The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I think this may be one of the first non Square, Atlus or Enix games that I am waiting for with incredible anticipation. If it's true that they are going to completely redo the series the way it was originally intended this is one game not to miss. The original was a great, if flawed, game that I spent entirely to much time on. If it is executed as I have read, this will actually be one game, played through several episodes. This will be one giant game indeed! There is a full length article on the game at gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/0,11114,519264,00.html. The last time I remember something like this done was for Shining Force III for the Sega Saturn. A great game even if they didn't release the other episodes in N. America.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Truthfully, I thought the story was kind of, I don't know, uninteresting, In my opinion, there are several other RPG's available have better stories... However, all the other factors I mentioned in my title topic were done quite well in Xenogears. The only RPG available currently which exceeds Xenogears in all of the area's I mentioned is perhaps Skies of Arcadia, I would have said Chrono Trigger, Solaris vs. Zeal, etc... but I think Xenogears does it all just a little bit better. Story can be an important factor to a game.

The Xenogears team are quite creative Evangelion fans =)</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>My Japanese friend saw the trailer and said they basically threw you all these keywords that you won't understand anyway (he sure didn't). Seems a lot like the first one where they're just throwing out big words left and right.

But at least the original Elle is pretty good looking... I'd like to see Emeralda too. It doesn't make sense for her to show up, but then, neither does it make sense for Citan to show up.

They really could've picked a cast that looked better, though...</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>I've decided this game will be my breaking point.  When it comes out here, I'll definetly have a PS2, price drop or not.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Let's hope the six episodes are as good as expected. They should easily be among the best RPGs as long as they keep the story level of Xenogears and improve the gameplay</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Bah, you always did bash the gameplay until you reached the 2nd disk then you liked it fine.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Episode 6 sounds kind of stupid. The description from the Xenogears Perfect Works is like 'The end of time is approaching blah blah blah'. What's this, Chrono Trigger meets Xenogears? Besides, they already defeated Deus in Episode 5, so I don't see much continuation along the lines... unless the alien guys from Xenosaga shows up or something, but that'd be pretty cheesy.

I think it'd also be boring if you play as Fei for six games in a row.

Playing as Kim and Abel doesn't sound very exciting either... those are episode 2 & 3 I think... I'm not sure if Abel is the first Fei... but even if he is, he looks much younger in the video for Xenosaga than the Abel we see in Xenogears, so that'd probably be episode 2.

I think Lacan's the only one with enough story and character around him to be interesting. You got Krelian, Sophia, and Lacan who are all interesting characters. You got some kind of war going on so there's actually things happening (Abel/Kim era were kind of boring, other than that eveything seems to get killed by Miang or Cain one way or another)

Other episodes would merely be a game with the Xenogears label on it and some character that looks like Fei/Elly/Miang. Not saying that it can't be good, but then they might as well have an original game instead.

I'm not convinced that there's enough stuff in Episode 1 to link it to the rest of the series... though we'll see.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>That's right. I liked it fine because there was hardly any gameplay on the second disk. It was about 80% story. I believe that's what a lot of people bitched about.....</div>