Xenogears

Combining good action, dark drama, a splash of anime, and lots of Really Big Robots, this game is the must-buy Playstation RPG of the season... Square's greatest masterpiece since it started producing for Playstation, and I highly recommend this game to anyone who's even heard of "Final Fantasy."

With an intricate storyline, beautifully designed characters and mechs, and some of the most innovative features in an RPG, you simply can't afford to pass this game up.

Xenogears' reliance on story, subtlety, and mood make it Square's most anime-like RPG thus far, in many ways making the game one of its best.

An extremely popular anime-style role-playing game of epic proportions. [Jan 2004, p.189]

Playing this game is kind of like getting into a good book. The first few hours may be boring or even painful, but once you get into it, you'll be up until the wee hours of the morning flipping pages (or pressing buttons) trying to find out what happens next. And let me tell you - the story is first-rate and the plot gets thicker than a pint of Guinness straight from the tap.

A deep, long (70 hours!), story-driven RPG that tackles some of the weightier issues out there... Yet another winner from Squaresoft. [Nov 2001, p.54]

A relentlessly slow plot, plodding dialogue, and the unfortunate fumble of the robot interfaces's potential keeps Xenogears out of that stratosphere enjoyed by its far superior cousin, "Final Fantasy VII."

An absolute masterpiece ****... it offers everything anyone could ever want from a story, music, characters. GG

Interesante

I played Xenogears right after beating Chrono Cross, Grandia, Breath of Fire 3 and 4, and my expectations were very high because of all the positive reviews about this game. Unfortunately I caught myself on thinking "when will this be over". I just couldn't force myself to finish last 30% of the game (major disappointment starting with disk 2). Gear combat is boring and fuel management system in my opinion is probably the worst mechanic in Xenogear. I almost never used ether in this game, because it almost never did any difference, and physical combos always hit harder. Non gear combat seemed fun at first, but got boring pretty soon, because after you learn a few deathblows it just comes to repeating them again and again, because there's no reason to use weak attacks. Playing as different characters seemed like a cool idea, but in the end it comes to leveling up only main characters, because they are the ones who take the beating most of the time so have to be strongest. Many people praise music. After 50 hours, I vaguely remember any tunes from the game, even though they repeat very often. Yes, plot is interesting, though too complex at times even for me as an adult. Cut scenes are directed well (except Disk 2 which feels like an addon). There's no option to speed up dialogues unfortunately for those who read faster than text appears. In the end, I wish I could get more from this game, because it has potential to be great. But it never hits each mark 100%.

Fighting in a gear is fun but thats all what is special in xenogears. The plot my be good but it is so unbelievable bad paced. The first CD is slow like anything else and the second CD is just skipping from one scene to another, while the main character sits on the chair and tells you what happened and what the group did and where they did go. Thats ridicilous. The battle system is average having minor plus for the gear fighting.Srsly maybe it could have been great game if square had not rushed with the game but it did not turned out to be.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]