"Leftovers from the Dreams of the Strong": Retro Review, Xenogears

Overall Score: 4.8

B++

Gameplay: 5
At first glance Xenogears looks like the typical SquareSoft JRPG fare of the time period. Largely menu based gameplay, where you give commands to your characters during battles and what not. It might even seem a little more limited since unlike Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears doesn't have a tower defense style sub-quest, nor does it have Suikoden II's turn-based tactics-style army battles.

Though what is present in Xenosaga that isn't in the other two games I'd mentioned is a platforming element in the towns and dungeons where the player has the ability to jump around, showcasing the game's 3D environment and adding more places where game developers are able to place/hide rare items. On the down side though, expect to get lost more often than you would in the other games, since being able to rotate the camera can be a little bit disorienting in some locations. Additionally this also has some frustrating platforming sections, though nothing that can't be overcome with a little bit of patience.

The main thing that sets Xenogears apart from the other JRPG's of the era are of course, the titular Gears, giant Gundam-like mechs that can be summoned by the player. Though unlike the Summons of Final Fantasy, which up until Final Fantasy X, were largely glorified super-attacks, the player actually takes control of their Gears the same way they would control the character on foot. The Gears even come with their own "limit break" attacks, when their Attack Level reaches Infinity. This system is essentially the forerunner to FFX's Aeon system, and the obvious direct ancestor to Xenosaga's (more on THAT relationship later) AGWS and AMWS combat systems.

Combat also differs from the Final Fantasy and Suikoden line, in that instead of simply selecting an attack to perform from a menu, the player actually has to input commands in the same manner as Tekken or Soul Blade/Caliber, by pressing specific buttons in a particular order (i.e. X,X,[],O), as mentioned this also applies to combat in the Gears.

Exploration is done both on foot and on-board Gears, within "Gear dungeons". Though for the most part there is little difference in terms of gameplay between the on-foot dungeons and the Gear dungeons. The world map can be explored on foot, aboard Gears or aboard the Yggdrasil which evolves from sand cruiser, to submarine, to air-ship.

Along with the regular gameplay, the game also has a few mini-games. One is essentially the card game Speed. This plays a bit clunky, needing to use the D-pad to select the cards. If a remake was ever made on PS4, the PS4's touchpad or motion controls may alleviate this issue. The other mini-game, is 8-way-run (think Soul Caliber) 3D fighting game where you, and even a second player, can select various Gears and monsters from the game and go head to head against each other. For what it is, it's actually pretty impressive. The generic random encounter Gears like the Hatamoto's and Eagles have as high a level of detail as the main character Gears like Weltall. The gameplay in this mode is pretty smooth and the hit detection is pretty spot on. It plays very much like Koei's Destrega, though there's no boundaries, like StarFox 64, the area just kind of loops and you can run "forever", which prompted one of my favorite taunts from an Eminem song, "Don't try to run from me, you'll just make it worse!"

Given that the game plays well on the OG PS1 digital controller, along with the menu based interface, the game will likely play well on a touchscreen interface.

Graphics and visuals: 4.5
On one hand, I wouldn't say the game really pushes what the PS1 can do the way FFVII and FFVIII did in terms of character and environment graphics, but the modeling of the Gears is easily on par with the 3D modeling of the aircraft in Ace Combat 3.

The graphics and visuals are fully 3D, both the character models and the environment, and you can rotate the camera the full 360 degree for the most part. The game does this all in a smooth manner with little graphical tearing, flickering or other glitches. The animation of the Gears doesn't look weird and clunky.

Overall the quality of the graphics is largely what one would expect out of SquareSoft in the mid to late '90s.

I will say this though, of the anime style cut scenes. While visually they were very good for their time (the opening movie still holds up today) the English voice dub was easily the worst I have ever seen (Hell Reba West's butchering of Lynn Minmay is still a better job than this). While the opening movie was done decently, the dubbing for the rest of the cut scenes was badly off sync and sounded like they were phoned in. Given that the same year Xenogears came out, Trigun and Outlaw Star came out, and Macross Plus in 1995, three series with decent English dub work, there's just no excuse for the horrible dubbing done in Xenogears. It would have been better had they left the Japanese audio and just subtitled it.

I have to knock half a point off for the dubbing, because while at first it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it really detracts from the experience, when you have an emotionally heavy event happening in the plot, then a cut scene comes on with the comically bad dubbing, it can affect the overall immersion in the game's plot.


Stability: 5
Playing this game since about 1999, I can't ever recall any major show stoppers. I can't recall encountering any major freezes or crashes, nor any save or load issues. Again, the build quality of the game is what one would have expected from SquareSoft's golden era.


Plot: 4.5
The plot follows the format of "the Hero's journey" (think Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Epi. IV), you have the main protagonist Fei (an amnesiac), who is forced to leave his secluded hometown due to a particular incident, and along his way he's accompanied/looked after by the town doctor who's quite familiar with the ways the outside world works.

As the plot moves on, Fei meets a rather colorful cast of characters that fate had decided to put together on the same road. His companions range from deposed Crown Prince turned sand pirate/rebel Bart, to an AWOL solder from a Waffen-SS like military organization named Elly, to a mutated demi-human "Battling Champion" (think UFC) Rico.

The cast of villains is no less colorful from the enigmatic and manipulative Miang, to the Machiavellian puppet master Krellian, and even the Darth Vader-esque Grahf. And there are certainly plenty of main and minor antagonists.

No... I am your fa- oh wait, wrong sci-fi series. 

As the story goes on, the player will get hit with one plot twist out of nowhere after another, eventually learning that the villains aren't what they seem on the surface. Eventually, the player learns how the events in the opening movie are connected to the game.

The plot of the game is very engaging, and as with Suikoden II it's paced like a well written novel. As mentioned earlier, there's quite a myriad of villains, but the way the plot is done, introduces them and fleshes them all out in a way that it doesn't seem like a "monster of the week" sort of thing. Each villain and their motivations are developed and fleshed out and most of them aren't black and white individuals. Half of them aren't even all that bad when you think about it, as you play though the game. And that's the point where the game's plot shines, as the writers in Suikoden II were able to do, the writers here where also able to integrate elements of human drama without doing it in a heavy handed manner. You as the player will come to sympathize with some of the villains and why they're doing what they're doing (most of them have motivations that have nothing to do with serving/believing in the Big Baddie, aka "God" at the end) while on the same token Fei finds out the hard way that some of his allies haven't been exactly 100% up front with him and keeping him in a sort of "need to know" basis.

Though the plot isn't all dry and serious, there are points of humor sprinkled in. One character, at first appears as nothing more than stuffed animal, but is actually a living creature with a child-like level of intelligence. A minor plot arc that leads to Fei being rescued by a salvage ship with a colorful crew of demi-humans who's half-walrus captain proclaims them to be "Men! Of the Sea!" (yes that's how he says it) starts out with Bart's penchant of shooting first and confirming his target second leading him to shoot down an aircraft that Fei had commandeered. While removed as a playable character, in the Perfect Works Marguerite is shown to have a Gundam-style bazooka, a pair of hand grenades and a sickle-like blade hidden beneath her cloak. There are also less dark but still deep scenes, like one where Fei goes along with Emeralda, an artificial human made from nanomachines, on a walk down memory lane and at the end some systems trigger within her that causes her to age from a young teen to a young adult, she "grows up.

The plot of game draws a lot from Abrahamic mythology with references to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam scattered around the game, with the last boss constantly referred to as "God" (no it's the real God of course). This cause a rather humorous tantrum to be thrown by the Christian Right in the US and an attempt by a segment of them to get the game banned over the fact that you "kill" God at the end.

Where I had to knock off a half a point was in Disk 2. Due to the up coming Final Fantasy VIII, staff and budget were pulled from the Xenogears project and it showed in Disk 2. Where as Disk 1 played like your typical JRPG, being able to go just about anywhere you want and play the game at your own pacing. Disk 2 pretty much got a less butchered treatment than Ace Combat 3's Western release did. In contrast to the previous part of the game, Disk 2 now takes on a linear, episodic format, taking the player's hand and walking them though the rest of the plot, rather than letting the player experience it at their own pace.

Rather than free roaming, the plot of Disk 2 is presented in this narrator segments told by various main characters. 

Most egregious of all though, was the sheer amount of cut content that resulted from this. Two of the playable characters did not get the intended upgrades to their Gears (though the game was coded to boost their parameters to keep up, so this is largely a cosmetic thing) the result being the removal of these quests and therefore less character development for these two. In addition, several locations were either greatly reduced or cut all together. While their removal doesn't have too big of a negative impact on the overall main plot, it does leave the player feeling like something is missing. If Square-Einx really wants to make their fans happy, they'll release an HD update to Xenogears with all the cut content re-introduced. Call it, Xenogears: Definitive Edition or something.


Music and art style: 5
The soundtrack is, again, of the same quality that one would expect out from Square. The music was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, the style is more instrumental and has more of a classical feel to it. In a sense it was pretty common for RPG music of the time period, though that isn't a knock against the music.

The musical tracks are also varied with a 44 track OST. With tracks ranging from festive "Aveh, Ancient Dance" that serves as Bledavik's theme to the foreboding "Grahf, Emperor of Darkness"to the upbeat military march "Leftovers from the Dreams of the Strong" that serves as Bart's theme. Xenogear's soundtrack certainly stands with the works put forth by Nobuo Uematsu for FFVII and FVIII.

The art style for Xenogears is extremely varied, ranging from characters who wear stereotypical martial arts garb, ones clad in a more roguish and flashy outfit. Landscapes range from ruins that resemble our contemporary Earth, to clean, sterile futuristic structures. One major city Aveh, is located in the middle of the desert and has a kind of Laurence of Arabia feel to it, while it's rival city Nortune has a very gritty and industrial, steam-punk feel to it with various soot belching smoke stacks around the metalic city. While in contrast to both of them, locations in the futuristic city Etrenank look less like a city and more like a lab.

Imperial Capital Nortune, yeah that big red thing in the middle of the city totally isn't some kind of battleship. 

Royal Capital Bledavik market place

Someone's house in the Imperial Capital Etrenank, hey that girl looks familiar...

The designs of all the Gears are varied, with each of the player Gears having their own unique look, with the female characters having Gears with a more feminine look to them. The Gears of the various countries also have their own styling to them. Kislev and Aveh gears are bulkier with a more rounded look to them, where as the more advanced Solaris Gears have a leaner more angular look to them, that make them look like something that could have come out of MS Gundam's Earth Federation Space Force's arsenal. The design variance also take another step up with the more powerful Omnigears. In contrast to the standard Gears which have a clear mechanical styling, the Omnigears instead have an organic look to them.

Citan Uzuki's standard Gear

Citan Uzuki's Omnigear

The Hatamoto Gear of the Kislev Army

The EFSF's RGM-1... oh wait, this is Solaris's Eagle Gear.

Elly's Gear Vierge

Emeralda's Gear Crecents

There are also influences from outside media. The massive Gear Seibzehn bears resemblance to Giant Robo and to a lesser extent Gundam Wing's OZ-00MS Tallgeese mobile suit. The massive battleship sized Gear "Super Dimensional Gear Yggdrasil IV" is an obvious nod to the SDF-01 Macross battleship of SDF Macross. Even the Yggdrasil IV's overall layout is vaguely similar to the Macross, and the Gear is first encountered in a cruiser form, sitting in the middle of a city, the same way the Macross is first seen, as a recently restored battleship, sitting in the middle of a city. Like the Macross, the Yggdrasil IV comes armed with a large scale heavy cannon, and uses it's arms to smash targets.

Super Dimensional Fortress-01 Macross

Though it isn't just the machines and locations that come in a wide variety, the people of this particular planet come in a variety as well. As mentioned it isn't just humans that reside on this planet, but there are also various demi-humans. Ranging from Rico who looks like Blanka from Street Fighter to various other's who seem to be hybrids with other animals.

The "Sea Captain", I always read this guy's dialog in the voice of the Sea Captain from The Simpsons. 

Minor antagonist Seraphita looks to be part rabbit.

Yggdrasil sonar operator Franz is obviously a dolphin demi-human

Overall, the music and the art style make for a varied experience. If the plot and the gameplay are the meat of the Xenogear's gaming experience, then the music and the art style are the prefect mix of seasonings applied to the meat in the perfect amount.


Final Verdict: Must Buy
Despite the game's short-comings, the game itself still provides an experience that post-PS2 has become largely unheard of. Since the PS2 there has been few traditional JRPGs that offer an experience of the same caliber. On Amazon the game can be had used for as low as $35.51 (way less than Suikoden II's $100+ price tag). Or you could go for a digital copy from the PlayStation Store for $9.99.

Spoilers and speculation ahead. 

Like I said, I'd get into the relationship between Xenogears and Xenosaga. 

On a final note with the plot, there is a fan theory going around that Xenogear's relation to Xenosaga is that Xenogears takes place in one of the many timelines that Wilhelm of Xenosaga had rewound with the Zarathustra though Eternal Recurrence.

The relation between Xenogears and the later Xenosaga can pretty much be described as "It's complicated". The staff behind Xenogears has left SquareSoft around '99 or '00, and gone to Namco to form their own development studio MonoSoft, which ended up being bought by Nintendo. 

Xenosaga has been labeled as a "spiritual successor" to Xenogears. But it could be more than just that. There is an argument to be made supporting the theory that Xenogears is a previous timeline. The main idea behind Wilhelm's Eternal Recurrence is that it results in people having to relive their lives with each reset (though think of it less as repeating and more as redoing). The events of Xenosaga appear to parallel the back story of Xenogears presented in the Perfect Works. 

- Xenogears and Xenosaga use the same calendar (Transending Christ). 

- In both games, a mysterious object of unknown origin was found on Earth. 

- After the object was found Earth became inaccessible, forcing humanity off the planet in both games. 

- Both games see a interplanetary federal government (Star Cluster Federation, and the Galactic Federation respectively) with their capitals established on a planet named after Jerusalem. 

-Both games have said Federation mired in a massive war. 

The Perfect Works is unclear as to who the Federation is engaged in war with, but in Xenosaga we see the Federation in conflict with a human faction in the Ormus Church and against the trans-dimensional Gnosis aliens. 

Given that whole planets have been turned into Gnosis in Xenosaga, and given that Deus was constructed as a "planetary invasion weapon" to be used as the Star Cluster Federation's trump card in a war, it's very much a possibility that Deus (the final boss of the Xenogears and a biological super-weapon developed by the Federation) was a strategic level anti-Gnosis weapon to be deployed against Gnosified planets in a previous timeline.

Alternately given that Deus has "living" characteristics, the major role played by a person carrying the Uzuki name in relation to this living weapon, and the very human appearance and characteristics of KOS-MOS along with the fact that KOS-MOS carries Mary Magdeline's soul (therefore KOS-MOS could be considered to be "living" as well), an argument could also be made that KOS-MOS, is the Deus of another timeline. As mentioned earlier, Eternal Recurrence has the effect of making a person re-live their life, but nothing is said of that life being relived in the same way. In Xenogears we have a man named Uzuki, who works closely with an artificial human and extension of the Deus System who takes the form of a man named Cain. Xenosaga sees the advanced weapon system code-named KOS-MOS being completed by a woman by the name of Uzuki, who subsequently works very closely with KOS-MOS. Additionally, both Deus and KOS-MOS went berserk during their initial start-ups and people died as a result, but where as Deus was a strategic weapon that destroyed a whole planet and was shelved, KOS-MOS was a tactical weapon who only destroyed her lab, and since the damage was only small scale, the Federation continued on with the project. 

While the timing of events doesn't seem to line up, with the events of Xenosaga happening in 14,767 TC and Wilhelm making his attempt to once again trigger Eternal Recurrence in 4768 TC. It can be implied that in each instance of Eternal Recurrence that the conscienceness dispersal that prompts Wilhelm to trigger Eternal Recurrence to save the universe makes gets worse and worse, and could mean that Wilhelm is having to trigger the Recurrence sooner and sooner each time. 

Xenogears could even be the "original" timeline. As we see the Wave Existence (Xenogears), a higher dimensional being got pulled into the Zohar during an experiment, and we see U-do (Xenosaga), also a higher dimension wave existence, interested in observing the Lower Domain universe that humans inhabit. It could be that U-Do's interest came about from it's complete or partial, or that of another wave existence, being pulled into Xenogear's Zohar. Additionally, one of the U-do's "observational terminals" in our Lower universe is perceived by humans as a young boy, a young boy who has a suspicious resemblance to an young Fei. This could be explained that because Fei had come in contact with the Wave Existence, that his likeness was the most familiar, or the one imprinted on to U-do and was the form that was used "later". As Recurrence doesn't affect U-do, it would still have knowledge of Fei if it was one and the same as the Wave Existence. 

Xenogears, the Gear, was one of Deus's "mobile terminals" essentially it served the same role as a fighter craft aboard a carrier. In Xenosaga, developed along side the Federation's ultimate weapon Merkaba, was the Gear like AMWS called Omega Universitas, Universitas bears a strong resemblance to Weltall with a face similar to Alpha/True Weltall. Lastly the "Weltall" is German for "universe". 

All this rolled together could be used to argue that the similarities between the two games are more than just homages and cameos, but instead are incarnations and counterparts living their lives over and over, but in a different manner, like making a different decision at the same crossroad.