Xenogears

Xenogears

One day a few years ago my cousin recommended me this little game called Xenogears. He had played it, beaten it, and loved it. Due to this I figured “Hey, I’ll check it out.” So I looked around and found it. I had just come off playing Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics, so of course I wasn’t expecting Xenogears to be as great as those. Well, I was wrong about that judgment. Xenogears not only stands as my favorite RPG of all time, but my favorite game of all time. It’s one of those cult classics that people either love or hate. So be warned, this game isn’t for everyone.

Xenogears consists of a massive story that captures you from the moment you decide to put it in. The anime-style intro at the beginning of the game takes you into a world that you never were expecting to enter and it doesn’t let you out of it until the beautiful conclusion to the 60+-hour game. With more than 20 minutes of anime cutscenes and a long developing story, this game is obviously very based on its story. It’s very difficult to describe any of the story without spoiling it so I will just let you discover the story for yourself.

Besides the beautifully written story the game has some of the most lovable and even most hateable characters I’ve ever seen in an RPG. For every character that you find connected to and love to death, you will find there to be even more characters you wish you could kill and get them out of your favorite characters way. Along with the lovable characters there is great character development about each character. The depth that the character development has and the already deep story can make the game a little confusing, which can force you to play it through twice.

Let me also let you know about the music. Best. Soundtrack. Ever. The songs seem to set the mood perfectly, not to mention they are all very good songs despite what mood they are trying to set. I’ve found myself whistling numerous tunes from this soundtrack frequently. The soundtrack is just that good.

The battle system is a lot of fun too. You’ll have battles in and out of your gears. What are gears? They are giant robots that you fight in. The only difference with them is they require fuel to attack and when you aren’t in gears you don’t need fuel. There is also a fun battle arena, which I have found to be very addictive. In regular battles you have chances to land combos, as you do in gear battles. Mastering these combos is fairly easy, but using your combos correctly can help you survive difficult battles. Unfortunately, besides combos I didn’t find the battle system to offer that much.

As a conclusion to this review I will leave with you one message. If you liked what you read in the review and don’t mind long cutscenes and a game based entirely on its story, try to find this rare classic. The time spent finding it either online or in a shop in the end could add to hours of enjoyment. I wish you luck in finding and playing this game. I loved it and I hope you will too.

Story: 10
Characters: 10
Music: 10
Graphics: 7
Gameplay: 9
Replay Value: 10
Reviewer’s Tilt: 10

Overall: 10

This game, as probably previously mentioned, is a game you should have in your library. Not too many games receive a rating of 10, sometimes due to just one area of the game lacking. Thus a 10 means most aspects are truly amazing and a few are almost that good.


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Xenogears Reviews


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