Xenogears is a game that’s reputation precedes itself. Intimidating, yet fascinating. A game truly greater than the sum of its parts (a characteristic I find most great games share in common). The term “flawed masterpiece” was practically tailor made for the likes of Xenogears. Because while it’s a tour-de-force in storytelling, its shortcomings are numerous, and I’m not just talking about the obvious suspect, either.

Xenogears, being a Squaresoft PS1 JRPG, was born in what could be considered the genre’s golden age, within the walls of the genre’s greatest champion. The pedigree brings about a lot of expectations, which I think it mostly fulfills. But you can tell that this game is the work of less experienced game designers than the ones upper management at Square tasked for the Final Fantasy series. I don’t want to come across as too harsh, because the gameplay of Xenogears is a cut above your typical JRPG battle system, especially for the time, but it’s rough around the edges, without a doubt. The fighting game-esque “deathblow” mechanic isn’t ever properly explained to the player, and while it’s possible to futz around in the dark and stumble into learning these powerful moves, it doesn’t go far enough in readying players for the challenges ahead. I spent a decent amount of the early game just spamming the deathblows I had learned by accident; Something which rewarded me in the short term, but would’ve screwed me over hard if I hadn’t had the idea to consult a guide before the going got really tough. It’d be one thing if I understood what I was doing to be a short term solution, but I didn’t. Which is the part I find should’ve been the game’s responsibility to teach me about. Something I think the game did tremendously well though, was portraying the scale and power of the Gears. On foot combat I found to be the more interesting of the two sides of the battle system, but there’s something to be said regarding the sheer number inflation that occurs when piloting a gear. Wailing on these massive creatures and doing thousands of damage while barely being able to crack four digits on foot feels tremendous. Gears are devastating, which the game constantly portrays to the player.

Visually, Xenogears is almost this perfect marriage of two-dimensional characters in three-dimensional environments. It’s a look that surely wowed players back in the day, and has come back around to being incredibly appealing in a whole new way. This look was supposedly a compromise, after it proved difficult to get a fully 3D game the scale of Xenogears off the ground. As far as compromises go, this was a fair one. I feel as though any push further towards 2D would’ve sacrificed too much of the gravitas that accompanies the Gears. Still, there’s a lot about the “feel” of Xenogears that slowly got on my nerves as I played. Text speed is much too slow, which made me apprehensive to talk to many NPCs the further and further I proceeded through the game. God forbid I had to replay a lengthy cutscene due to a boss wipe. If I ever play this game again, I’ll most certainly employ the “fast text” cheat 100% of the time. I’d probably shave at least an hour off my playtime if I did. Many other aspects about Xenogears feel sluggish. The less said about the platforming, the better, so this is all I’ll say about it. No, I think the bigger culprit to my frustrations playing Xenogears have to be the random encounters. Complaining about random encounters might just be the biggest canned criticism of the JRPG genre, so let me attempt to get in front of the eyerolls and say I don’t hate the concept in the slightest. I’m far from some radical that thinks all RPGs should do away with them. They’re a mechanic that can be done well, or done poorly, like anything else put in a game. That said, I’m sympathetic to those who dislike random encounters, and certainly wouldn’t give them Xenogears to try and change their mind. Xenogears has one of the most egregious random encounter systems I’ve ever experienced. If you ask me, the key to preventing frustrations with random encounters requires at least one of two things: infrequency, or speediness. AKA, if you’re gonna have a high random encounter rate, you need to get the player in and out of the battle quickly. Battles shouldn’t require too much character management, and should be done under a minute, to choose an arbitrary time. Inversely, if you want the player to think and strategize throughout these fights, then they shouldn’t be occurring every seven steps or so, to choose an arbitrary number. Xenogears is the worst of both worlds in this regard. Random encounters take a decent amount of time whenever they occur, and they occur often. I think a decent litmus test for knowing if a JRPGs random encounter system is poor, is if the player fears navigating a dungeon outside of the bare minimum, which is a feeling I definitely had playing through Xenogears. The biggest joke of all though, is that the game has a bit of a delay between deciding a random encounter will happen, and actually putting the player through said encounter. This results in having to fight battles as they’re leaving a room, or opening a chest. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that’s done that before, it was very strange, and very frustrating.

This whole time I’ve avoided talking about the narrative, and that’s because I sorta feel out of my depth discussing it. While playing the game, I would frequently tune into Resonant Arc’s discussions on the story (seen here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJCH8faf6GaxQ_7bA7cD0lROu3yMRmwh5).
Which kept me grounded and able to keep up with many of the complex ideas the game throws at the player. It’s a fantastic story, held back by things mostly out of its control. Like the translation, which feels stilted for much of the playthrough. It’s hard to put too much blame on Richard Honeywood, the translator, after knowing the behind the scenes story, but regardless, the conditions surrounding Xenogears localization resulted in the translation suffering. The big elephant in the room, however, is the infamous “Disc Two”, a turn in the structure of the game which sees much of the story progress via abstract narration of events rather than the more typical structure of disc one where we play through the events as they happen. While this surely shocked players back in 1998, these days its reputation precedes itself; I knew what I was getting into beforehand, so I wasn’t completely blindsided by this shift. I wouldn’t go so far as to defend this change as a good thing, mind you, but with how much of the story is covered by this second disc, it’s clear that if the “true” vision of Xenogears was to ever be realized, we’d be dealing with an incredibly bloated game that would’ve taken years to finish. I think I agree with Tetsuya Takahashi when I say that it was better to finish the story then and there. At the very least, it sticks the landing. The truncated narrative of disc two also means that the amount of monotonous futuristic hallway dungeons is kept to a minimum. Although a few still managed to sneak their way onto it.

To borrow a phrase, Xenogears is: “...the type of game that relieves my fears”. A collaboration between a team in way over their heads. A project that should’ve completely buckled under its own weight and resulted in a mess few could find enjoyment in. Instead, it’s proof that vision can shine through even the roughest of circumstances. I hope that one day I can make something that’s even a quarter as profound as something like Xenogears. Which I would recommend to anyone into JRPGs who hasn’t played it, despite the game’s numerous flaws (many of which could be remedied with some simple number tweaks, or a tasteful remaster, perhaps). It requires a lot of patience, but it rewards that patience in spades.