Xenogears: First Impressions

So, Xenoblade Chronicles recently saw its US release to great critical acclaim and (so far) success. But, while I did preorder and receive a copy of this wonderful RPG, and play a little bit of it, I simply do not have enough access to a Wii in order to properly sink the required time into a massive title such as Xenoblade. You see, the Wii in our house belongs to my sister, and me being the ever-so-gracious person that I am, I decided not to impose upon her belongings and will wait to play Xenoblade and The Last Story for when I get my own Wii somewhere down the road.

That said, I wanted to start something. So, in the spirit of all things Xeno, I started playing Tetsuya Takahashi’s original masterpiece, the 1998 Squaresoft classic Xenogears. I’ve always admired Takahashi for being such an ambitious storyteller in his games, but I’ve never actually played Xenogears, despite having bought it on PSN shortly after it was rereleased.  So, what are my initial thoughts on this classic? Well, after playing the game for a couple hours this morning, I have come to a few conclusions:

1- Xenogears has a good story. So far the writing is pretty good, the setting is very interesting, and there are some cool-sounding mysteries waiting to be resolved. I am definitely intrigued.

2- Xenogears has some very similar elements to Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, which is definitely a plus. If I had to describe it, it would be the love child of Chrono Trigger and Neon Genesis Evangelion, with an early version of Cross’ battle system.

3- Xenogears has amazing music. Gotta love Mitsuda.

4- Xenogears looks pretty damn ugly.

Explaining that last, it’s not so much that the game is ugly, but rather that it, like Final Fantasy VII, has aged very poorly. Unlike Final Fantasy VII and other Squaresoft games from the time, Xenogears uses 2D sprites set against 3D backgrounds that can be rotated with the shoulder buttons. The sprites look good and animate well, but they don’t mesh well with the low-detailed 3D backgrounds, which makes an early dungeon that requires a bit of platforming positively infuriating. There are gorgeous anime cutscenes with a decent enough dub (there really hasn’t been much voiced dialogue outside of the opening), but the cutscenes that use the in game visuals are pretty inconsistent so far- one early cutscene involving a robot attack on a village is so blurry it’s hard to tell what’s going on. I’ll probably be mentioning something to the same effect when I finally review Xenogears, but only time will tell if the graphical foibles end up being a huge problem.

That said, while I’ve only played a couple hours of it, so far Xenogears is an enjoyable title. Presentation issues aside, the game’s got a very unique sense of style and a fairly intriguing plot, as well as the typical aspects of old Playstation RPGs I’ve come to love. With everyone else delving into Takahashi’s latest work, I’m going to be catching up with the original Xeno game.