Xenogears (review)

Xenogears

This compelling Squaresoft RPG was overlooked by many of the mainstream gamers, while also sparking a great deal of controversy due to its strong religious themes. There were many rumors that the game would not be released in the US because of its strong religious overtones, yet Square EA did in fact release the game in the year 1998. Xenogears was a mixture of well-established sci-fi franchises wrapped up into one cool game, Star Trek, Gundam, and many sci-fi novels.

The ‘hero’ of this complex story is a character by the name of Fei Fong Wong. Square does something daring with this character by having him do something so terrible that some people may not see him in a good light after the shocking event toward the beginning.

The battles in the game are split into two sections, 1.Human size battles where your character fights using fighting commands that can be combined into special combos, and 2.Giant Robot battles that are comprised of the same type of fighting, but on a larger scale. The backgrounds are in 3D, while the characters are in 2D, which makes it stand out from FF7. Besides its amazing story, the other aspect of the game that receives great praise is the music by master composer Yasunori Mitsuda. The music is epic, and taking into account that the story deals with Judeo-Christian themes, certain portions of the music have that quality as well, using organs and a choir. Some of the scenes in the game are done in an anime style of animation, which does work as well, despite the dub being off a bit.

With all this praise, I should note that there is something tremendously wrong with the game, and it’s called the 2^nd disk. In the 1^st disk, the game, while linear, gave you the freedom to explore some of the world around you. Plus, the story unfolded before you with you as the player being involved with the story. That all changes with the 2^nd disk, because the way the story is told is through characters telling you what happens in the game. Each character sits down in a chair and tells you a portion of the story, while a limited number of flashbacks are playable. This is a major cheat, because we don’t see everything that happens, so there’s sense of detachment. The 2^nd disk feels rushed and thrown together. Think of it this way; What if in MGS3 you play as Snake through half of the game and then in the second half Snake sits down and tells you the rest of the story with a few gameplay areas thrown in. Doesn’t sound like fun…

Even with this major flaw, I highly recommend this game if you want an interesting Sci-fi RPG mixed with old religious stories.

1^st disk Grade: B+

2^nd disk Grade: C

Special Chrono Trigger Note: Yes, a certain nerdy inventor girl from Chrono Trigger does in fact make a cute cameo appearance in the opening village, so try and find her.

For fun, I’ve found the opening to Xenogears… http://youtube.com/watch?v=yBWcZNCithc

Note: notice the Star Trek TNG sound effects, phasers and button sounds.

Comment: The opening appears not to have anything to do with the rest of the game, but it does in fact have a strong connection to the main story.

Square in a lot of ways abandoned this game, and this was the reason the creator and other people involved in the game left the company to start a company connected to Namco, and they begun work on the retelling of Xenogears in the form of the Xenosaga series.

Some people believe, to this day, that that Xenogears and Xenosaga are set in the same universe, despite the games being with different companies. I don’t have a stance on this yet until I play Xenosaga 3 (last chapter)

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Fei Fong Wong doing his Steven Seagal impersonation
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Cute, and every fanboy’s dream…