JRPGs

bigmark268 said:

Man I always see people raving about xenoblade chronicles. Are they really that good? And do they actually have anything to do with xenogears?

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They've got nothing to do with Xenogears. Monolithsoft has always been allergic to making anything actually connected to Xenogears in any way. Yeah, Square owns the "Xenogears" name, but it wouldn't stop Monolith from actually having games take place in the universe they created if they wanted to. Instead they reset everything every couple of games which is annoying.

Still kind of pissed-off that Xenogears, which perfectly set up five more games in a six-episode series, didn't get any kind of followup.

The Torna DLC for Xenoblade 2 is sorta like if Xenogears had gotten a Solaris War DLC, or some sort of sequel transpiring during the 500 years ago conflict (the Episode 4 to XG's "Episode 5")

Xenosaga was originally hyped to be a six-part reimagining of the Xenogears history. A whole lot of us were completely confused when it finally came out and actively avoided having any connection to Xenogears, despite taking place on what was apparently the beginning of the Xenogears timeline (using the same dates and everything, then having completely different things happen out of left field). Was all a very frustrating experience and it's no wonder the Xenosaga series' sales died off after the first one. Too bad because taken for what it was, XS1 and XS3 were both really good games. XS3 even has the Xenogears final boss in it, but of course they change the name and make it a completely different thing. A few small tweaks and XS1/2/3 could have easily been XG Episode 1.

Xenoblade itself is just yet another story from the same creators that has nothing to do with XG despite sharing a similar name. I wasn't that into Xenoblade 1 like everyone else seemed to be, and it didn't feel like the other Xeno games at all. Xenoblade 2 feels a lot more like Xenogears' human-based gameplay and I think a lot of that is because of the music. And Xenoblade X, a weird outlier game that has nothing to do with its own series, has a lot in common with both Xenogears' gear-based gameplay AND the theoretical Episode 2 of Xenogears' untold story (a massive ship crash-lands on a planet and people pick up the pieces).

Basically the whole Xeno-verse is just a bunch of unrelated stories that use super-similar concepts and are THIS CLOSE to actually being a connected universe but never actually go through with it.

Malakriss said:

Story-wise XC is not related to Xenogears, however XC1 and XC2 happen at the same time in different universes with a connecting plot point. At the end they both merge up and that leads directly into the upcoming XC3.

Gameplay XC1 was helped tremendously with the definitive edition release, XC2 had a lot of good systems but some criticisms on english voice actors / female design choices. The XC2 battle system was improved and polished in the Torna DLC (which is a separate smaller game taking place earlier in history). You can get a lot of hours of playtime from any of them with endgame/postgame and platinum pursuits.

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I had no problem with XC2's character designs. At first I thought the characters looked kinda dumb and the females were extra-slutty, but once I played the game, the looks of Pyra and the evil blue chick really grew on me. They're both hot as hell. Of course in the modern era people are going to get upset about female characters being super feminine and scantily-clad.

If anything I was way more offended by the hero's stupid-looking goggle-boy outfit.

I personally really liked XC2, and was lucky in pulling op blades. Stoked for 3 to release end of the month

Malakriss said:

2023

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Ayo hold up. Yasunori Mitsuda? He's only the greatest game music composer of all time. I think he did some of Xenoblade 2's music, as well as Xenosaga 1, Xenogears, the Chrono games, Shadow Hearts Covenant... all freaking incredible OSTs. Trying to remember what else he's done as far as big name RPGs go.

I'd buy this just off of his involvement, but it looks great otherwise too. Clearly meant to be a modern spin on Chrono Trigger.

The Messenger was pretty great too so glad they're making cool follow up.

Rude said:

Rajaah Xenosaga died because episode 2 was an abortion of a game mechanically and its entire story spanned like.. 12 hours. Episode 3 stands the test of time, easily, which is probably why it's not cheap to get if you're trying to buy a genuine copy of the game. And while I think Xenogears is great I haven't forgotten that Fei spent half of the second disc narrating game events in a chair with a swinging pendulum behind him.

That whole IP is in all sorts of hell unfortunately. In any case I give the Xenoblade games a huge thumbs up and am glad they've gotten more popular over time. Switch remaster was definitely a massive quality of life improvement over the original too. Made the brain dead fetch bear asses quests tolerable for starters. I was hoping to grab a special edition of 3 but both of those shitty Nintendo sales happened while I was at work. Oh well.

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I'd say Xenosaga was already on death's door before Episode 2 totally sucked. The sales of XS2 went off a cliff compared to XS1, even at launch. I was knee-deep in the fan discussion of the series at the time and saw firsthand how people's enthusiasm for the Xenosaga series pretty much croaked once everyone finished XS1 and were wondering why the hell it had nothing to do with Xenogears despite using the same dates and names and settings. Was very little interest in XS2 at all after that, even if it had been decent. When it was terrible, that just put the nail in the coffin.

Then XS3 was really good but not many people played it, so huge prices for that one now. Similar to Earthbound's rarity / cult status driving the price up.

Xenogears was one of my favorite games of all time so I took all the Xenosaga stuff a bit harder than most. At least XS1 had Yasunori Mitsuda on board.

Rude said:

Me and you must've been knee deep in the opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to fan discussions then. Bad word of mouth and reviews tanked Xenosaga 2 -- just the same as Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 sank -- from what I've read and seen. LoS1 got a lot of flack because it rebooted the franchise and cloned GoW's hack and slash model. The game was actually pretty fucking good, and the purists who were mad about it were in a minority .. as there hadn't been a good Castlevania game since SOTN. From what I saw and remember, the Xenogears -> Xenosaga transition had the same problems, probably to a lesser extent. Waiting up to 45 seconds for assets to load when you transition to a battle screen fucked Xenosaga 2 a lot more than the rabid weebs who want to pretend Xenogears Disc 2 doesn't exist because Final Fantasy 7 stole all of the product's money and whatever other horse shit can be blamed for its poor development wrapup.

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In 1998/1999 I co-played Xenogears with like six friends of mine and I think it might have been the last time I did something like that with my teenage friend group. Then there was also Suikoden 2, Chrono Cross, and FFIX but if I remember right, the group participation dwindled with each one until it was only 3 of us for FFIX. Kinda sad but we were all reaching college age one by one, that's how it goes. Closest thing I've done since was probably getting Elden Ring at launch along with a ton of people on here.

Anyway I bring that up because one of the friends I co-played Xenogears with was super-stoked about Xenosaga for one particular reason: When it was announced, EGM and a few other places were saying the series would be a "six-episode reimagining of the Xenogears universe". He pointed out to me that this meant Xenosaga Episode V would be a remake of Xenogears, hopefully with the full story restored this time so that Disc 2 was like the rest of the game.

Man, what coulda been. Soon as he said this, I was beyond excited at the prospect, but I also tempered my expectations a little bit because that sounded too good to be true. And of course, it was.

So basically I love Xenogears, but a lot of that emotion is a love for what it could have been if it had been actually finished in a remaster situation. Looked at objectively, it's a woefully incomplete mess. I have similar feelings towards Secret of Mana and wondering what it could have been if it had been on the Nintendo Playstation CD system as originally planned (it was going to be called Maru Island). They removed a ton of stuff from SoM, though at least a lot of that made it into Chrono Trigger once the SNES was capable of a bit more. Xenogears' cut content pretty much just went nowhere and Square forgot about the game. So to have the game's actual developers break off and start their own company to "finish what they started" was an incredible thing to look forward to circa early 2001. Then...none of that happened and as a turning-18 present we got 9/11 instead. Fuckin' hell.

Malakriss said:

Prepare thy wallets, they are going in dry.

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Whoa. Saga Frontier 2? That's one of several PSX RPGs I missed out on and was planning to get eventually. Glad we're getting a remaster. Tons of people didn't play SF2 and from what I've heard it was a really good game.