Xenogears (1998)

Xenogears is an old school JRPG from the PS1 days that often makes its way onto people's lists of best or most underrated RGPs of all-time. On some level, it makes sense. It's got a unique, interesting combat system split into different types, has beautiful sprites for a generation of games in which graphics haven't exactly aged well, dabbled in 3D landscapes for every area besides the world map, and has a pretty awesome score. Its story also is one of the more intricate, complicated, and confusing in any game you can find from the period.

Yet it is also a game that could be used as a shining example of what not to do in a game today. (Full disclosure: I did not complete the replay. I beat it once about a decade ago, but I remember so very little from it. I've been playing for months and have recently had to give up for various reasons. I made it 50+ hours in and got about half way through the second disc before quitting. Personally, I don't see how finishing the game could possibly alter my review, but if you're someone who feels an entire review is completely invalid if the author doesn't complete the game, then you might as well not bother reading on.)

Originally slated to be a Final Fantasy installment, Xenogears incorporates some of the classic Squaresoft elements that made its flagship franchise so popular. An epic - if completely confounding story - with distinct characters, a new combat system, and a sprawling world map filled with history and lore, the game does a lot of things well.

Most notably is the combat. It scraps the ATB system found in most JRPGs of the time, opting for a strictly turn-based system. Menus are a little strange to navigate through at first - depicted in a sort of wheel-like manner in the upper corner - but instead of your traditional options of "fight, item, magic, et cetera," players pummel enemies through series of combos. Each character has X amount of points to expend for a turn, and the player may choose to distribute them however they'd like. If the character has 5 points, it could be divvied up into three attacks (2 weak attacks at 1 point apiece, and 1 strong attack at 3 points), or two attacks (1 medium attack at 2 points, 1 strong attack at 3 points). Or, if desired, five attacks (all 5 attacks being weak attacks worth 1 point).

It's an interesting and fun system. Basically, think of the entire character-driven fighting system as Sabin specialty moves from Final Fantasy VI. As you progress, the party members learn "Deathblows" as well - combinations of attack sets that unleash special moves. Players might also choose to pocket some spare AP each turn, saving up to unleash huge "Combo" chains, though this tactic does take some time to make worthwhile.

Additionally, the game created a second style of combat with Gears. Large mech suits that each character rides and fights in, Gear battles function somewhat similarly, yet also have different dynamics entirely. Each Gear requires fuel to perform any action at all. Fuel plays a bit like a mixture of AP and EP from character battles, only it's much easier to find yourself out of in the middle of a fight. Indeed, relying on fuel is a big reason why Gear battles are often the toughest in the entire game. There's more to be conscientious of. Plus, for about a third of the game, you cannot heal gears. Doing so requires a special item sold later in the game. As a result, when you take damage, your Gear can't get that health back during the fight. This is especially problematic in areas where you have to marathon bosses.

While an interesting idea, that fact makes the Gear battles feel slightly unfair. It doesn't help either that many boss fights are at the end of long, drawn out story scenes that cannot be skipped. This puts a lot of pressure on each fight, and it's extraordinarily frustrating to find yourself losing to such bosses. The argument that putting save points at a distance from bosses to make the game more difficult only holds water if there is a stretch of the level the player must complete again if they die. Here, it's annoying because the only thing you must repeat is an unskippable story sequence.

Late in the game, one of the more annoying elements is how the fuel cost of many attacks keeps increasing, but recharging does not. For example, some moves will scale up its fuel consumption cost as you level up and improve the Gears. Yet "Charge" - a move that lets you gain fuel - never yields more than 30 units. By the time you're on Disc 2, 30 fuel is nothing, and it's even easier to run out of fuel.

In fact, the hyper-focus on narrative is often detrimental to the game. Many will mention that the problem is especially noticeable on Disc 2. By that point, it is clear that the team developing the game ran out of time and resources, hastily slapping the final disc together. The narrative style changes drastically, often relying on a character in a chair straight up explaining the bits of story that they didn't have time to include in the game otherwise. Yet the slog of story problems begins well before the end of the first disc. If they had been able to include everything they wanted in disc 2 in a natural way, the game would have taken well over 100 hours to complete.

That in and of itself isn't a huge problem. However, the issue with Xenogears' story is that it isn't paced very well, and it's reliant on incredibly cryptic story elements that take forever to understand or get explained. The pay offs are almost never worth it, and many character elements are contrived in ways that extend beyond the norm for JRPGs of that era. It doesn't help that some sequences can last up to twenty minutes, followed by no save point, merge right into a boss fight, and oh yeah, you can't skip anything. (This was a problem it's spiritual successor, Xenosaga, fixed by allowing players to skip cutscenes.)

The end result is a game that often feels like a slog. It drags as you trudge through it. It's almost shades of Final Fantasy XIII too in the sense that there is surprisingly little for you to do at any point in the game, besides go wherever it wants you to go next. Exploration is substantially less of a role in Xenogears as it is in any Squaresoft Final Fantasy. The world map is nice and big, but doesn't offer any room for worthwhile sidequests or towns to look around in. This very linear design kind of conflicts with the idea of rendering all environments in 3D, which was obviously meant to make the game feel more open. It does not, in fact, feel remotely open.

The 3D maps, by the way, are interesting, but not executed super well. Certain dungeons will require a quasi-platforming element, with players needing to make jumps to a platform or landing based off of clunky and awkward camera angles. Plus, the running and jumping mechanics aren't tight enough for these elements to ever be anything other than frustrating.

Going into the replay, all I could really remember was that I thought I liked it when I played it a while ago. Perhaps it is truly good for the time it came out in, but I'm inclined to think that calling it underrated is inherently overrating it. It's not a terrible game without any merit, but it fails in a lot of ways.

REDUCTIVE RATING: It's Fine
(Rating scale: It's Terrible..., Pretty Bad, It's Fine, Pretty Good, Amazing!)

(I'm inclined to rate it "Pretty Bad," since I spent months on the game and it felt like such a slog, and eventually some glitches made me finally give up. But I think it does have enough positive attributes in the gameplay department. I think fans of the genre might take something away.)