~*chain of ocean and fire*~

~*Tenese's Review of XG*~

It has taken me a long time to put together my review... because it took me a long time to finish XG =P I'm not a chick of many words, so I'm not a qualified writer. ~sighs~ This is in no way professionally done. I tried doing this the way RPGamer likes reviews to be done, (but without the point scale, cause I'm lazy) becase a) I have NEVER done these and b) it's organized and better than me just blabbing on for 10Kb here. (Oh, and I will change that ugly-ass color, I promise.)

When my boyfriend said to me that lovevly November, "yeah, I've been playing Xenogears!" I was thinking "what the hell kinda drugs are you on?". I vaguely remembered the name mentioned on RPGamer. He said Fei and Elly were "young lovers, much like ourselves" (Um, excuse me? I'm not Miang... but I'm glad you're my lover ~evil grin~) and that Xeno "kicks ASS!" I had thought that he, like me, was biased as hell because we are a very rare couple in the way that we are total video game addicts, especially RPG's. (At this time, I wasn't very impressed with Square.) But, no, it really does kick ass. Antonio made me want it, bad. (The game, you perverts!) I still had no idea what to expect. I even forgot it was a Square game til I asked him. (Boy I felt soo dumb when he said it was.) When he mentioned gears I was thinking along the lines of MagiTek armor from FF6. I mistaked Fei, Bart, Billy AND Citan for females! Here comes the heartbreaking part... Much as I love Antonio, I still haven't forgiven him for spoiling Id's true identity. Sorry, love ^_^

Hee hee hee. On to the review...

Graphics - 2D sprites suited XG much more than polygons would have, except they got really ugly and pixelated at times. It didn't really take away from the game, though, which is a good thing (right?) The Gears were very ahh nice. I prefer the anime cutscenes to the CG FMV's of FF7 because, well, I do like anime and it's nice to hear a voice once in a while (and as for text XG gets -very- wordy). For the most part, the voice actors were good, but the dubbing was bad. But, really, how can you make it better, when it takes much longer to say something in Japanese than it does the same thing in English?

Battle system - Unique. Certainly something you can't get bored with as easily as, say, FF7's. As opposed to concentrating on building magic, you build attack levels and techniques. Xenogears doesn't depend as much on magic as most RPG's, which is kind of nice to see. My one gripe is that there could have been an option for ATB (active time battle) or real-time battles in terms of characters and enemies attacking.

Gameplay - Long. How many RPG's are long but still enjoyable (Yes, that counts out SaGa Frontier, but that's just my point.) Still, it's enjoyable, because there are so many twists and turns to the story. The first couple of hours after Lahan tend to drag, but after, it really picks up. But in Disc 2 most of us feel like we're watching too much of Xenogears and not playing enough of it. It is -very- wordy on Disc 2, although just as many events happen as on Disc 1, it makes it all the shorter. The only part I liked the storybook theme was at the beginning of Disc 2 - Fei and Elly's dreams. I suppose the developers thought it would be way too long if they hadn't done the story sequence, but I wouldn't have minded a 100+ hour RPG (then again that's just me)

Story - Xenogears is very story-based. There is lots and lots of text and, if you're patient, you'll see it gets very complex, but on the other hand, the layers aren't all pulled off right away. The more you get into it, the more complicated the story gets, which is why you won't understand what the intro cutscene has to do with Xenogears until middle of Disc 2. The story is well done though, and -most- characters were developed really well. Luckily on Xenogears, Square did better research on their topics ^_^

Music - I'll say one thing... I didn't buy the soundtrack off Druff for nothing =) Yasunori Mitsuda did just as well as on Chrono Trigger's music if not better. Likewise the music is very remniscent of CT. In Steel Giant and Knight of Fire I hear tinges of CT's main theme, and A Distant Promise is much like Marle's theme. Antonio (me love) likens the Shevat theme to me, because it sounds much like a cross between CT's Time Circuits and Schala, and me with my nick being Schala (not to mention my Zeal shrine), well... Anyways, some of the music os so good I can image some of it in an actual movie score. My personal favorite? Uncapturable Jewel. However a couple of themes got awfully repetitive, and weren't even the best tracks. (PS My final note on the ending song: It would have been perfect if they left out the cheesy drums and guitar)

Characters - Much more believable than, say, FF7's. They were developed really well, for the most part, but a couple could have used some, um, improvement. Fei's problems were more well researched, written into the story, and pulled off better than Cloud's. Miang though... shudder...

Design - Places that ranged from very medieval - like to unbelievably futuristic. (Chrono Trigger did this, too, but they had a good reason- time gates.) The cities were bigger, more fun to explore and more realistic than usual. I wish more RPG towns were like this. The themes actually fit the towns (Stupid cheesy Solaris...) and even the forests and deserts were more realistic. Shevat - Can we say Zeal Kingdom? Wow-ee! So many things of Shevat (save the royalty) were parallel to Zeal, but it's not like I mind, I shrined Zeal =) The character sprites, though, should not have looked like the little kids they're not, save Maria.

Gears - If these don't kick ass, I don't know what does. The first little bit of Gear battling is kinda dull, though (in the Stale-lacite Cave), but I like the design of Gears in their fighting, Ether and other such abilities. Equipping them and such was just as important as characters, and I like how some of the Gears just look. My faves? Crescens, Id's gear, and Xenogears.

Replay Value? - Yes and no. XG is lots of fun, but the story is so well done that the first time around it's so much more fun with all the twists and turns and surprises. The second time you know what to expect and might not want to go through all that text or sometimes really long and hard battles again.

Misc. - I liked the view rotation. It helped and made it feel a lot more realistic. (Come on, who faces north ALL THE TIME?) Ah, my lovely summary. XG was well worth the 80 hours of effort, and my money. Not to mention the soundtrack, strategy guide, soon to be fanart, still-in-progress fics,and, of course, this here Web page.
My final word? Fei is damn cute =)