I'm really enjoying Xenogears. I'm gonna ramble for a bit.
Battles took a bit getting used too since it's a PS1 game but it's fun. Gear combat is interesting too. Camera sucks and so does the map (the map only appears in the overworld and tells you jack ****, otherwise, you just have a compass that is useless) but again, it's a PS1 game so i can let it slide.
The party members are coming and going. Fei, the main protag, is always there of course. But then we have Elly, who joined for one dungeon and then left (i assume she'll be back). Then Citan joined for a while and then also left (my current objective is to meet up with him) and i currently have.....was it Brad? I don't remember his name. Blonde hair with an eyepatch. Anyway, i'm with him at the moment trying to find our way out of an underground cave. Both of us have our Gears.
This game isn't really hard. I haven't died once yet. Especially since Gears kinda one-shot normal enemies. But even bosses aren't that hard.....yet.
Item use bothers me. I clearly have healing items but i can never seem to use them in battles...but sometimes i can. I've used healing spells and items on Gears but nothing happens.
Music is.....surprisingly average so far. There aren't any bad songs but there aren't any standout ones either, aside from the Dalzar Town theme. I won't judge yet but so far, we haven't reached Xenoblade levels of God-tier music.
The Xeno series has a habit of making Christian references very obvious, but it's like, super obvious in Xenogears. There's some lore on how humans supposedly came to be. They used to live with God in paradise but then they ate the forbidden fruit and gained wisdom. So God banished them. This is exactly what was said. It's kinda like the lore in Xenoblade 2 where people lived with the Architect in Elysium before being banished. I read about how Xenogears was almost never localized because the localization team were actually getting upset at all the religious references. Christianity is a much bigger deal in the West than it is in Japan.
Bit of trivia, to think that Xenogears originally would've been Final Fantasy 7, before Square Enix decided that the plot was too complicated for a Final Fantasy game (that's cute, coming from the developers that went on to make Kingdom Hearts). But you know, i'm glad. Because if Xenogears WAS a Final Fantasy game, we would've never gotten Xenosaga and Xenoblade.
But yeah, camera, map, and item issues aside, Xenogears is great and if you're a fan on Xenoblade, you should definitely play Xenogears.
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