Archview #24: Xenogears

 Stand tall & Shake the Heavens.

 Xenogears is a very ambitious, highly compromised, RPG. It has an excellent first disc, but a borderline mediocre second one, rumor says Squaresoft saw fit to move staff and money to FFVIII, it´s a shame, as the
game could´ve been so much more.
 It´s hard to describe the story without spoiling stuff, but basically, the game is set in a somewhat post-apocalyptic world. All the high-end technology and futuristic stuff are actually remnants of a civilization long gone. The story follows Fei, an amnesiac hero who´s been living in the rural town of Lahan after he was brought to the town, heavily injured, by an stranger. Eventualy the plot twists and turns, and has you overthrowing an evil king, exposing a religious sect for what it is, invading an empire and a lot, lot more.

 Like other Rpgs of yore, there´s a large world map for the player to explore, and like said rpgs, there are random encounters. There are two types of Combat: On-foot and on Mech. On foot you have the usual Item, Ether(Magic), Defense and escape commands, however, Attack is anything but usual.Here, you have 7 Ability Points, which allow you to attack with three different attacks: Weak(Consumes 1 AP), Medium(Consumes 2 AP) and Strong(Consumes 3 AP). Some combinations produce Deathblows, read special attacks, which deal a lot of damage. Mech Combat is similar, but it has it´s own nuances. Here, you get the same basic Item, Defense and Ether commands, with the addition of Booster, which consumes fuel per turn, that makes your turns come up faster. Attacking is slightly different too, instead of AP, you use fuel, and deathblows don´t use more than two buttons. Fighting on Mechs is also more challenging, as you can´t restore fuel with magic or items, it requires special vendors that are, sometimes, placed on towns or dungeons.
 The graphics are a mixed bag. The 3D used for enviroments and mechs looks amazing, specially for a Playstation game, but the 2D sprites, used for characters and small enemies, are heavily pixelated. However, as pixelated as they get, the animations are very smooth and movement from move to move is very fluid. Music is fantastic, while some tunes get used a bit more than they should, it sounds great, and there are many pieces, ranging from epic to depressing. There´s also a tiny bit of voice-acting, used during the cinema scenes and a couple of events, but it´s not too good. Speaking of the anime cut-scenes, they were made by Production I.G, and it shows. They scream of quality, the animation is top-notch and is heavily reminiscing of 80s anime, with clear colors, cryptic sounds and angles... quality stuff.

 It has to be mentioned, while the first disc last more than 30 hours, and it´s incredible, there´s a noticeable dip in quality on the 2nd disc. You don´t get to move throught the overworld until the very end, and you get dragged from event to event through narration by the main characters set to some screenshots. Playing the 2nd disc is incredibly vexing, because the story is really good, and some set-pieces that could´ve been amazing to play, were reduced to mere events, sometimes, just to a couple of dialogue lines. Luckily, the story is interesing enough as to keep you hooked, but some of the hour-long exposition scenes on the 2nd disc tend to drag oh so much.

 Despite a dissapointing second disc, the game itself is fantastic, it´s fun to play, it has an interesting story and the presentation, ranging from graphics and sound to the colorful translation, is top notch, but one has to wonder about what it could´ve been.
 9 out of 10.