While Xenogears has some interesting stuff going on, especially in the earlier sections, its unfortunately clear that the content just wasn't enough to back up the ambition.
Xenogears starts off strong. Just a few hours in and its already clear that this isn't going to be a typical JRPG. The tone and story are mature, the combat a unique blend of turn-based and fighting game styles, and the bits of lore the game teases you with hint at ideas that I really can't think of any other media I can compare it to. But alas, those early hours are the best it gets.
The combat, while flashy at first, quickly grows stale. There isn't much strategy involved and enemies don't get any more interesting to fight. Rather than expanding your strategic options in any interesting way, growth is driven almost entirely by gear and stat increases from leveling up. The game increases its difficulty mainly by scaling enemy stats upwards without adjusting their movesets in a way that makes them any more interesting to fight against. The few times where the game does mess around with its combat and do something different, its changes are often annoying rather than engaging. And worst of all, the combat is painfully slow. Animations grow ever longer as the game progresses, enemies get ever more health meaning it takes more and more attacks to kill them, and the sheer amount of random encounters are enough to make me dread having to traverse a new dungeon.
Without a strong gameplay foundation to back it up, Xenogears needs its story to be good. But, while I can admire the ambition displayed by those who wrote the game and the sheer amount of thought and detail they put into the supplementary material, the game itself doesn't let any of those positive aspects flourish. So much of the early game is spent on sections that have little real importance to the plot (Nortune being the most egregious) while time and budget constraints mean most of the conclusion is rushed. But with such a complicated story, rushing the conclusion left it practically incomprehensible without the assistance of external sources.
Xenogears was certainly an experience. While I would be very interested to play a fully fleshed out version that got all the resources the team actually needed to complete it, no such thing exists today. And when judging the game as it is rather than what it could have been, I struggle to recommend it. There are worse ways to spend your time, but there are far better ways too. So unless you have a strong reason for wanting to play besides idle curiosity, I would recommend looking elsewhere.
Xenogears starts off strong. Just a few hours in and its already clear that this isn't going to be a typical JRPG. The tone and story are mature, the combat a unique blend of turn-based and fighting game styles, and the bits of lore the game teases you with hint at ideas that I really can't think of any other media I can compare it to. But alas, those early hours are the best it gets.
The combat, while flashy at first, quickly grows stale. There isn't much strategy involved and enemies don't get any more interesting to fight. Rather than expanding your strategic options in any interesting way, growth is driven almost entirely by gear and stat increases from leveling up. The game increases its difficulty mainly by scaling enemy stats upwards without adjusting their movesets in a way that makes them any more interesting to fight against. The few times where the game does mess around with its combat and do something different, its changes are often annoying rather than engaging. And worst of all, the combat is painfully slow. Animations grow ever longer as the game progresses, enemies get ever more health meaning it takes more and more attacks to kill them, and the sheer amount of random encounters are enough to make me dread having to traverse a new dungeon.
Without a strong gameplay foundation to back it up, Xenogears needs its story to be good. But, while I can admire the ambition displayed by those who wrote the game and the sheer amount of thought and detail they put into the supplementary material, the game itself doesn't let any of those positive aspects flourish. So much of the early game is spent on sections that have little real importance to the plot (Nortune being the most egregious) while time and budget constraints mean most of the conclusion is rushed. But with such a complicated story, rushing the conclusion left it practically incomprehensible without the assistance of external sources.
Xenogears was certainly an experience. While I would be very interested to play a fully fleshed out version that got all the resources the team actually needed to complete it, no such thing exists today. And when judging the game as it is rather than what it could have been, I struggle to recommend it. There are worse ways to spend your time, but there are far better ways too. So unless you have a strong reason for wanting to play besides idle curiosity, I would recommend looking elsewhere.