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I've always wanted to either play Xenogears or Xenosaga (part 1), but each game represents my two most loathed parts of RPG's; long stretches of unskippable dialogue (Xenogears), and long-ass, non-interactive cut-scenes (Xenosaga). Which is the lesser of two evils?

If those are such unattractive features, why would you want to play Xeno-whatever in the first place?

Xenogears suffers from being told the same thing <i>over</i> and <i>over</i> again. One example is the countless times has Citan stated about a certain someone having mutliple personalities. Dialogue would go roughly like this:

Citan: He has multiple personalities. In short, he has multiple personalities, which causes him to have more than one personalities, thus meaning he can change personalities because of his case of having multiple personalities.

Someone else: So, you mean to say he has multiple personalities?

Citan: Yes, but I'm going to say what I previous said in a more complex way of saying it, just because I can. Did I mention he had multiple personalities? I'm going to waste ten speech boxes just so I can think of different ways of saying he has multiple personalities.

I could probably write a book full of passages citing dialogue that was written in a similar manner.

That and the pain of not being able to press a button to make all the text show up, so you have to wait for the text to slowly scroll just so you can try and soak in everything.

If Xenogears is any indication of how Xenosaga is, then I hold no interest in Xenosaga. It is by no means an incompetent game, and I recognize that there may actually be something deeper than I care to comprehend, but jesus did it have long stretches of text. Perhaps if it was more streamlined and had more polish... when I think about it, Xenogears actually had a great deal of ambitious ideas. But there's too much damn text for me to care.

Poison Eggroll wrote:Xenogears suffers from being told the same thing <i>over</i> and <i>over</i> again.

"My father? You mean my dad!?"


I <i>liked</i> Zenogias.

"This must be his dying message."

"Must've written it as he was dying."

"This must be his dying message."

"Must've written it as he was dying."

"It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of uuggggggh'."

Psxphile wrote:"My father? You mean my dad!?"

Damnit, you said it before I could.

I really enjoyed Xenogears when it came out, but I think if the exact same game came out today (with today's graphic standards) I probably wouldn't play it. Xenosaga is just garbage.

(Then again, if they re-released 'gears with that text story towards the end fleshed out into actually gameplay, I would be the first to buy it. A consumer whore I am.)

Poison Eggroll wrote:If those are such unattractive features, why would you want to play Xeno-whatever in the first place?

I'm tired of cookie-cutter medieval / Final Fantasy RPGs. Xenogears looks so different and fresh (for 1998) it sticks out to me.

Xenogears is good if you don't mind stretches of text, redundancy, repeating things, long dialogues, the occasional reinforcement of obvious facts, noninteractive stretches of written story, constant repeated facts, redundancies, and the occasional unnecessarily long paragraph of unnecessary information.

Whatever you do, don't start to play it and then take a long break from it, or you'll be completely lost in the sea of convolution when you come back.

I played through it three times and I still have no idea what happened.*




*this is an exageration. Please don't explain the plot to me, I get it, thanks.

Dang, now I wish I actually played it so I could explain the plot. :(

Zeta wrote:

"This must be his dying message."

"Must've written it as he was dying."

"It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of uuggggggh'."

Wouldn't he just have SAID "uuggggggh" instead of WRITING it?

He was dictating, obviously.