My Review: Xenogears (PS1)

Tetsuya Takahashi is a game designer I’ve always admired. As someone who enjoys epic storytelling in games, it is hard not to appreciate his work. With his latest game Xenoblade Chronicles making headlines all over the gaming press, I thought I’d finally try to gain a larger frame of reference for Takahashi’s past projects by playing Xenogears, the 1998 mecha-themed RPG that has maintained a large fanbase over the years. Xenogears certainly isn’t lacking for ambition, but does this Squaresoft classic hold up today?

STORY

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

Xenogears features one of the most bizarre and intricate narratives in the medium, but despite its strangeness and complexity, Xenogears’ storyline remains the primary reason why so many people love the game. Xenogears is an epic highly reminiscent of famed anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Mobile Suit Gundam, which features giant robots called Gears and an unending war between several superpowers that a young man named Fei is unwittingly swept into when a battle breaks out in his village of Lahan. After climbing into a strange black Gear, Fei is somehow able to pilot it and tries to fend off the attackers, but loses control and blacks out. When he awakens, his village has largely been destroyed, apparently at Fei’s hands. Fei sets out on a journey to uncover the mysteries of the black Gear, his own forgotten past, and the mysterious figures that seem to have plans for him. I won’t give away anything else; suffice it to say that Xenogears has a fantastic story, one that deals with powerful religious and psychological themes such as the origin of God, the beginning of creation, man’s place in the world, and the complexities of the human psyche. The game’s actual writing is hurt by an average-at-best translation, but the dialogue is usually able to convey what is necessary, and a lively cast of well-rounded and interesting characters helps support the package. If I had to criticize Xenogears’ plot for anything, it would be for the slow first half. The game takes its time introducing the characters, establishing the lore of its world, and setting up several mysteries, and the major payoff doesn’t start until about halfway through the game. This plot structure is very typical of old-school RPGs, however, so I won’t fault it for that. To make the comparison to Evangelion once again, Xenogears feels like a well-planned anime series; an ambitious sci-fi epic that is deserving of its prominent place in gaming history almost solely on the merits of its plot alone.

This guy has issues.

                                                                                          

GAMEPLAY

If I could describe Xenogears’ gameplay in one word, it would be ‘functional’. The game has all the elements of a classic JRPG; you’ll build a party, explore an overworld and vast cities, delve into dungeons, do sidequests, etc. However, the gameplay is undermined by a few flaws that have been exacerbated with time, as well as one really bizarre instance which deserves special mention (and I’m sure that Xenogears fans already know what I’m talking about).

                                                                       

Before getting into any of that, let’s talk about the combat. Xenogears uses a version of the active time turn-based battle system from the Final Fantasy series, but with an added twist. Each character has a set amount of Action Points per round, and they can use them to string together Weak, Strong, and Fierce attacks, each mapped to a different button and costing a different amount of AP. By entering specific combinations of attacks (like a fighting game), characters can perform powerful techniques known as Deathblows. Any AP that is not used in a given round is pooled for later use, and pooled AP can be spent to chain together combinations of multiple Deathblows. A similar combat system would later be used in Chrono Cross, and with good reason; it’s a fun, engaging battle system. Characters will also spend a lot of time battling in their respective Gears, which works similarly to regular battles with a few key differences.  Instead of costing AP, attacks take up a certain amount of a Gear’s fuel, and when fuel runs out the Gear is inactive until it is able to recharge enough to take an action. This adds a little more strategy to the Gear battles. Gears can also perform Deathblows, which become available by building up a gauge with normal attacks. When not being used in battle, Gears can be customized with new weapons and parts which can increase their fuel capacity, increase their damage output or their resistance to certain kinds of attacks, and add extra armor, among other things. Keeping your Gears fully upgraded is crucial to progressing in Xenogears, because the vast majority of story-related battles will be extended sequences in Gears.

Gears in action.

                                                                        

Xenogears’ core gameplay is solid, but there are a couple of little problems that hurt the game overall. For one, the game is very slow-paced, and while this isn’t a crippling flaw, it’s worth pointing out. Several long stretches of the game will go by with minimal plot development (the Kislev Prison section being one of the worst offenders), and this can be very tedious, especially if you’re invested in the story and just want to move on to something interesting. The biggest problem with Xenogears is that the controls aren’t that good. The control scheme is similar to other early Playstation RPGs such as Final Fantasy VII, where a D-pad was used in lieu of a control stick. Unlike Final Fantasy Vii, though, Xenogears opts to have 2-D sprites occupy a 3-D space, and the result can be quite obnoxious. It usually isn’t a big problem until you reach a dungeon that requires platforming, of which there are several; particularly aggravating is a certain mid-game dungeon that will take most players a number of retries after failed jumps. The poor controls, combined with a somewhat shoddy presentation (which we’ll get into later) and a finicky camera makes navigating some areas in Xenogears unnecessarily frustrating.

She also has issues.

                                                                      

One final point about Xenogears’ gameplay, and one that was foreshadowed at the start of this section; the game features a sudden shift in gameplay style near the end of the game. Most RPG players from the time will be familiar with Xenogears’ infamous second disc. Basically, Disc 2 of Xenogears contains the rest of the story, interspersed with a few boss fights and the final boss, with little other involvement from the player. As a result of this, people have claimed that the game feels unfinished (which very well may be true), but while I do agree that it is sometimes annoying to see a cool area only in a story section rather than by playing through it, I don’t think it’s as big an issue as some do. Xenogears apparently suffered from budget constraints, and a lot of this content had to be cut so that the developers could finish the game, and Xenogears still manages to tell a great story. Disc 2 is a strange divergence from the rest of the game, but seeing as the story is still wrapped up satisfactorily, I see it as an odd change of pace and nothing more. As for the gameplay itself, Xenogears remains perfectly playable, even if it has a few small problems that have grown more noticeable with time.

PRESENTATION

As mentioned earlier, Xenogears suffered from budget limitations, and perhaps as a result of this the game’s visuals are inconsistent, to say the least. The game features a blend of well-done 2-D character sprites and muddle 3-D backgrounds that never quite gels. It’s not that the game looks bad, per se (it is a Squaresoft game, after all), but the inconsistent style wasn’t all that great to begin with, and it hasn’t aged as well as some other PS1 games’ visuals have. The same applies to the games story scenes; Xenogears has in-engine scenes, gorgeous anime cutscenes, and even the odd FMV sequence. Put simple, Xenogears is a visual mess.  Still, none of it looks especially terrible on its own, and honestly, as I got used to the visual scheme, I appreciated what Xenogears’ developers were able to pull off with what was available to them. An aspect of Xenogears’ presentation that is still great is its aural offering, featuring one of Yasunori Mistuda’s best soundtracks and decent (for the time) voice acting in the anime scenes. For some reason, the voice acting is somewhat muted in these scenes, and there are no subtitles, which is a shame. As a whole, Xenogears’ presentation is very inconsistent in quality; great music and cutscenes combined with rather jarring in-game visuals.

CONCLUSION

I may end up remembering Xenogears as one of my favorite games now that I’ve finally played it, but I find that it is a difficult game to recommend. Xenogears is a game that many gamers will either love or completely despise. If you haven’t played it already and are a fan of classic RPGs, Xenogears is absolutely worth checking out for its incredible story, and at only $10 on PSN, it is readily available for those who are interested. For me, despite a few aged elements that made the game somewhat frustrating to play, Xenogears’s story was enough to keep me playing. It’s a truly epic RPG still deserving of classic status based on the merits of its narrative.

SCORE- B