What sheer over-ambition does to a motherfucker. Xenogears is up there as one of the densest games ever released which given the sheer length of it is a staggering fact. I knew going into it about its scope being too big for its own good. Disc 2s infamy speaks for itself and while there is a lot to say there, I'm looking at this in a broader sense. The entire idea of this being planned as the fifth story in a multi-millennium spanning epic with no real text for the previous four entries gives us a story with massive holes in which you have to fill with the paragraphs of exposition dumps thrown at you in the late game.

Frankly, I think it's more interesting this way. A world in which either Xenogears is planned out as a single story from the beginning, or one where Takahashi's multi part epic comes to fruition would probably still be good, but far less fun to dissect. Its requirement of the player to put its more abstract and disconnected moments together with no assistance at all gives Xenogears this sticky quality to it which I think works to its benefit. 4 previous games of lore dump (or a Youtube XENOGEARS STORY EXPLAINED (FOR REAL) essay) would make things clearer but so much less fun. Not everything has gotta be fully explained and Xenogears' story is at its best when really leaning into the sheer unimaginable scope of its events which you can barely scratch the surface of.

On a sheer presentation level it's on another level entirely. For 98 the animated FMVs (the first one especially) are extremely good. The real strength for me lies in the town areas however. Every single one in the game is so lovingly and densely crafted, with some of the best pixel art and music of the era to compliment it. Adding along with them an eternal cast of nameless and very funny NPCs who I had to continuously make sure I would see what ridiculous (often time intentionally so!) thing they would say next. The battle animations of both the regular and Gears combat, the Deathblows in particular are still a delight even as they repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

The combat itself is crunchy enough with its multiple button inputs which helps scratch the primal monkey part of my brain that wants my RPGs to feel fast because of years of KOTOR as a child. The dungeons could be worse I guess, the one in Shevat that was 90% hallways that didn't further anything made me very annoyed but every other one was at least justifiable. My standards for turn based combat and area design aren't super picky because I know it will all annoy me no matter what at least a little bit and this one only got on my nerves like 25% of the time, which is a passing grade in my book.

Smarter people than me have already said much on the games many references to classical literature, psychology and religion. One could probably spend a long time diving deep into that, I will not do so here because I'm not very smart. What I will say is very clearly this party needed culling. Fei, Elly, Citan and Bart are all incredibly well defined characters who get plenty of time to shine and after that it gets questionable. After Billy gets Jessie cannon he kinda vanishes, Rico totally vanishes once you're out of Kislev, and Maria is up there as an all timer forgotten character who gets a sheer total of two scenes worth a damn. Emerelda's at least got the plot significance and extra scenes to work with but the moment you get her in your team you are immediately side-lined from having her in your party for like 10 hours of game.

Those previously mentioned original four are great though, Fei in particular I think stands as an especially strong lead. Someone whose journey and personal drama within himself helps ground the insane events around it to something very real and tangible. I am very much someone who attaches themselves more to character based stories hence my harping on the cast. It's not a true detriment to the game but it's one case in over-ambition where I feel a call should have been made earlier to trim the fat.

Like Xenogears itself, this write-up has gone on too long and now at the halfway point I am condensing the back half. Disc 2 honestly kinda rules in my eyes, some stuff I wish did make the final product but its forward momentum is pretty invigorating. If someone can find me a more oedipal JRPG romance than Fei/Elly I'd love to see it. And most importantly....

All hail Ramsus, the funniest character ever put in a video game.

tl:dr game good

Some of the slickest art and graphical design and one of the best soundtracks of all time with writing that I sadly think doesn't completely match up to the reputation of what came before it. All 3 stories start off about as strong as The Silver Case does but the only one which really keeps it up all the way through is Placebo, which is some of the best stuff in Kill The Past and justifies the entire work.

I think Correctness's individual parts are very good, chapters 2 and 3 in particular, but I don't know how much I like it as a unifying story. The Kurumizawa stuff is amazing but feels almost underwritten compared to the far less interesting Kosaka scenes which felt like they were there to over-explain what was happening in chapter 5 especially.

It's the Matchmaker story that bumps this down to something lower than it probably deserves though. First two chapters are amazing until it slides down the yakuza plot line for two chapters which is the first time in any of these games I felt like I could predict every single thing that was going to happen next. It ends well enough but what started as a funny dark parallel story to Correctness which enhanced both stories ends up fairly tedious and damaging to the other stories it's supposed to help prop up.

Placebo really is excellent though, Tokio's chapters in The Silver Case are some of my favorite writing in any game and I'm glad to say they don't drop the ball here. In particular chapters 3 and 5 are so pitch perfect and quietly devastating that it's almost enough for me to look past my issues with the other stories.

I think in the end what has me prefer TSC far above this is mainly personal taste. I loved TSC because it was simultaneously a horrifying nightmare paranoia world that was incredibly human. The cast was all memorable and the way their stories came to truly violent ends by the end sat with me strongly. There's really no such interesting character dynamics here. There's no Kusabi type to center everything. Kuro is a hell of a lot of fun but she doesn't have much to do post chapter 2, and Tsuki and Osato's dynamic also pretty handily peaks at chapter 2 for me. I do think this distance is a deliberate choice but it's one which I feel doesn't fully resonate with me, especially at the ends of these stories where they try to have moments where it feels we really should care about the relationship between the cast.

Still, it's Kill the Past, it's still unlike anything else that I can think and even if I don't think it fully lives up to its predecessor, very few things can.

If I'm given 50,000 yen I''ll bump the score up