Absolutely horrendous second to last dungeon and some of the worst cutscene direction and pacing you’ll ever see in a game but it’s still good.
They're not amazing initially but this is the start for one of the best casts you'll find in JRPGs. Everyone in the party gets their screentime and is a thoroughly interesting character. This game also has a very promising concept to its battle system, and manages to pull off consistently challenging yet fair battles for the majority of the game. Unfortunately once you get some techs to the "hi" setting later on in the game, it'll essentially devolve into spamming your aoe techs and ceases to be very engaging. There's also very little reason to use the AGWS in battle but some fights are clearly intended for it and can take ages if you decide to fight them on foot (there's no real indication that you should be using them either, it is entirely optional), this wasn't very well planned but it doesn't happen too much. You can completely sweep the endgame if you go through the trouble to get Erde Kaiser for Shion too.
Actual battles aside how you build the characters is a huge factor in this game as well. The systems will feel very overwhelming at first but they are very satisfying and customizable. Characters will gain EP, SP, and TP through battle which can be used to learn new spells, permanently gain accessory abilities or invest in tech skills/stats respectively. EP can also be used to transfer spells from one character to another giving you a lot of room to play around with.
The story is nice but as previously mentioned, the cutscenes are not engaging until you get a ways in and as you move on to the sequels you'll also realize how little story really is in the first episode, it was just setting the groundwork for those. That said, the story and characters are why you should play this, getting to this as a big fan of Xenogears was really fun and I certainly don't regret the time I spent with it.
They're not amazing initially but this is the start for one of the best casts you'll find in JRPGs. Everyone in the party gets their screentime and is a thoroughly interesting character. This game also has a very promising concept to its battle system, and manages to pull off consistently challenging yet fair battles for the majority of the game. Unfortunately once you get some techs to the "hi" setting later on in the game, it'll essentially devolve into spamming your aoe techs and ceases to be very engaging. There's also very little reason to use the AGWS in battle but some fights are clearly intended for it and can take ages if you decide to fight them on foot (there's no real indication that you should be using them either, it is entirely optional), this wasn't very well planned but it doesn't happen too much. You can completely sweep the endgame if you go through the trouble to get Erde Kaiser for Shion too.
Actual battles aside how you build the characters is a huge factor in this game as well. The systems will feel very overwhelming at first but they are very satisfying and customizable. Characters will gain EP, SP, and TP through battle which can be used to learn new spells, permanently gain accessory abilities or invest in tech skills/stats respectively. EP can also be used to transfer spells from one character to another giving you a lot of room to play around with.
The story is nice but as previously mentioned, the cutscenes are not engaging until you get a ways in and as you move on to the sequels you'll also realize how little story really is in the first episode, it was just setting the groundwork for those. That said, the story and characters are why you should play this, getting to this as a big fan of Xenogears was really fun and I certainly don't regret the time I spent with it.