everything get wrapped up by the end, like the opening sequence with the spaceship. Before I got the game, I read around on the internet that the game falls apart on Disc 2. I can already see the dialogue and events getting kinda choppy. Should I prepare myself for a disappointment, or is it all good in the end?

Please, little to no spoilers. If you must, at least wait a few posts after the initial responses, so I know not to come back to this topic for awhile.

You shouldnt notice anything in the dialogue where you are? >_> That game was made between FF7 and FF8, and translations back then were still far from perfect, but it doesnt hurt the overall quality too much. Second disk imo was the best part of the game. Like people said above, it mostly mostly consist of Fei telling you what happened in front of a black background with a few image/cutscene, but story is so awesome you don't care. You just want more. Certain part did feel rushed, but it worked well for me.

About the space ship and other weird thing, everything will be explained sooner or later. That said, the world they created for Xenogears is much bigger than what you see in the game. You might want to read Perfect Work for additional details about the world (there is a translation on gamefaqs)



Personally, I prefered Xenosaga over Xenogears because of the story and awesome cutscene (gameplay in XS was lacking), but either way, those 2 series will always be my favorite. And to people interested, Nintendo bought Monolight Soft last week (86% nintendo, 10% namco, 4% other now), so if we get another Xeno game, it will be on DS or Wii most likely...but that's just wishful thinking

[Marcin]

You guys just made me want to replay Xenogears. Time to find the discs! God I hope that doesn't take too long

[Yangsing]

Xenogears not only had a great story but I think it also had really memorable music. Xenogears really did have the total package. Lot of people complain about the 2nd disc, but I didn't really care. Back then, as long as it continued the great story, I didn't care if it was mostly through cinematics.

People can nit pick the game as much as they want but it was still fun as hell.

Although I don't think it's the best rpg ever, it's got to be at least top 3. Best PSX RPG though.

Xenogears > FF7

[Elcura]

Xenogears needed more then 2 discs for the OST. Incredible music but some tracks were used over and over again. I wish it had a lot more music but what can you do? <3 June Mermaid (or was it October?)

[Yangsing]

June

[Avé]

Yeah, there are some great tracks, but I can't help but thinking that I've heard most of the music before. Some of the songs sound like precursors to Chrono Cross's music. It isn't a bad thing really, the songs are still nice. It just throws me off when I hear them in the game, I start drifting off and reminiscing about Chrono Cross while I'm trying to pay attention to Xenogears.

[mistmonster]

I guess I shouldn't have tried Xenogears right after beating Xensoaga huh? Graphics just completely turned me off, especially coming off of high-end PS2 graphics. I'll probably try it eventually, I have it on my PSP.

I have a really stupid question, how did you get this on your PSP? I love this game and wouldn't mind playing it again

[Kylen]

Easiest way is if you own a PS3; there's a way to buy/download PS1 games and play them on your PSP using it somehow (not sure on the details though since I don't own a PS3). The other way is to find a Xenogears ROM, and manually downgrade the firmware of your PSP, then re-upgrade to a hacked version by dark_alex that allows you to play it. I did this and I play all of my old PS1 games on my PSP now . Details on how to do this can be found at http://forums.maxconsole.net/.

I'm a huge fan of good soundtracks in RPG's; if an RPG has shitty music I'm not going to enjoy it no matter how good its plot or gameplay is. Xenogears and Final Fantasy VI are tied as being my favorite RPG's of all time, and their absolutely amazing soundtracks have a lot to do with that (both of them have excellent plots, too).

[mistmonster]

Thanks for your answer! I have a PS/3 and just recently hooked it up to remote play, but I haven't figured out how to do this. Time to RTFM/GI I guess

I would love to do this with crono cross too, one of my favorite games/soundtracks ever

[Exoduso]

You don't need a PS3 to play PSX games on the PSP...

forums.maxconsole.net << check their psp section for info.

And the PS3 store has crappy PSP games right now, so using Dark Alex's custom firmware is a much better choice than Sony's legit one atm. And technically it's not doing anything illegal since you're just making an iso out of cds you own, turn them to .pbp with psx2psp, and upload them to the psp and play them on a custom firmware that is basically sony's current psp firmware + releases it of all its protections so you can play any psx game you want, not just the ps3 store ones.

And to be on topic, I was a little put off of Xenogears because of the horrible graphics (especially coming off of Xenosaga 3 when I first popped Xenogears in, seeing those gear units in ugly PSX graphics was kind of depressing), but once I started playing it the story has been pretty good.

[Nikko]

Xenogears was not my first or last RPG, but it is probably my favorite.

[Exoduso]

I was wondering... did all you Xenogears fans even give Xenosaga a shot? Supposedly Xenogears is like, the "4th installment" of Xenosaga if you will, and all the chars are basically reincarnations of the Xenosaga crew.

Not that i'm asking for spoilers, just wanted to know if there was any truth to that and if there are actual evidences for it, since it would probably make me want to play the game more.

[Andarvi]

I was wondering... did all you Xenogears fans even give Xenosaga a shot? Supposedly Xenogears is like, the "4th installment" of Xenosaga if you will, and all the chars are basically reincarnations of the Xenosaga crew.

Not that i'm asking for spoilers, just wanted to know if there was any truth to that and if there are actual evidences for it, since it would probably make me want to play the game more.

I was extremely excited about xenosaga and played it. I was dissappointed with it to say the least. It was ridiculously slow, more confusing than xenogears, the gears were stupid and most of all there was practically NO MUSIC. Huge let down in that department. However, one of these days Ill probably give it another go.

There are clearly very similar characters, basically identical, you can just look at screens to see them. However, to my recollection from what I did play and heard from others who played xenosaga 2+3, they are not the characters they look like. Apparently because square developed xenogears and monolith developed xenosaga there were some restrictions on how much they could do as far as linking with xenogears. Anyone who played the whole xenosaga series will hopefully comment and add to or correct me.

[Exoduso]

I meant "played Xenosaga" as in, played the whole series.

#1 wasn't that bad but the battle system was way too slow, #2's battle system was meh but at least the story was better (with crappy voice actors for Shion/KOS-MOS, but story was still good), with #3 they did everything perfect because they brought back all the old voice actors from #1, had the perfect battle system for the series with fast-paced moves, and the music/story was absolutely amazing.

You should really give the rest of the series a try..