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Finished Xenogears for the second time. I liked it more than the first time through. The second CD isn't NEARLY as bad as I remember it being....

PostPosted:Fri Nov 01, 2002 3:59 pm
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>First I'll start with the second CD, there isn't much more story to it than any other portion of the game, and not really any less gameplay either, the thing is that the plot moves along much more quickly on this disk than the previous one. Disk 1 I assume takes place over a period of about a month or two, while the second disk appears to take place over several years (at least one year as far as time descriptions go, it keeps moving forward by several weeks or months between each gameplay segment).

The strange thing though is that all the religious terminology I think was just a marketing scheme, the game's plot didn't even really require it. Deus wasn't really a God and it didn't appear anyone truly believed that it was (despite being refered to as God, but then usually they would have Deus in brackets right after), it was the biological core to an interplanetary invasion weapon. The Zohar Modifier which contained the unlimited source of energy (and powered the colony ship) drew power from the fourth dimension and captured a being from there called the Wave Existance which supposedly was the origin of souls (they were broken off bits and pieces of the wave existance from a past time), I suppose that could be the real God though it is never described as such until the very end of the game.

The theme generally is that God 'Deus" was false and created by mankind, all of Gods ideals were also created by mankind. The game has more major villains in it than any game I can think of, there's Grahf, Krelian, Stein, Shakhan, Miang, and Ramsus among them. All of these villains seam to have a different goal, and everyone is manipulating each other.

I very much enjoyed the plot, it was a mixture of old Western Science Fiction literature with a Japanese twist. A lot of the names were taken from Jewish and Islamic tradition.

The gameplay: it's very diverse, in the fighting I don't understand the real purpose of combo's, they don't seam to be useful at all. Perhaps if Combo's quickened the speed at which deathblows were learned it would be different.

The amazing thing about this game is that despight it's enourmous length, it doesn't seam to drag on at any location, the only other long RPG I have played like this is Skies of Arcadia. The game seams to have more play value to it than Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 combined.</div>

PostPosted:Fri Nov 01, 2002 4:18 pm
by the Gray
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I love this game, pure brilliance. I'm a sucker for a story so disk 2 didn't piss me off.</div>

PostPosted:Fri Nov 01, 2002 4:27 pm
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I can't wait for Xenosaga, apparently it takes place over ten thousand years before Xenogears (Which is Xenosaga episode 5). Apparently Monolithsoft is very happy with the final product (they felt they rushed Xenogears), so it should be amazing.</div>

PostPosted:Fri Nov 01, 2002 4:52 pm
by the Gray
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I hope this adds yet another big gun to challenge Square's rpg dominance. Heaven knows my fav enix isn't...</div>

PostPosted:Sat Nov 02, 2002 1:32 am
by Zeus
<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Disk 2 saved the game IMO. The story was the reason to keep on goin</div>

PostPosted:Sat Nov 02, 2002 1:52 am
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Disk 2 had a less intensive approach to the plot than disk 1 actually, the major issue I think most people had with disk 2 was the slow moving text in the first person scene's. There's also not really any difference in the gameplay from disk 1 either.</div>

PostPosted:Sat Nov 02, 2002 12:24 pm
by Flip
<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>absolutely agree, half the reason i play these damn games is for the amazing stories.</div>

PostPosted:Sat Nov 02, 2002 3:17 pm
by Zeus
<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>No difference in gameplay, just less of it, which was a good thing at that point</div>

PostPosted:Sat Nov 02, 2002 9:47 pm
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Actually the slow moving text during the non-gameplay scenes is the reason everyone was complaining.</div>

PostPosted:Sat Nov 02, 2002 9:53 pm
by Zeus
<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I was so happy to get away from the tedious gameplay I didn't care</div>

PostPosted:Sun Nov 03, 2002 1:39 am
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>On disk 1? Which part are you refering to? The only part of the game I found to even be tedious was the final dungeon towards the end of disk 2, it was the longest dungeon in the game, and by far the most repetetive. The only other place that compared was Shavat (which was about half as long)</div>

PostPosted:Sun Nov 03, 2002 11:35 am
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>On disk 1? Which part are you refering to? The only part of the game I found to even be tedious was the final dungeon towards the end of disk 2, it was the longest dungeon in the game and by far the most repetetive. The only other place that compared was Shevat (which was about half as long)</div>

PostPosted:Sun Nov 03, 2002 11:59 pm
by Zeus
<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>The battle system, all of it. It was just plain shallow. Neat idea, but without the balance of any decent magic, all it was about was getting to your deathblows and kicking ass. All other turn were about building up to them</div>

PostPosted:Mon Nov 04, 2002 4:04 pm
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I don't know, I just didn't really care, whether it's learning magic or learning deathblows, all the same to me.</div>

PostPosted:Tue Nov 05, 2002 4:36 pm
by Zeus
<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>But it was the lack of useful magic that killed it. It was basically useless, so the gameplay became very shallow</div>