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Xenogears

ゼノギアス

Developer / Publisher: Square
11 February 1998
Xenogears [ゼノギアス] - cover art
Glitchwave rating
4.03 / 5.0
0.5
5.0
 
 
335 Ratings / 1 Reviews
#160 All-time
#7 for 1998
Fei Fong Wong is raised in Lahan Village after losing his memories under mysterious circumstances that involve him being brought to the village in an unconscious state by a masked man. Following an encounter with a group of mechanical battle-suits known as "Gears," Fei is forced to leave the village and embark on a journey after his forgotten past.
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Releases 3
1998 Square  
2xCD-ROM
JP 4 961012 977147 SLPS-01160 / SLPS-01161
1998 Square Square EA  
2xCD-ROM
XNA 6 62248 99802 2 SLUS-00664 / SLUS-00669
Xenogears PSOne Classic
2011 Square SCE  
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Title
Masterpiece of the genre
This is my favorite JRPG of all time, but I also suppose because it got me into the genre. The story goes hard, the music and character development is superb. I am smitten. While long, the story felt rewarding to me, in the end. I would advise anyone who is a fan of the genre to check it out. The art style and sprites were really great for the time, 1998. The soundtrack I still play. I think this was a game from my childhood which survived with me well into adulthood.
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dmanexe 2024-01-18T07:17:37Z
2024-01-18T07:17:37Z
5.0
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Xenogears stood as JRPG's premier monolithic sci-fi epic. If anything, the game is a showcase of long, visually appealing cutscenes that almost serve to dispose of the typical village/dungeon JRPG progression. Having fully embraced their acrobatic style of storytelling, Square now seeks to stretch it to new levels, effectively splitting their game between one disc of JRPG modulated by heavy use of excellent cutscenes, and another disc of an almost egregiously-linear cinematic experience, punctuated with random skill checks. While effective, these moments sometimes feel too scripted and render much of the RPG elements meaningless, making combat feel like an afterthought in the grand scheme of things. Rich as the game's characters, world-building, dialogue, and scenes may be, the psychological elements were a lot more interesting than the main plot, despite the numerous themes laid about. As far as scale and variety go, Square's cutscenes were unmatched.

The combat system was surprisingly unique given its lack of emphasis - built around estimating chance with a heavier degree of resource management/partitioning damage, and ends up much more involved than the norm. The special combos dilute some of the interest, but deathblows and AP management make boss fights more engaging. Gear battles are a little lesser, but the fighting mini-game area battles was a welcome surprise. However, dungeons were ultimately somewhat tedious despite standing out conceptually. Overall, Square's propensity for drawn-out, epic length stories is on full display here for better and for worse. Parts of disc 1 and (especially) disc 2 could be trimmed down to produce a masterpiece. As it is, this is Square at their most talented, ambitious and varied, but also at their most self-indulgent. Xenogears didn't so much revolutionize JRPGs as they helped add a new dimension to cutscene arrangements and abstract storytelling.
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Blah_Blee 2021-06-28T14:00:42Z
2021-06-28T14:00:42Z
7.5 /10
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It has literally taken me fifteen+ years, on and off, to try and complete this game.

The story is magnificent for an unpolished Squaresoft title, but the battle system is completely atrocious. If you are someone with no patience for JRPGs, it might be best to cheat or simply watch the game being played.
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MoaM 2020-02-28T21:19:11Z
2020-02-28T21:19:11Z
4.0
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Its been exactly 2 years since I played through and beat Xenogears, its a game that took me roughly 2 weeks to complete and brings back memories since that was kind of an odd time period in my life. Xenogears was actually a game I meant to play for a while before I did, I heard tons about it and played most of the other Square games including all the mainstream Final Fantasy games and Chrono Cross, and Xenogears seemed like a game I'd enjoy since I heard it used a lot of psychology in its story.

Xenogears is essentially your typical JRPG but instead of going to tons using giant swords or guns, you travel around in giant mech suits and combo together abilities while exploring a post-apocalyptic World with tons of complex and deep lore. That's the thing about Xenogears, it plays pretty much like most other Square games, but its the deep lore along with big open World that make it stand out. Each town I went to in this game stood out, and I still can recall all the towns and big segments in this game pretty well 2 years later. The first disc of this game is really good, and among some of the best JRPG. The story was pretty complex, but it wasn't too difficult to follow, it was basically about an evil empire like organization who was exerting its power to control a bunch of oppressed people who are in constant war with each other. But then in the back story you have your characters weird split personality, you have the whole religious and psychological parallels, tons of deep back story surrounding the history and characters.

Disc 1 is really solid and has a ton of locations, dungeons, and bosses/segments. The story feels like is progresses pretty natural, although it does drag out at times and feels slow for the first half. But then about 2/3 through the game you switch discs and then the game goes downhill. It just throws a ton of dialog that explains what your characters do, and it mostly is just boss fights without many dungeons. I feel the developers just ran out of time so couldn't include many extra areas, which is a shame because this game would have been huge if you actually got to play all the areas that are described in the 2nd disc. It just got tedious since disc 2 felt more like reading a novel than playing a game, and it would get overwhelming since so much would go on without you seeing it happen. Disc 2 just felt like it tried to cram the conclusion to the game in and it hardly had any playable segments or dungeons. Even the endgame to this didn't feel satisfying, I felt like the end dungeon was a bit weak and didn't feel unique or memorable and the final boss in this game really was more annoying than cool because you had to hope you chose the right team to defeat the different parts. The very end of the game is typical everyone is happily ever after anime type ending.

I mean Xenogears is really a mixed bag of mostly good, the first disc of this is really good with tons of areas to explore, tons of bosses, tons of story and you get a decent variety of party members with different abilities to choose from, and playing as the mech suits add a unique and fun mechanic that require strategy since they run on fuel so you can't just spam random attacks. But then about 2/3 through the game after you defeat Grahf for the first time. The final 1/3 is just tons of story thrown at you and the game tries to throw a very convoluted back story along with rushing through the rest of the main story and tries to conclude everything. I just wish the final segments of this game were more engaging.

Xenogears does have a good story, even if it is confusing and convoluted but if you watch a Youtube video or read the complete works it does have interesting lore, and the idea behind the game is very unique. But the game does throw a bit much at you and there are tons of characters, factions, and events that are thrown at you throughout the game, and its very hard to understand the full story from the start. Even I was confused often on who certain characters were, why the bad guys were trying to do what they were doing, and who was on who's side, plus I was never sure if Fei had amnesia or split personality since the game hinted at things he did that he couldn't quite recall. Plus Elly being added makes a bit more confusion since its like she may have amnesia or is hiding the truth from Fei, on top of the love story which to be honest, was a bit more sexual than I expected for a Square game. But if you can deal with a confusing story that will require most likely tons of analyzing and outside sources to fully comprehend, and also are able to put through with a kind of rushed and dissapointing final 1/3, it is one of the best RPGs of its time, it has a bit open World with tons to explore, it has tons of areas and characters and like I said, the game did take me 2 entire weeks to beat when I played it in late March of 2016 and I played it every day for at least 6 or 7 hours a day. I really enjoyed the World and different locations, along with the different twists the plot would take and the characters all seemed unique and the Xenogear combat was a unique twist to the typical turned based JRPG formula. The game did drag at times, but I did enjoy how fleshed out the dungeons and different locations were, and there were some annoying backtracking moments, but it was never too extreme. Plus, the game never felt overly difficult, although the end of the game did require a bit of grinding but then again a lot of other Square games had similar design. The only complaint I have is the final 1/3 just drags this game out and feels like it was super rushed and has way too much dialog and reading and not enough playing. The story also at times does feel a bit oddly paced and is hard to follow once the game starts introducing new characters and showing flashbacks. But once you start taking time to understand the story, it ends up being a really engaging game and one of the best Square games, maybe it has enough flaws to hold it back from being the best, but it does a lot with what it was given and is one of the longest and most fleshed out JRPGs of its time, and it brings back fond memories.
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jweber14 2017-07-21T20:32:11Z
2017-07-21T20:32:11Z
4.0
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Catalog

andiov1 ゼノギアス 2024-03-26T19:22:51Z
2024-03-26T19:22:51Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
joe
deSelby ゼノギアス 2024-03-24T03:47:22Z
2024-03-24T03:47:22Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
youarefuckingcrazy ゼノギアス 2024-03-23T03:59:45Z
2024-03-23T03:59:45Z
8.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
c0lcat ゼノギアス 2024-03-21T10:43:06Z
2024-03-21T10:43:06Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ZachGM ゼノギアス 2024-03-20T14:37:55Z
2024-03-20T14:37:55Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
saltyshive ゼノギアス 2024-03-20T07:42:15Z
2024-03-20T07:42:15Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
deforge ゼノギアス 2024-03-19T09:56:44Z
2024-03-19T09:56:44Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
FetteredPassKare ゼノギアス 2024-03-19T01:54:30Z
2024-03-19T01:54:30Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
DyoxsitoCL ゼノギアス 2024-03-17T03:38:32Z
2024-03-17T03:38:32Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Zer0xrebel ゼノギアス 2024-03-15T07:38:11Z
2024-03-15T07:38:11Z
5.0
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
The1993 ゼノギアス 2024-03-12T19:52:13Z
2024-03-12T19:52:13Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Awdrfs ゼノギアス 2024-03-07T04:35:50Z
2024-03-07T04:35:50Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
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  • Previous comments (25) Loading...
  • feargm 2023-02-11 23:06:43.912425+00
    happy 25th
    reply
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  • Turton 2023-03-27 02:22:08.981687+00
    im genuinely obsessed i probably think about this game every day
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  • ... 2023-05-16 11:46:35.881154+00
    hide Removed by mod
    This post was removed by a site moderator.
    • SMZXW 2023-05-22 05:56:45.398516+00
      youll ose subscriber
    • you_destructive 2023-11-11 20:50:01.508449+00
      who was this brave soul.... i definitely didn't troll gamefaqs using this exact same tact 25 years ago.... time.... meeting the man who would be the love of my dreams.... gonna sit on a chair for 8 hours and reflect on this.
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  • Flocox 2023-06-19 16:39:40.347576+00
    Actually crazy how much this is inspired by Evangelion, I've only played 8 hours so far but everything from the esoteric Christian imagery to some of the direction of the cutscenes (especially those introspective scenes) just screams Hideaki Anno
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  • Flocox 2023-06-19 16:47:35.487681+00
    Also I'm always pleasantly surprised by how Japanese artists handle mechas as godlike, terrifying, mass-destruction weapons.
    Although I'm not that versed in the genre and only know the most famous ones, the fact that it pretty much always puts the moral dilemmas in front and turns into philosophical galore has always been quite fascinating in the best way possible
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  • Chilindo 2024-01-03 21:22:37.788351+00
    this game is more like a mix of Space Runaway Ideon, Brain Powerd, G Gundam and Nadia (especially nadia) than it is evangelion
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  • Iko 2024-03-10 16:28:22.320661+00
    this and evangelion were developed at the same time so theres not much evangelion influence as much as both of them were using religious imagery and themes
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