We all know Final Fantasy VII, basically one of the most important JRPG of all time: Excelent story, narrative, characters, fun gameplay, amazing soundtrack. The main reason JRPGS are easier to find in the american market is because of Final Fantasy VII, its fame motivated other companies to launch their games in this part of the world too. Ok, that´s great and all, but what does Xenogears have to do with Final Fantasy VII at all? Well, what if I told you that Xenogears was going to be Final Fantasy VII at first?
Tetsuya Takahashi is known as the man that brought Xenogears to life, he was a respected employee of SquareSoft a long time ago, working in some important projects as Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy. One day, he managed to write a script of Final Fantasy VII, but this got rejected for being too mature, dark and exploring very sensitive themes like racism, canibalism, child abuse, religion, philosophy, and so many others. In the end, Square gave him a chance to make his own game by another name, then, he and his wife made what we know today as Xenogears.
Xenogears initially takes place in Ignas, the world's largest continent of Xenogears and the site of a hundreds-year-old war between the nations of Aveh and Kislev.
A church-like organization known as Ethos has excavated the "Gears" for the preservation of the world's culture. Despite the fact that Kislev was originally the dominant kingdom in the war, a mysterious army known as Gebler appears and begins to help the kingdom of Aveh.
We follow the story of Fei Fong Wong, a boy that has amnesia and apparently many years ago, his wounded father brought him to the elder of a village called ¨Lahan¨, he likes painting and in a little time he wins the respect of the village. It´s really complicated to tell you a synopsis of this game because the story is too complex, so what you read might sound boring, but trust me, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
As our classic JRPG, we are free to explore the world of the game with some limitations of the story, it´s a big map with many things to find a explore, later in the game, we´ll have options to travel faster than just walking. We´ll have a compass on the screen so we can have an orientation of where we are, this will be very useful in some puzzles of the game, yeah, as you read it, this game contains puzzles.
Most enemy encounters in Xenogears are random and the spawn rate is high so you will need to be patient if you are new in older JRPG. Characters use a combination of martial arts moves, ether and special Deathblow combinations that are learned through the repetition of specific proportions of strong, medium and weak blows. All offensive actions use Action Points (AP), at a cost of either three points, two points, or one point, corresponding to the intensity of the attack.
We can fight with gears too, being the most interesting part in the combat system of the game. In Gear combat, the AP limiting factor is replaced by fuel, with each attack consuming an amount corresponding to its power in these battles.
Deathblows can only be executed after the first normal attack and when a team has no fuel left, we can no longer execute attacks, use special options, or use reinforcements. We can, however, load fuel to retrieve and use ether abilities. Fuel upgrades, HP of Gears and accessories or weapons can be purchased from in-game city stores or individual vendors that may appear in certain dungeons or caves.
As you can read, the battle system can be a bit confusing and the strategy is more focused on gear battles, even healing yourself is a hard task, the items which you can heal yourself costs you a lot of your fuel, it may deppend of the item but usually it can cost 10%, 30%, 50% or even 90% of your fuel.
In our journey, we´ll be accompanied with a great cast of characters. more than characters, they feel as real human beings with their own problems, background and character development, easily story and charactes are one of the strongest points of the game so you won´t be disappointed, there´s a amount of nine characters playable through battles and other ones through the main story too.
The soundtrack of Xenogears was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, you might know him by being the father of the soundtrack of Chrono Trigger and there is not much left I can say about this beautiful and marveleous soundtrack, it´s amazing and the work of Yasunori doesn´t disappoint either this time, as far as being one of my favorite soundtrack in videogames, with such great themes as ¨Knight of Fire¨, ¨Bonds of Sea and Fire¨, ¨Steel Giant¨, ¨The Treasure Which Cannot Be Stolen¨, and others.
Xenogears graphics are an interesting thing to talk about, back in that time, companies weren´t used dealing with 3D world environment, the team behind this game were new people so they opted using 2D sprites within a 3D world environment and the result is a very good looking game and long time ago it was a pleassure to watch, taking into consideration SquareSoft didn´t give a high amount of money to the production, they were kinda short.
Sometimes there are cutscenes in anime style, they are not long and the existence of these animated scenes is for showing shocking and strong moments in the plot, Koichi Mashimo, an animation director and his studio Bee Train, was in charge of the anime cut scenes.
In conclusion, if you are a JRPG player just like me, this is a must-play videogame, probably the best story I´ve seen in a JRPG, awesome graphics for its age and a strategic and fun gameplay with a marveleous soundtrack, one of the best. Xenogears it´s not a perfect game, it has a lot of controversy because of its dark and mature story but this is an aspect that actually makes this game so good.
Many people doesn´t know this but the responsible for making the story with this dark tone was Takahshi´s wife, so thanks to her the story is this way, she helped a lot with the script, dialogues and other things.
Xenogears is no perfect game, of course. Its main problem might be the second disc, there are a lot of explanations to this but that´s not the point, the second disc feels rushed, it doesn´t have many gameplay, most of the time you are gonna be reading and this is a factor most people can be angry about and it´s totally understandable, it feels more like a visual novel, but the story is so good you are gonna be intrigued.
Finally, the game hasn´t aged too well, sometimes it´s a bit painful to play in some parts, the movement of the camera you can do doesn´t help too much either. But again, even with its problems, I still think this is a must-play videogame and their fails can be forgiven partly.
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