Improves upon 7 mechanically to an insane degree, and is great for tying up loose ends to Kiryu's story... but it's by far the weakest Yakuza since 4 besides that. The game is very strangely paced, story is unbelievably messy in part because of how sidelined Ichiban gets, and I kinda felt that the side content was generally less memorable than every other Yakuza in recent memory save for Judgment. It's a Yakuza game and therefore a lot of fun, but I genuinely cannot believe how this is the one that scored a 90 on Open Critic for how messy and undercooked a lot of it is.

While the game is very fun, it is hard to rate it when you consider the success and impact of Mario Kart DS. This game did introduce customizable karts and the glider feature, which was very impactful for the later and highly successful Mario Kart 8. The roster is a bit larger with some very bizarre picks (The wiggler and Queen Bee from Mario Galaxy). Local play is still fun as ever. The course list is very OK and is somewhat forgettable. A fun game and a passable portable Mario Kart experience that set the groundwork for the next game in the franchise.

An absolute masterpiece. I don't care that they ran out of a budget while working on disc 2, the story and journey of this game is an absolute joy. The first time I played it, I cannot possibly describe how intensely I felt about the appearance of id in the desert.

It delves deep into philosophy, religion and man's place in the world. It's a fascinating game that every fan of JRPGs should go out of their way to play. Just go in knowing the disc 2 experience won't match your disc 1 journey. It's like they press fast forward on anything. From the time you put down the controller in disc 1 to when you finally get to go back to the open world in disc 2, you will be stunned by how much the game world has changed.

Gameplay wise the game suffers from the full PS1 RPG jank package: Shit combat, shit dungeons, and being terribly sluggish in all aspects of design. Best played with cheats and some sort of turbo mode.

Where the game shines is definitely in its narrative, delivering a unique and incredibly ambitious story that mishmashes philosophy, psychology and religion in a dense and complex sci-fi package that gives plenty to think about. This ambition however can also be considered its greatest narrative flaw: Xenogears is clearly chock-full of "things I find cool!" by Takahashi, lifting cues, plot points and inspiration from plenty other mecha anime and similars, leading to a bloated cast that at times often feel like they are just there to deliver a cool scene and never do anything else for the rest of the game. A more focused cast and character writing would've definitely improved the overall package, as I feel like the game would've definitely benefitted from spending less time on side adventures in Disc 1 and instead spaced the writing regarding main duo Fei and Elly more evenly across the game, as, while they are strong and interesting characters, the meat of their characters is almost entirely relegated to the already infamous Disc 2.

Still, god damn you can't help but respect this game's ambition. Shot for the stars and landed on the moon, but in a time where even now-legendary entries like the PS1 FF entries rooted themselves firmly in the Earth, Xenogears sure as hell is a work deserving of respect. The team set out to deliver an age-spanning sci-fi epic about humanity living under the yoke of its own societal and personal constructions; and while realistic development constraints and, let's face it, the immaturity of the dev team as writers and game designers made the end result a fairly janky game, it definitely deserves to stand as one of the greats of the genre.

God damn that final dungeon sucks though, jesus christ.

Well this was definitely a journey,DQ7 is heavily flawed,most of the skills you get from grinding the classes are worthless and you end up using a few OP one over and over,trivilazing the fights,user interface feels very sluggish and cumbersome to control,game sometimes struggles on the 3DS,dungeons are overall very "meh" worthy,i can keep going,but in the grand scheme of things,these are fairly minor issues except for the very simple battles,because this game provides an overwhelming sense of scale and adventure like no other JRPG,every few hours you encounter different storylines,different towns with their own culture,atmosphere and characters,even if you don't like one,you can count on that it's going to end soon for a completely new island.Tone of some of these stories are surprisingly dark and melancholic,but never enough to kill that sense of joyous adventure.Out of the 3 Dragon Quest games i've played so far,7 easily has the best story and atmosphere,but it didn't still reached the heights of 11 for me,still a must play for those who can tolerate longer,slower paced RPG's