To Attack and Dethrone/Marry/Fornicate God (Xenogears)

Placeholder needs it’s own thread I am a busy dad. Mods if you need something to do move all my Xenogears posts here. But only if you are very bored.

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whoo! yeah! xeno-postin’~!

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I am consistently impressed with The Sets this game has. Unique, strange environments just for cutscenes with camera movements and extras. Followed by extremely expensive anime fmv, then some good for the time Square style CG. Unique character animations mixed with changing character portraits in the text boxes. I think I was most horrified getting to the second town going “Oh My Xeno, they made this game In Order.” As I go on I am going to watch the budget detoriate after they made a huge coregraphed scene for some asshole landing in a spaceship to say some political stuff I do not understand.

It has the bedrock of a standard JRPG underneath, deep. A guy with amnesia’s town is destroyed and forced out in the world to find justice. Then it adds Gundam: robots, who wants to pilot THESE death machines. Then a bunch of Fire Emblem/Sengoku political intrigue and country names and moving forces. Then what if heaven was real, and a spaceship, and sold weapons to the middle east?

Right now 11 hours into the game I am in a prison district of my 3rd country of the game fighting robot battles for my freedom and just went through a 3 hour sewer dungeon that would drive some to madness.

More spoiler/theories for those inclined

I had vague pop culture knowledge that Citan Uzuki was going to betray me. Weird to just have a scene where he talks to Space Emporer in a what’s on CBS this fall demo reel and outright says it. But I had noticed with increasing dread the way he asks clarifying questions to Fei. Why do you know that? Who is that? When did that happen? Which is a pretty good trick!

I mentioned previously we’ve just gotten better at writing in video games and translating that better writing. The dialog is uneven probably on both fronts. I am glad I am playing in English trying to parse the cryptic bullshit and political intrigue sounds like a headache.

But the greater story! They seem to be setting up Fei as some bio-engineered tool designed to attack/dethrone God who may just be a person or Jesus. And Jesus might be Elly who is ressurected every X years for some purpose but also don’t know who her Dad is yet or who Fei’s dad is.

I did find it hilarious Mysterious Asshole C, Wiseman, on your third meeting goes oh shit wait you have amnesia? So you haven’t understood any of the cryptic bullshit I’ve said at all? Oh I’m sorry I’m a friend of your dad’s. Fuck man let me explain a bunch of stuff. I am trying to find out super evil dark man Gharf’s deal too.

That the current big evil is named Gharf doesn’t stop being funny. Child acting up on this post that took an hour to try and type byyeeee

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Pointing at the screen for my child, “That’s Fei. He has a secret power in him that kills anyone he has ever loved.”

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i hate being this person but it’s Grahf :frowning:

anyway i was also thinking of replaying this at some point. have you encountered any cutscenes that are messed up because of the text-speed hack? i think if i replay this, i’d have to use that hack to stay with it.

it feels odd saying “Xenogears was highly influential in my life” but i was like 14, so yeah, it was

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This ocremix is DEEP and MEANINGFUL that’s why it’s on repeat okay mom??

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Some incidental dialog has gone by faster than I could ever read it but haven’t missed anything important and all the time I’ve save makes up for it.

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excited to join you all post-saga

xenoseason 4ever

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For my part I find it a pretty incredible work at 38. I see why it melted 14 year old’s brains.

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Don’t think I ever completed the Wall of Text that was Disc 2 but Teenage Me was enraptured by its narrative scope at that age, and can only hope it achieves the same effect when I stupidly throw myself at it during my next jRPG kick

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If videogame companies are gonna spend all this money “remastering” perfectly good games why won’t Squeenix pony up the cash to finish Disc 2 and release a Xenogears Directors Cut?

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hell yeah xenogears

if they ever retranslated/rewrote this game I’d definitely buckle up and do it again

The soundtrack! It’s not as good as either of the chrono games, but in fitting with xenogears as a whole it is fucking all over the place

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Creid and Brink of Time are definitely neck and neck for best ost arrange albums of all time

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I think this would perhaps be my action button-esque bottom line review of the game.

Anyways I loved this game, am utterly terrified to go back and see what today me would think, ganbare~

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The first third-to-maybe-half of it to this day remains the best JRPG I’ve ever played, and the backhalf-to-two-thirds or so just goes completely off the rails.

…and I refuse to go back and play it yet again 'cause I’ve been there and done that and have plenty of other things to do with my limited time these days.

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idk about a text hack (i don’t mind the speed so far) but duuuuuude i could use a random encounter hack

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Most emulators (and the mister) allow for real time turning on and off cheats and I know there is a turn random battles off cheat.

That said make sure you learn some deathblows!! I didn’t and it made the 2nd and 3rd dungeons stuck in my robot very difficult in an uninteresting way.

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are the deathblows just the attack combos? or are they something else?

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They’re the unique capstone attacks that result from inputting particular combos. Iirc you have to use the combo a bunch in combat before you learn the deathblow.

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I think my first time through I had like one or two deathblows the whole game up until the id fight

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