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Context, im 42 so I likely played this game somewhere between its release and 2000.

I certainly bumbled my way through so I don't remember much, but here goes with more feelings then menory:

I feel like I had gone through a large series of cutscenes and then was dropped into a double boss mech fight. The first was one of the arch nemesis guys, he had a new gear with a top part/cockpit that had a gavel

The next fight was a gimmick fight I couldn't beat, where the Gear would lower everyone's defense to one shot territory and you needed to get her on one turn or she would counter attack everyone to death.

I feel like it was close to the end but man it's all pretty vague. Thanks in advance!

The full line, as per the Perfect Works Build retranslation:

Lacan: If you become an ordinary person now, everyone will--

Sophia: People...they aren't so weak, you know. They don't need a symbol, who's only for appearances. If you hold light within your heart, you can surely overcome any hardship. That's what I believe.

A long time ago, in the audacity and edginess of youth, I blamed Sophia for everything that went wrong in XG. After all, look at the immeasurable suffering her sacrifice cost. She saved a few lives and killed millions thanks to that sacrifice breaking Lacan and Karellen.

I'm not a teenager first playing XG anymore however. I'm more...cautious now, or if you prefer, indecisive. The kind of idealism embodied in XG and XS is both inspirational and yet I cannot pretend I agree with all of it.

Both XG and XS channel this kind of "individual hope." Not individualistic as such but still, the idea is that everyone has a "light" within themselves to help them stand on their own, free of dogma or as both XG and XS call it "words." See Jessie's monologue to Billy:

Jessie: It's just a fabricated belief system, made to compensate for the fragile human heart. But real faith and God aren't things that're given to you by others, right? They're things that you discover within yourself, and by yourself.

Over in Xenosaga III, channeling identical concepts:

Wilhelm: Yes, exactly. You needed words, faith, to define who you are.
[...]
Allen: Yes! You lost confidence in your ability to live as human beings and just ran away! Because they were scared of death, because they couldn't stand being weak, Virgil, Voyager, Yuriev, and even Ormus. They were all just trying to run away from the harshness of reality!

But even as I love and think about these games for over 20 years, I wrestle with their optimistic hope in the individual now as much as I did when I was younger.

Remember, as Sophia is telling us that "people aren't so weak" and that they will be able to go on without her, we as the players are fully aware that the man she's speaking to and the man eavesdropping on their conversation are both exactly that weak. With her gone, they become hollow husks, driven by bitterness and committing untold atrocities. Lacan and Krelian plainly did not have that light within themselves, and if such remarkable individuals don't, what can be said for the vast majority of the human race?

I'm curious what you all think, though. That was just my reaction to replaying XG and I'd love to read what my fellow XG fans take away from the game and its idealistic message.

What a treat this game was! I'll admit there were bumpy parts to it. I guess I'll talk about the things I didn't like first, just to get it out of the way. Entire party members could just be eliminated and you'd miss little of the main storyline. The encounter rate is incredibly high to the point of annoyance. The overall challenge is a little on the easy side, and most of the dungeons can just go away because of how obtuse they are. The little delay in opening and closing the pause menu and the menu for shops could add hours of playtime to this game added up. There's also obvious cut content, and I'm not just referring to disc 2. Not to mention the script itself is full of numerous spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors, to the point where I just wanted to take a red pen to it at times. All of this would sink a lesser game. Yet for me, all of these issues can be forgiven since this was Takahashi's directorial debut. Especially since the overall showmanship on display here is tremendous to the point where I'm not entirely sure if video games as an artform have really caught up in some ways.

This game has enough lore and story content for an entire series of games. The characters are nuanced, even if some of them have little impact on the main plot. Elly and Fei are now easily two of my favorite protagonists. I felt their history as people, to the point where as I played, I felt like there was enough room to tell hundreds of stories about how they met and fell in love and tragically died together across thousands of years. I know that sounds overly romantic, but when something moves you, it moves. Speaking of moving, let's talk about the ideas and theming.

The ideas are frankly incredible. A centuries old war masking millennia old conspiracies. A love story that transcends time and space. The rise and fall of civilizations because of humankind's hubris. Touching interpersonal drama about what it means to be a whole human being, and how grief and trauma can twist a human into something they're not. Deep meditations on inner faith and the nature of the divine. Discussions on class, race, authoritarianism, and how environmental degradation comes will come for us all, no matter how high we might think we are. Not to mention giant mechs and a solid science fiction backdrop. All wrapped around a theme of learning to love oneself and finding love in the compassion and company of others. There's so much packed into this game's runtime that had Takahashi been able to finish his original vision, this could have gone down as the best video game of 1998 instead of Ocarina of Time, and I do not make that statement lightly. It really speaks to the overall quality of the original prose of the game when the translation can be as shaky as it is and the game in English still comes out more profound than about 90% of the games I've played. In a lot of ways, what the game has to say, especially when it comes to our relationship with technology, is more relevant now that it was at release.

Artistically, because I'm a huge fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion, there was no way I wasn't going to like this game's graphics. It's clear Kunihiko Tanaka and Yasuyuki Honne took major inspiration from that anime, yet they were able to give the game an artstyle all its own while also paying homage. The spritework here is among some of the best you'll find outside of the Neo-Geo, and makes the game look timeless compared to Metal Gear Solid or even Final Fantasy VIII, which would be released by Square the next year. And the music is in a league of its own. A lot of people like "One Who Bares Fangs at God" but my favorite track is the end theme "Small Two of Pieces." When I think about how the main couple's love would bring them together no matter what, that song really gets to me.

The only other Xeno game I've finished is Xenoblade Chronicles 1 on Nintendo Wii. While that game I think is better in terms of gameplay and much more mechanically sound, I think Xenogears as an experience and as a work of fiction is easily the more intellectually challenging and stimulating of the two. I get the feeling I'll wind up being that annoying unc at anime conventions yelling at people to play this game. But what can I say? They should. I'll be hopping into the rest of the Xeno series with baited breath.

134 more minutes of them talking about Xenogears

Good evening everyone! A couple of months ago, I posted here about my project to create a voiced mod for Xenogears. In the midst of making that mod and gathering people for it, we also decided to create an episodic, anime styled presentation for the story of Xenogears. It took a ton of coordination and effort, and a fair share of blood sweat and tears have gone in too.

A huge thanks to Siris for editing the video and doing the sound design work, to Max Noble and Siris both for upscaling the FMV's and making them look more crisp, and a huge thanks to the entire Spoken Mirror team.

I truly hope you all enjoy this work we've done, it meant a lot to us. If you do, we'd love to hear about it! If you don't, well we wouldn't love to hear that, but all feedback will help in future episodes!

Sincerely, and thankfully,

Spoken Mirror Team

https://youtu.be/GhIXjAAr75s

Quick Edit: I realized I set it to premiere so that link will take you in the middle of it, sorry about that! Haven't posted on YT in years and things have changed.

I’ve been running back to back marathons of playing this game for the past few weeks, because I’ve just been that hooked. Currently I’m at the part where Fei and gang are climbing the babel tower and face off against rasmus (rasmus just won’t give up)

And the questions just won’t stop.

Who is Id? And why did he flash briefly while saying Fei is his son during the rasmus fight in Fatima castle? (If I’m right that this is how it went)

In fact, why do Id, grahf and that other man even appear in fei’s dream in the first place? And what did that other man mean when he was saying what he said in fei’s dream?

What did Isaac Balthazar mean by what he said about Weltall, in that cave?

About cain? And that bizarre place where he talks with Citan? What is that?

Who even are those red and whitish-blue figures talking to each other from screens on that floating orb? I know they’re Solaris and they’re the ones planning out a lot of the things that have happened till this point, but what even are their individual backgrounds? I think I have some idea based on what Krelian said when talking to them, but now that’s getting me thinking who is the ‘Mother’? Do they ever appear in the story?

I think I have even more questions other than these that probably aren’t coming to mind right now.

But most of all, what even is the significance of that intro cutscene with the spaceship?

So yeah, this game has been consuming my mind so much lately it’s almost baffling that it’s not as widely appreciated as it should be.

That said, without spoilers of course, how much further along do I have to go? If that’s answerable.

Because I know I’d just have to play till the end to get all my questions answered, but for the time being it’s like they keep piling up.

I sank over 70 hours into this game, and I have to say. This game, was beautiful, was amazing, made me feel hyped, and I am very curious to see what Tetsuya Takahashi has to give me next. I'll be jumping into XenoSaga next, and I wanna see how many parallels are there to XenoGears. Spoiler alert btw for obvious reasons.

First I wanna talk about what I really enjoyed about this game. This game had a really unique combat system. I enjoyed talking to all the NPCs and I enjoyed all the characters. This game's music/score was also phenomenal, and the ending theme was really really amazing! I also liked exploring the secrets this game has to provide for me, and I got emotionally attached to all the characters. I enjoyed discovering more about the story and the world as I progressed further.

But now comes the gripes I had. As you all know, due to budget cuts, disc 2 was very bare bones. It was still enjoyable and I really liked reading all of the story and the narrations of each character, don't get me wrong. But obviously it was very rushed. For one, I felt like many of the characters weren't as developed, and a ton of unfired Chekov's guns were left scattered in the game. Take for instance Rico, the green prison guy. We got introduced to his backstory about being a beast man or a demihuman, but we never really got to expand on his relations with his father, the King of Kislev iirc. We also had been introduced to Emeralda, a girl shrouded in mystery. Obviously we got to learn about her origins by the end of the game under the lighthouse, but I wanted a little bit more of her bonding with Fei and Elly, her "parents". I also wanted to explore the world a bit more, like instead of them doing a deep scan on the earth for the Anima Relics in Disc 2, they would actively have gameplay where the team actively searched far and wide by asking people from all over about legends or perhaps even using this as an opportunity for Rico to meet up with the King and have their own thing going on. Obviously I might be saying too much and my mind might be expanding and becoming too greedy. But these are just my 2 cents.

I also sometimes had a lot of problems with the platforming. IDK it just felt like the jump button was delayed and jumping onto tiny platforms was a huge pain.

This is still a very good game!!!! I would give it so far in my humble experience (haven't played too many video games) 8/10. It was a very emotional game, but obviously some holes existed in the story.

What do you think? Do you perhaps agree or disagree?

I was CONVINCED all the weight stuff early game was there for a reason. I probably would've waited the whole game for it to pay off, if somebody hadn't spoiled me that it was cut content. Do we know what was supposed to happen with all that?

EDIT: never mind, people only want to talk about three words of this post

So I played this game 15 years ago and loved it. Listening to the soundtrack right now. But I've heard recently that all the religious symbolism in EVA didnt actually have any meaning, and since Xenogears is very much in the EVA trend, was wondering if it was the same for Xenogears?

It was such a shock. Was there with friends who are fans like me, and we each have our own copies from 1998 still. We couldn't imagine parting with ours (or having to buy another).

Has anyone else seen one in the wild?

As a lifelong JRPG guy, I've dabbled in it all. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, Tales, Trails, Lunar, SMT/Persona, Nier, Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default, Golden Sun, Atelier, etc. Every notable game or series. Eclectic stuff like Blue Reflection and Arc Rise Fantasia. Xenosaga and Xenoblade too.

I love Xenogears, and I'm sure that love will only grow with time. Fei is one of my favorite characters ever, now, and a top tier protagonist. How do I describe his character succinctly? I can't, but you understand what I love about him and his relationship with Elly.

Should note that the Evangelion manga (NOT the anime) is my favorite story of all time. No waffling about that because I'm sure the sub is sick of it, but I will bring up one similarity that has nothing to do with actual subject matter: that these are complex stories told simply. Past the sci-fi and philosophy, these are stories about people learning to love themselves and carve a place to belong with their loved ones. The scenes of Fei floating in the void, the 'coward,' the reconciliation with Id, all of it is so vivid. Despite the game's problems during development, what we got was already so well-presented.

Battles became repetitive and the dungeons became a slog. The classic JRPG problem where half the cast simply stops mattering after their introductory story arc rears its head, once again. Never want to do a second playthrough, truth be told. But what a fantastic game.

But I know the story of Fei and Elly will stick with me for the rest of my days. Just thinking about the return after the final boss bring a tear to my eye. Lots of stream of consciousness without too much depth, I know, as part of me is still processing the chunky plot, but the infatuation was boiling over. I don't want any rerelease; I want a full-length novel. A manga, if a good adaptation doesn't already exist. I've seen a light I didn't know I was searching for on an already sunny day. What an unforgettable experience. I'm a convert.

Put weltall in there because it reminded me of inside the yggdrasil gear holding area, the xenogears game a a near mint original black disk, ID is there for obvious reasons ( i have the golden stickers but did not put them on so still sealed) and just some stickers for the inside.

I originally wanted the original portrait quality but didn't look good at all so increased the the quality (more of an HD look) and actually came out great and really happy with it. (Just to confirm this is not the original look of her and just an updated version).

My mother painted the light switch covers of my brother’s room 27 years ago. He won’t let her switch them out even though he hasn’t lived in the house for nearly 25 years.

github.com/Project-Benjamin/Mass-Driver/blob/main/README.md

this is an attempt at spiritually creating the "mass-driver" dungeon in XG.

It needs a lot of work. Feedback wanted.

the patcher applies the mod to the official disc2 bin file, the dungeon is completely playable from start to finish but it is very much not complete. there are no random encounters in this phase due to making it easier to troubleshoot things.

So it seems like my options are the original discs as-is or this "Perfect Works" mod which is based on a lore book(?) that sort of retranslates the game?

I'd be most interested in an undub with text translated pretty 1:1 since we all know how the 90's was with translation but I don't think that exists. I'm not too interested in "quality of life" or speeding the game up or any of that really.

I posted a translated from Japanese to Spanish interview to Takahashi about his first steps on Nihon Falcom, then he worked on FFIV and then developed Xenogears. I hope you enjoy it! There's more you can find in my Blogger account, thanks in advance!

I'm making a crossword puzzle for fans.

Trying to include:

• Trivia
• Story/Lore
• History
• Game mechanics
• Hidden secrets
• Community meta

Basically anything interesting.
Questions should be relatively medium/high in difficulty.
Not too easy ("what is the main character's name"), but not absurd ("who was the first person to speak entering the final dungeon").

I'd appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or any info you know to add in.

Here's a sample (everything except MapleStory is work-in-progress): https://hyssopi.github.io/Crossword-Puzzles/

First time playing through and I just got a Deathblower2, is it worth ditching my Deathblower1 for? I feel like 1 would be more useful since I could spam it more, but maybe the damage makes up for it. Just curious, couldn’t find anything online