DON'T GET IN THE ROBOT, FEI

I will tag, but please know there may be light spoilers throughout.

Neon Genesis Evangelion Xenogears is a story about a weapon and a power plant that people think are god.

Xenogears is a musical masterpiece, but an album obfuscated by mediocre gameplay, horrible pacing, and so-so storytelling.

But seriously, Xenogears is what you get when you put a bunch of children in a room with no adult supervision and ask them to make a video game.

Xenogears has some incredible highs and some abysmal lows. There were a number of moments that were incredibly touching, moving me to tears. Then there were moments where I was attempting the same three platform jumps for almost an hour, or wandering the same confusing maze for two hours, or doing literally nothing but reading text for forty minutes.

Why are we forced to spend so long climbing the Tower of Babel, or literally spend DAYS (in-game and real world play time) wandering the Kislev slums? But then, oh whoops, we're out of time, we have to just text dump on you and cut away actual adventure, exploration, a world map, a changed world, using characters and abilities you built up, and you know, most actual gameplay, on the second disc?

Because people with poor time management skills and no sense of pacing made this game.

Which frustrates me SO MUCH. This could have been a great game. I think I could have loved this game. But man, it's just SO rough around the edges. I actually get the gist of the story, but there's way too much going on. They really should've trimmed away more of the fat. Rico and nearly his entire storyline feel like they add nothing. And Maria. And Chu Chu. Emeralda is important, but they give her no agency in the game's present day, and barely anything to flesh her out more.

Battles feel slow. Using different button inputs for attacks, like a fighting game, seems fun and strategic at first, but quickly devolves into spamming one or two commands a battle to get Death Blows, and then spamming a single Death Blow once you've learned a good one.

I was getting into a good groove of using Fei, Citan, and Elly, or Bart instead of Elly when I was forced to. ASK ME HOW PISSED I WAS WHEN I COULDN'T USE ELLY FOR THE ENTIRETY OF DISC 2.

Gear battle is even worse. And I get it, it's a robot game, but I feel like there's too much of it. Or rather, they overdid it with on-foot combat, so that it's unbalanced. I can't think of any fight outside of a gear that required me to have developed characters. A few random battles were tough. I don't know if this even makes sense. If you're going to make the robot part 70% of the game, don't make the not-robot fighting part like 90% of the effort.

Can I say something stupid? I was kind of hoping there'd be more fantasy and less sci-fi in this. I'm not sure why I was expecting that. Maybe because as a kid, I only played the first few hours and had that lingering expectation in my mind all this time.

There are a few difficult battles that make the game interesting. Shakhan is tough. The back to back to back to back with The Elements was real hard, largely because you can't heal in between. That was a race to the finish. The back to back with Ramsus and then the last appearance of Miang that isn't the last boss takes some strategizing. The antepenultimate boss the Marlute pillar of Deus is easily the hardest fight in the game. I went into that with Billy, Bart, and Chu Chu(you can fully recover her beforehand, she can heal, is a decent damage sponge, and doesnt have to worry about fuel...) but without Tank Guards. This was the last pillar I fought and I was down to Bartt with 120 something HP and like 300 fuel doing X attacks when I could. I was going to freak out if I didn't make it. Harlute is hard also. The last boss is a joke.

Ugh, y'all, I am going through it with this game. There are a number of nice little anime cut scenes that the VAs mumble through that REALLY could have used subtitles. I just kind of laughed when I missed Krelian's last line of the game.

The ultimate eyeroll comes at the end when the title card reading XENOGEARS Episode 5 pops up, and you learn they were expecting to make FIVE MORE of these games. This feeds into my feelings that they were too busy daydreaming and what-iffing than just making the damn game.

And OH MY GOSH did this game really need a SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE segment in it?? Do they ever explain why, in the larger plot, that's happening?Like, if Cain is a good guy (is he?) why he's making people into food? How is this contributing to Deus?

The best part of the game is easily when Elly starts calling out Citan in Krelian's Lab, the lights go dark, and everyone disapears and Fei winds up in that insane TV room. But then, oh, Citan's just kidding, he and Cain aren't bad guys. How radical would it have been if that was all true, though, that Citan really was a bad guy? That would have been amazing. Speaking of, is Cain a good guy? Do they ever establish why he, a presumably bad guy, is working with Citan for the good guys?

Not sure what else to say that hasn't already been said. The game looks nice, sounds incredible (if not a bit repetitive), and the plot is mostly understandable. It's just developed in a way that is incredibly uneven, and on the second disc, laughably so. WE RAN OUT OF TIME, SORRY EVERYONE. GOD IS A SPACE WEAPON.

After about 18hrs total, I fell off this game after slogging through the same city (Kislev) for hours and hours and hours and boring hours. I gave it 2 stars when I stepped away "because they meant well".

A few weeks later, I picked the game back up and found that I was actually right at the end of that neverending Kislev bore-sequence. Promising! However, despite me now being into the "good" part of the game, the gear-battle boss rush I got dumped into felt like the polar opposite of fun. I lost a couple times, and was forced to wade through the same slooooow text and boring battles again and again and again...

It's not all bad. The music is good. The art style is good for the time. And... yeah, that's about it.

The story is utterly generic, uninteresting anime trope dogshit. Captain Dumbass Anime Ponytail Fuckwittington has amnesia and is told that he's meant to kill God or some dumb shit.

The battle systems (yes, more than one) are uninspired, uninteresting, and unexplained. On foot, your only real options are to attack, use ineffective magic, or use items. Equipment and levels are meaningless. Eventually, you learn combos that spawn longer attack animations that you're forced to watch for 10-30 seconds a pop -- and you give a little bonus damage for having to sit through that crap.

Then they toss you into a mech, where there's a completely different battle system. Your only options are "attack" , "stronger attack" , and "strongest attack". No combos. No healing. No semblance of an enjoyable battle system. Oh, and you can run out of fucking fuel, because fuck you.

Between terrible battles, you have even-worse walking through narrow-hallway maze dungeons, where around every corner, everything looks exactly the same. The camera is abysmal, and as a bonus, sometimes you're expected to attempt some hot, sloppy garbage-platforming, half-obscured behind some walls. All the while, you're assaulted by way too many random encounter battles.

Coming back to this game made me realize how much I actively despise it. Fuck this overrated, horseshit "game". The people and articles who tricked me into dumping 20hrs into Xenogears because they praised it as one of the "best ever" RPGs: they're all super-wrong.

This is a dense game. Dense in terms of themes, plot and characters. The end result is something that falls short of being a masterpiece due to a bloated ambition that far exceeded it's budget and resources. This flaw, which is not fatal, is the result of the director not adapting appropriately to his environment. It's still worth your time and disc one is probably one of the best JRPGs ever made, but the experience as a whole is significantly brought down by the existence of disc 2. If the director had filed back the scope of the narrative, themes and focused I think this would have been a masterpiece.

I won't touch on the themes because it will make a long review unnecessarily longer, but it's complicated, nuanced and inconsistent. The main focuses thematically are in the philosophies of Nietzsche, Gnosticism and Freudian-ism. The later being the weakest and most convoluted aspect of the narrative and characters.

I really loved the art direction of this game and it's easily it's greatest strength. The director wanted to fully render everything in 3-D, but had to compromise with full 3-D environments and pixel sprites. I honestly think adapting to this compromise vastly improved the games graphical fidelity and story telling. It can be breathtaking to look at. Some examples are with the Nisan Church. The lighting and set design are cinematic. An even stronger moment is when they stop the ship from destroying the nuclear reactor. Though the moment is diminished by having Elly survive. It pays off with great character moments after. Including the awesome scene when Elly merges with Deus. This scene easily beats the best animes. . Thanks to the fully rendered environment, the director was able to leverage cinematic angles. It may not be as strong in presentation as Vagrant story, but it's a close contender. The game includes sparse FMV anime scenes which are well done, but clearly they didn't have the time or money to utilize more. My issue with these FMVs would be the English dubbing... it honestly was grating to listen to these characters after developing my own voice for them in my head. Another case of cut corners. I also felt it was a weird and questionable decision to use a film stock filter randomly for some of the flashback sequences. I liked it's use when used as Fei's only happy memory, but it felt jarring and cringey when showing Sophia crashing her space craft. We never see film as a technology in the game world so it doesn't make narrative or world sense.

The writing has some of the best highs in any JRPG but also some deep lows due to the unfocused and incoherent nature of it. It's equal parts camp and melodrama. When they turn on "The Feels" it hits hard and is earned. Characters almost always have strong introductions that are poignant and memorable. The drawback to their strong introductions is they always take the backseat and become more flavor than substance after their character arc. This is a major let down with how much the plot shifts from Fei being important but ultimately a part of something greater to being the sole focus and chosen one. It's shame given how likeable and poignant these characters are during their intros. The peak of these introductions is with Billy which doubles as a criticism of organized religion and an exploration of Nietzsche philosophy. I was a huge fan of Captain Thames who doubled as welcomed levity. One of the great lines from this character: "Men have courage! And appetites!" Another great moment of levity came from game play. The mechanics in Goliath Facility were hilarious. After destroying the mech they fought with they would either throw wrenches at you for 1 damage or heal your gear. There are other weird character choices such as Bart and Sigurd (pirates) both wearing eye patches, though on opposite eyes, because they're pirates... they should have given them both parrots and pegged legs while they were at it.

Conversely, there are plenty of questionable and inconsistent character moments throughout the story. The worst is with Citan at the Solaris factory. Citan lets Elly and Fei eat the food inside the Solaris factory despite clearly knowing the ugly truth about it. I also felt that Krelian wasn't presented consistently. I appreciate trying to humanize him at the end of the game, but having him laugh manically over his evil plans really undermines the end of his arc. It feels like they made him more crazy to cheaply build him up as evil but then say "LOL JK he actually had noble but misguided intentions."

The game play (when you are given agency to play) is the highlight of the game. It combines classic turned based ATB with classic fighting games into one. Based on ability points, you can combo together moves that result in "deathblows" which are basically a fighting games move. This makes combat feel less homogenized than most classic turn based RPGs. The downsides of this system are how weak magic is, how convoluted learning new deathblows is and how frequent random battles occur. I didn't even understand how to properly learn deathblows until I watched a video explaining it after I beat the game. It's a cool system in principle but the game fucks it up by never bothering to explain it to you. Another aspect of the game, which I never learned until after I beat it, is comboing deathblows. If you save up enough ability points by saving your actions, you can then string together multiple deathblows to unleash truly devastating damage. Not understanding this didn't impede my ability to beat the game fortunately. It's just a shame to have such a complicated system that will likely be underutilized by most players due to its obscure presentation.

Another big aspect of the game play is mech based combat. It's not radically different than standard combat, in terms of mechanics, but it sure is fucking awesome punching a dragon in the face with a giant robot fist. There is a weird mini-game that transforms game play into a fighting game for story progression. It's really questionable to put so much effort into transforming the game overtly into a fighting game, but then never use it again after the set piece (it's possible side quests allowed you to do more of this combat but I didn't explore that and I would argue it's still underutilized). During Disc 1 there are more cases of these one off mini-games. One of the better mini-games would be the scene when you're attacking a mechanized army in the desert. You need to maneuver your mech around traps and enemy mechs until you reach the flag ship. It's cool to vary game play like this, but in aggregate it contributes to a growing feeling of being unfocused and in addition none of these distractions were better than the standard game play.

Platforming also plays a role while exploring the world and is honestly the worst part of the game. It feels clunky because the controls are pretty standard JRPG over world motion, with an added jump button. What really breaks the platforming at the seams is the interaction between motion, jumping and random encounters. After a random encounter is triggered, you're still able to move for 1-2 seconds before you enter battle. During this 1-2 second window, jumping is disabled... Plenty of platforms require you to run first and jump at the last moment to reach the next ledge... fine in principle until that 1-2 second pre-battle window triggers right as you run to the ledge... since jumping is disabled it will result in you falling and having to start back over once the random battle ends... there were countless platforming I messed up because of the random encounter jump lock... profoundly inept design. All they had to do was disable random encounters for platform sections and I would have been fine with it. The mechanics would have still been half-baked but at least not grating.

The final aspects of game play are puzzles and exploration. Puzzles feel inconsistent and sometimes just plain lazy. Disc 2 is the worst and most puzzles are extremely tedious or obscure to solve. "Puzzles" are typically married to exploration which isn't improved by the copy and pasted environments. The homogenized and confusing level design starts in the sewers during the chapter of the narrative that also includes the weird fighting mini-game. It's a problem when the devs slap a band aid on the bad design by including a map... honestly the sewers and later labyrinthine maps would be impossible to navigate without the maps. This is a clear symptom of budget and time constraints. Better design is to create visual distinctions and landmarks that are used by the player for navigation rather than nearly identical hallways and a map. Exploration is also a mixed bag. With the exception of dungeons (and even then not consistently), exploration is rarely rewarded with tangible rewards. In most Final Fantasy games, exploration is heavily rewarded through finding items (sometimes fantastic weapons). While it's more believable that you wouldn't run around people's homes looting everything while being the savior of the world, it does discourage exploration.

The difficulty curve of this game can be truly jarring. For example, Calamity. I hadn't upgraded my Gear because the parts I could buy were not clear upgrades. The engine massively increases your dps, but since it was a string of ambiguous numbers and the fuel capacity was equivalent to my current engine, I assumed they were comparable. Certainly not the case. Calamity took 0 damage from me, and only 40-60 damage from a deathblow. Thus I could only deal damage every other turn while he has an unavoidable move that could deal 500 damage. I was running out of fuel well before I could kill him. After looking up online, it turns out the parts the old man sold were significant upgrades... I just wish the game conveyed this information more clearly to you.

Finally, level design. I alluded to this earlier with puzzles and exploration. It's a mixed bag with few high points. Peak design was when you were escaping the city and trying to get your gear back. It starts as a maze of air ducts, but after you get the master key, you back track through linear hallways. This clever inner looping design was only explored one other time in the Solaris level when trying to free your friends. The master lock is locked behind a door when you enter. You then loop around the whole facility, unlock the mast lock, and end up in the starting room. Now you can progress through a locked door above you. Excellent ways to shake up progression. In contrast, refer to my criticism of exploration and the copy and pasted obtuse design that plagued most dungeons.

I didn't talk much about disc 2 because chances are my issues with it will be consistent with any criticisms already out there. The motif used for the 2nd disc was cool, but it ultimately wears out its welcome after seeing it for close to 10 hours. It was also a clear demonstration of cut corners... It's greatest failure and sin is how it strips away agency from the player and introduces a very passive experience. You basically are forced to watch these visually interesting (but ultimately homogeneous) scenes with a character narrating while sitting in a chair. This narration will often times go over an entire dungeon, leaving the player to only fight the boss... most the time you don't even get to fight the boss... the weirdest part of this motif is how Citan gets a session of sitting in the chair. This feels inconsistent because unlike Elly and Fei he doesn't have a split personality nor an ancestor threatening to take over his psyche... thus the imagery of the hypnotizing religious cross doesn't make sense. He was never disillusioned by religion. He was awake at the start and end of the game...

In conclusion, Xenogears was an ambitious game that tried to do too much with limited time and money. It's commendable, but would have benefited greatly if the director had limited the scope of his ambition to tell a more focused and coherent story. I still rate this game high because it left an impression on me despite it's glaring flaws.

Xenogears is well-loved among JRPG fans, and for good reason. This is arguably the best, most expansive, narrative in a video game. Ever. Add to that an interesting battle system that has multiple variants and a cast of (mostly) interesting characters, and you've got a recipe for success. So why is my score for this game much more middling? Even the staunchest Xenogears fan will admit that it has it faults. Some are able to look past them, however those faults had a significant impact in my enjoyment of the game.

The Good

As Mentioned above, the story of this game is truly remarkable in both its scope and quality. The characters who tell the story are complex and interesting, becoming even more so as the game progresses. Psychological and religious themes are well-woven into a grand-scale "save the world" narrative typical of JRPGs. There’s also a companion book called “Xenogears Perfect Works” which fleshes out the narrative even more. Translations are available online, but videos and other shorter online written pieces exist which reference the book and do a great job at fully explaining the Xenogears story.

The battle system of Xenogears, both on-foot and in-gear (giant fighting robot) is unique, and is almost reminiscent of a fighting game in its mechanics. The two battle systems are used in nearly equal amounts, are similar enough to one another to feel like they belong to the same game, yet have strategic elements unique to each. This allows them to complement each other wonderfully. Each of the special moves, or "deathblows," must be unlocked by using a specific series of attacks. The process of unlocking these is very rewarding, reminding me of the Additions leveling system of The Legend of Dragoon.

The game’s visual style and audio is exceptional for the time period. Xenogears uses well-animated 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds (with full camera control). This gives the game a much more timeless look than the 3D character models on 2D backgrounds of many of its RPG contemporaries. The 3D models of the gears in combat also look fantastic. The game uses few CG cutscenes in favor of anime cutscenes, which look and sound great even in 2017. The lip syncing in these cutscenes is downright atrocious at times, but the voice acting itself is surprisingly good, and the animations themselves are done very well. I only wish there were more of these sprinkled throughout the game. The music is also excellent. Of special note is the overworld theme "Emotions" (seriously, this track is incredible) and the game's main theme "Distant Promise" along with its vocal arrangement "Small Two of Pieces."

The Bad

As much praise as I just gave Xenogears's battle system, the on-foot combat especially is painfully slow. Using a deathblow can take upwards of 15 seconds to get through the entire animation. That's for one single attack. It doesn't help when individual enemies take several turns to defeat and you can face up to 8 enemies in a single encounter. Even if the deathblows took half the time to execute, this would be a slow battle system, but as it is, it's almost unfathomable. If anyone is looking to play this game, I'd highly recommend emulation so you can speed up combat in dungeons. The finer points of combat, including the actual method of unlocking deathblows, are not explained in the game at all. A thin veil of a tutorial in the form of text is presented in the game before your first combat, but its usefulness is very limited.

Speaking of dungeons, almost without exception, they are needlessly bland and confusing. Every corridor looks exactly the same and the non-fixed camera makes navigating them confusing and aggravating. The encounter rate is manageable, but God help you if you decide to stop moving for a moment to re-orient yourself. As soon as you start moving again, you'll get into an encounter almost immediately. Then you spend another eternity with the sluggish battle system before you gain control again. If you remember where you’re supposed to go after all that, especially in the late-game dungeons, it’s a minor miracle. There is also mandatory platforming in some areas. It's unresponsive, clunky, and in a word: bad. A cool concept, but frustrating in practice.

The story of Xenogears is amazing, but the way it is told in the game is decidedly not. The staggering number of people, places, and things to keep track of in the 60-hour adventure is easily forgivable, but can be very confusing, especially on the first playthrough, where the end of the game expects you to remember small details that happened 50 or more hours ago. Again, this is totally forgivable, and is arguably great storytelling. But, the entire second disc of the game has objectively awful storytelling. Nearly the whole disc is one giant exposition dump, with characters sitting in a chair explaining to you what is happening in the story. Occasionally you take control to complete a short dungeon and boss fight. Other times it's just a boss fight. In fact, an entire dungeon is explained with text and then you fight the boss at the end. There's no way around this: it's bad, it feels rushed, and completely ruins the pacing of the game.

Inventory management is impossible in Xenogears. If you buy a new accessory or gear part, good luck finding it, since the inventory isn't organized in any semblance of a logical order. It's even worse if you find something in a chest out in the field. The game doesn't give you any indication of what type of object it is you just found: item, accessory, or gear part. So not only do you have comb meticulously through an unorganized inventory, you have to fumble through up to three. Sometimes more, as some items are exclusive to certain characters. Is there any indication of that? Of course not. And of course you can't manually sort or reorganize this equipment either. Even equipping your characters has minor annoyances, as there's no dedicated armor or helmet slot for a character, nor any true indication that such an item is this type of equipment; it's all just thrown in the same pile of "accessories." RPGs had been doing this for over a decade by 1997. There's no excuse for this.

Conclusion

This game should be great. It's so close to being great, but it is held back by so many things. If you like your epic stories and think you can look past the faults I've listed here, by all means, give it a shot (just use an emulator speed up combat). I've heard it said that if any game would benefit from a remaster, that this would be it, and I completely agree. This would truly be a masterpiece if those flaws listed above were fixed. Apparently the game’s troubled development lead to some of these issues, which is all the more reason for a remaster with the proper time and resources devoted to it. A story and cast this good deserves to have an excellent game associated with it. Unfortunately, Xenogears is not that excellent game.

This title is one of the most ambitious and memorable RPGs of the late 1990s. It stands out for its intricate storytelling, rich character development, and unique dual-layered combat system that blends traditional turn-based battles with mech-based "Gear" fights. The MC is called Fei Fong Wong, an amnesiac young man who becomes entangled in a vast and mysterious conflict spanning nations, ancient technology, and shadowy organizations. As the story unfolds, themes of identity, fate, religion, and human consciousness are explored with surprising depth for a video game of its era.

The world-building in Xenogears is expansive, the game introduces you to a variety of cultures, political intrigues, and moral dilemmas, giving a sense of scale and complexity that rivals even modern RPGs. The characters are equally compelling, Fei’s personal struggles are mirrored by the journeys of those around him, each with their own flaws, secrets, and motivations. The narrative does not shy away from mature and philosophical topics, making it a thought-provoking experience that resonates long after the credits roll. This one is indeed one of the golden era JRPG titles similar to FFVII, FFVI and both Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross games from back in the day.

The gameplay is multi-layered, on the surface, standard turn-based combat is solid and satisfying, with a strong emphasis on timed button presses to chain attacks and unleash combos. However, the standout feature is Gear combat, where you pilot giant mechs in tactical battles that feel both powerful and strategic. This dual-layered system adds depth and variety, keeping combat engaging throughout much of the game. Some mechanics, such as random encounters and extensive menu navigation, may feel cumbersome by today’s standards, but they were typical of the era.

The OST is another highlight, ranging from emotional piano pieces to epic orchestral tracks, perfectly complementing the game’s dramatic moments. And this is not an unique trait of this title, it is indeed one of the best OSTs that I've ever experienced, and this is a common thing when it comes to JRPGs in general. Visually, the game blends 2D sprite-based characters with 3D environments, creating a distinctive style that still has charm today, even if it shows its age. I loved this aesthetic back in the day, started with titles such as Resident Evil, and I wished more games used this feature nowadays.

The game’s major criticism lies in its pacing and storytelling toward the end. Due to time and budget constraints, some plot elements are delivered through long text sequences rather than fully animated cutscenes, which can feel overwhelming. This is definitely one of the worst aspects of this title, I knew it before playing it for the first time, but I never thought it would be so bad as people made it out to be, and unfortunately, it is even worse than I thought. Despite this, the ending is still emotionally impactful and leaves a lasting impression.

Overall, this game is a masterpiece of narrative-driven RPG design. Its combination of deep storytelling, compelling characters, philosophical themes, and innovative combat make it a must-play for fans of classic role-playing games. While not perfect, it’s a game that remains influential and beloved decades after its release. It'll continue to influence other titles of today's JRPG modern games, one of them which I highly recommend is Chained Echoes, which has a similar two-layered combat system, quite similar to Xenogears. This game is definitely a must-play for fans of RPGs in general, not just of JRPGs, it is one of the best games of all time in my opinion, despite the last sections being one of the worst gaming experiences I've had.