Emulator Hour: Xenogears (PS1)

Seems like a sufficiently villainous goal

You know, in my endless pursuit of nostalgia, I've come to the conclusion that the Playstation 1 actually had a lot of really great games.  Back in the great CD Burn-off of '01, I acquired quite a few excellent RPGs from Square.  In fact, I think the rate of US release for Square really increased around that time.  'Only in Japan' was no longer a phrase to frustrate the RPGphile.

Xenogears - it's been twelve years since I played through the first disc, but I still remember it like yesterday.  Would I do it again?  Maybe.  I think I'll just read a plot summary instead.   This is a very good plot summary, full of love and criticism.   You know, I played this game yesterday for barely an hour, and I've had its image in the back of my mind all day today.  I think this may be due to the sheer number of hours I put into it twelve years ago.  This  game is long-  50 hours on one disc!  (of two)

Playing Xenogears is like watching 300 episodes of some Shonen Anime.  You know - the kind whose story just keeps getting bigger and bigger, new twists, bigger bad guys, greater powers.  Xenogears is epic, sweeping, daring and strange.  The music is good, the environments have character, the battle system is fun.  All in all, a great jRPG from 1998.  

 But, there's no getting around it:   Xenogears starts to drag after while.  Then it proceeds to drag on for a very long time.  After a point, it's hard to say what is dragging the most, the story or the gameplay.  You start to notice the encounter rate is maybe a bit too high.  Or that the story simply takes too long to reveal things that it has been hinting at for a long time.  On the one hand, I like that the game takes its time with the story.  On the other hand, when two things are dragging at once, it really takes its toll.  This game is in dire need of an editor.

And yet... I would still consider playing it through again.  Or at least trying.  Boy it would be nice if I shorten some of the gameplay though.  It feels weird to say so, like some kind of betrayal of my young self, who loved long games.  But it's true, and I don't think it's just me being old. I think that Zeboyd games were onto something when they made monster encounters manual.  Or Chrono Trigger with the encounters being featured on the screen, sometimes avoidable, sometimes predictable, but not hyper-persistent and random.   There are so many times when I'd like to explore a little-- hell, even hear some more of the music play out, but I know I'm going to hit a random encounter every five seconds.  In an already long game, this is just too much. 

So, ultimately I'd say Xenogears:  play at your own risk.  If you like jRPGs, particularly 90s era RPGs, Xenogears is a great game.  Compelling, unique and mysterious.  But it takes like 50 hours to get through the first disc, and it can really drag.

It's really tough to encapsulate Xenogears in just a pic or two.  But here's a cast shot.

 
P.S.  I decided to read through the Let's Play Xenogears article rather than play through the second disc.  It was enjoyable and entertaining, with music links for each scene, and a pretty funny sense of humor.  I can only recommend it as a cop-out for those of us unwilling to dump another 20 hours into this game.  

P.P.S.  Xenogears gets a lot of criticism - the same criticism I also levied against it.  So here's an article from Joystiq coming to its defense.  It really is a great game!   Mostly.

In The Northwest, Every Precipice in Rainslicked

For the life of this blog, I probably won't be talking too often about games before they're released.  This is primarily because I don't have enough information that isn't already "out there" and if I'm talking about a game before it's release date, I can almost promise you that half of what I'll say will sound like, "This looks really awesome; I can't wait to play [insert game title here]; I liked the first two games, but I don't know why the developers are taking this direction, I guess it might be alright; This looks to be a fun game, but as I don't have the necessary system, I probably won't play it unless someone else I know buys it."

However!

Penny Arcade Aventures: On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness - Episode III comes out this Monday, June 25th, 2012.  I played the first two games much later than nearly everyone else (as in ~3 years after they came out) and thought they were hilarious and kept in the spirit of the creators and the comic characters.  This third installment is a taking a different direction, artistically from the first two games (since they've moved away from Hothead Games and are now using Zeboyd Games (the people who created Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII).  The first two games looked like a souped up version of the NES game Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Wait, you're saying you didn't play that game?  It looked something like this then.  Well, my memory just failed me, because it didn't look much like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, just watch part of this and you'll get the gist.  

So, now that the context is set, my point can be made, even if it's in a different paragraph than the one where my point was mentioned.  Rainslick...III is not like those games.  It's more like Final Fantasy III/VI, at least the visuals and artwork are.  I can't say that they're trying to capitalize on some 16 bit hipster fan-boy thing since the people who wrote the game grew up playing these games when they were first out.  But anyway, just go have a look for yourselves at the trailer here:

I'm just really excited because I loved the story, style and humor of the first two games and like anyone who enjoys a series, I want to play more of that series.  And, and, and, AND!!!!  When/if you decide to purchase this game (through Steam), you will earn yourself a copy of Cthulhu Saves the World! Sadly, I already have the game (have yet to play it though) and I can't gift it to someone else.

That's all I'm going to say on this matter as again, I'm just a part of the gaming community, not part of the industry and I don't know anything about the game save what the trailer just told me.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Sounds of Silence are Excited Too