COURSE ONE: RIGHT HERE. GET YOU SOME.
COURSE TWO: PART ONE. SUCH FUN. PART TWO. GOOD FOR YOU.
INT: STEREOTYPICAL GRIMY MEDIEVAL DUNGEON, CASTLE GRUYERE, CHEESE MOUNTAIN
"Alright, Grahf, you listen to me and you listen good!" roared the King of Cheese Mountain from a parched and aching throat. "I don't know what it is you want, but I will not stand here and...wait. I WILL stand here! Because I'm stuck that way! You chained me in my own dungeon, set fire to the banquet hall, boned my wife, and you just keep ranting about power! Literally, you picked up the bone from my giant turkey leg every king is required to have and clocked her with it! What do you actually WANT?!"
"Here stands the great and glorious King of Cheese Mountain asking I, Grahf, the Seeker of Power, what it is I could possibly want! It would seem your recent troubles have addled your thinking. What is it the Seeker of POWER could want? It's right there on the tin! Dummy! And in this moment, the power is mine. You think yourself clever, petty king, but you will learn! I defy you! Come! Come and kneel before Grahf! GRAHF!"
"You have got to be kidding me! First of all, I can't kneel, as I am chained upright to a wall! Second of all, that's not even your line! What's happened to you since 1998? You were an absolute menace, but now you're infringing on General Zod's gimmick! You were the best part of Xenogears! The plot always started cooking when you showed up screaming about power! Where's your pride, man? Where's your dignity? Answer me!"
"Dignity! You talk of dignity! You, who can't even stick to a schedule! You, who have stretched a three part article series over the course of a year! You, who have no actually good jokes, just chaos and outdated references and utterly non-topical nonsense! No, Cheese King! The power is mine! Your power! The power supreme! The power of cheese! And I demand of you the one thing you fear most - to watch as I finish this article for you! No more waiting! No hesitation! All that is yours shall be mine!"
The King grumbled petulantly. He could not pinch his nose, nor rub his temple, so he scuffed his toe into the dirty stone. "Okay. Fine! A final battle it is! Cheese versus cheese! This is gonna be about how Xenogears sucks anyway, so that means I get to take my power back - by talking a lot of shit about YOU, you cheesy, monologuing bastard ! Na na, boo boo, stick your head in doo doo!"
"Well now you're just being childish. Fine. Prove it! Prove you are still the King of Cheese Mountain! Jerk."
Goddamnit. Xenogears. Where do you even start with Xenogears? In the long annals of JRPG history, never has there been a more notable case where extreme ambition, insane talent, laughable inexperience, and lamentable lack of budget came together to create what should have been the greatest JRPG ever made. If it had been given a chance to finish it's story properly, develop it's characters narrative arcs out fully, and become the vision it's creators dreamed it could be - it would be definitively and unarguably true. As it stands, one half is the greatest JRPG ever told...and the other is a 20 hour slideshow that you occasionally trek through a dungeon while watching. And still it might be the greatest regardless. But we aren't here for that. Are we? We're here to talk about the things that suck. But here's where I make an admission to you, true believers: I fucked up.
All the way back in December of 2024, I sat down to make the title image for a silly article that, as I always do, spiralled rapidly into something far too ambitious. And on that title image, I decided, without really thinking about it, to include Fei Fong Wong. The trouble here at the closing moments of the Great Cheese Mountain Sacred Cow Barbecue Extravaganza is that Xenogears is in no way a sacred cow. Not a single person you will find on the internet, not a single review either old or new, even those people like me who think this is an all time classic will not hesitate in the same breath that we praise it with to talk at great length about all of the numerous ways it sucks. It's not seen as anything but what it is by anybody: brilliant and heavily, tragically flawed. And maybe, looking back at the narrative, that is how we regain power in this situation. We just accept that it sucks, and don't try to hide our admiration despite that.
Let's start from the beginning. The opening is a long anime cutscene of a giant spaceship, the Eldridge, being attacked and taken over by...something. It's intense, and it's well done, and it REALLY gets you pumping. There are hints to the overall story and what actually is happening if you rewatch it - you see that it is the final boss of the game taking over this ship, you see the Zohar Modifier, a significant McGuffin in the story...and then the ship crashes to the planet below and a naked anime chick with super long indigo hair steps out of the wreckage to look at the sunrise.
This will all be explained in about 100 hours and NOT A MINUTE SOONER you spoiled brat!
We then open on something that will become incredibly and increasingly common as this game progresses: a long, slow opening text crawl giving us a big expository dump of information on the current situation, and then not even a flashback, but a flash FORWARD of all things. And that's one of the first and largest issues you're going to find when it comes to Xenogears: cutscenes. A lot of very long, very dense, often confusing cutscenes that sometimes go for HALF A GODDAMN HOUR with no action...and if you're really lucky? You'll get to fight a boss right after! Without saving! Glee! And that's both the greatest strength and the gaping gap in the armor of this game. It's story and themes and characters draw from a variety of esoteric sources - Nietzsche, Jung, Gnostic gospels, the Kabbalah, and Evangelion to name a few. It covers very serious topics of mental health, destiny, interpersonal relationships, generational trauma, and yes, POWER, as Grahf so often goes on at length about in a very late 90's anime fashion.
And it's all set up in Disc 1, you are left with so many questions, so many dangling threads remaining to be pulled...then the infamous second disc happens, and for the most part, the next 20 hours is us staring at a static image of Fei or Elly in a chair under a spotlight with the Cross of Nisan swinging in the background. An occasional foray through a dungeon to break it up with a few story beats, then you're dropped at last on the world map again - in a world that is utterly and entirely destroyed. There's a few optional areas and the final dungeon and not much else. It just slowly deflates like a sad helium balloon bobbing in the corner.
Usually this spot is for a funny caption, but, here we are. See this? 20 hours ago, this had cities and towns and the super awesome floating city called the Thames that was destroyed off-screen along with it's awesome captain and his MEN! OF THE SEA! It's all gone - and we experienced NONE OF IT.
You're left with the dungeons, with combat, and with the last few battles of the game and any requisite grinding. Which is the big failing of the creative team having to make the choice of either ending the game after disc 1, or putting together this shoddy slideshow bullshit in order to at least finish up, because their strict two year time-frame was over. The strongest part of the game - the narrative, the themes, the characters - is suddenly gone and all that's left is the combat, the dungeons, and platforming with a camera that actively and aggressively hates you, the WORST PART.
Bitch, please, the real victim here is me.
Let's just do a little list of the shitty parts of navigating various locations on disc 1, shall we?
- STUPID MOUNTAIN BEHIND THE GENERIC DOOMED IDYLLIC RPG VILLAGE: just getting to terms with the fact that the jumping is clunky, the frame rate is iffy, and the camera is just NEVER where you need it to be. But, mostly harmless.
- CREEPY FOREST FULL OF WOMAN BEATING ELVES IN TINY LOINCLOTHS AND GIANT DINOSAURS FOR SOME FUCKING REASON: Long, dark, half adventure, half cut-scenes that say a lot while saying nothing at all. Get used to it, fucko. This is your life now.
- SAND DUNE WALKING SIMULATOR AND RAPIDLY SINKING SAND SUBMARINE: Hope you figured out that jumping and camera. Wasn't it fun when you got to punch stuff with a robot an hour and a half back?
- FEATURELESS GREY CAVE WHERE YOU FINALLY GET TO ENGAGE IN GIANT ROBOT KUNG FU AT WILL: Welcome to the land of random battles with a five second load time every three steps. Hope you go the right way! Hope you bought Gear upgrades from the GRUMPY OLD FART before he decided you hadn't been kicked in the nuts enough today and hopped in his chubby as hell rocket bot to kick your ass.
- STUPIDLY CONFUSING CAPITAL CITY: Actually kinda fun, pretty cool martial arts tournament, annoying as hell mandatory hide and seek section with bratty orphans and weird optional mini-games aside. Hope you somehow know that in the last round of the tournament that you get a missable, unique item if you don't punch the grieving child in his grotesquely huge forehead. It also helps that this game was scored by Yasunori Mitsuda, and he is at his absolute PEAK with this soundtrack, and this is a very strong cut.
- STUPID CANAL SYSTEM OF THE STUPIDLY CONFUSING CAPITAL CITY: Swim AGAINST the current while navigating a maze while repeatedly being interrupted so Fei can punch more people including 5000 Year Old Elvis Presley in the daddy bags and being completely lost and disoriented after it's over. Riveting.
- STUPID GODDAMN CASTLE OF THE STUPIDLY CONFUSING CAPITAL CITY: Take out your aggression on hapless guards, get your ass kicked by the only competent person you've met so far who isn't Citan, cringe at the awkward romantic tension between Bart and his cousin, then enjoy Fei's Terry Bogard impression that will be relevant to the ongoing plot MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES.
- FUCKING MOUNTAIN CLIMBING: Did you perchance buy some response circuits and beam coats for your gear four hours ago on board the sand submarine? No?Then good fucking luck with the solo boss rush and following steroid rage fueled couple's spat.
- THE WORST DAMN SEWER DUNGEON EVER MADE: Suffer. Be lost, be attacked every five seconds, be poisoned, lug around the most useless case of 'unstoppable badass as a boss becomes useless weakling in party' ever. You will suffer, and you will like it. The Nortune Sewers are where happiness goes when it wants to be reminded that it's been a filthy whore and needs to be punished.
- ROBOMAZE: Not too bad overall, a lot of good giant robot kung fu action, and tiny little dudes throwing giant robot sized wrenches to attack before you stomp them will never not be hilarious,
- BADASS FLOATING CITY FULL OF DRUNK AS HELL SAILORS, THEIR WALRUS CAPTAIN, AND THEIR EFFETE DOLPHIN XO: The Thames is the best location in any RPG ever and I will fight you, and I'll win because I! AM A MAN! OF THE SEA! HAHAHAHA.
- ZOMBIES ATE MY GHOST SHIP: In no way is this the start of a long setup for a Soylent Green reference 15 hours from now. Atmospheric yet assmospheric.
- NOT THE VATICAN: The only good part is that this whole section leads to us forcing a twink to fire his drunk father out of a giant robot sized cannon to blow up an implied child predator imbued with Grahf's beloved POWER!
- LONG, AGGRAVATING CLIMB UP A PIECE OF THAT SHIP FROM THE OPENING ANIME SCENE THAT WILL MAKE SANE PEOPLE JUST DECIDE THIS GAME ISN'T WORTH IT: Those jumps. The camera, usually fairly close, positioned so far away your giant Gears are just dark blobs of pixels against a dark background, while still being difficult to maneuver into it's proper place. This is like trying to harpoon a whale with a fucking salad fork. Oh. I forgot. Because of the multi-second delay when the game is loading one of the frequent random battles? The game will take away your ability to jump while it's happening. Which means even if you line up the jump just right, YOUR DUMB ASS IS FALLING DOWN. How dare you think you are allowed to have fun!
- CITY FULL OF HYPOCRITES, HORNY TEDDY BEARS, AND LOOT YOU CAN'T GET IF YOU DIDN'T BEAT A RANDOM GUY IN THE FIRST VILLAGE AT ROCK PAPER SCISSORS FIVE TIMES IN A ROW 40 HOURS AGO: Absolute fucking NONSENSE in every fucking sense of that word, adorable anime mascot teddy bear thing orgy, a 5000 year old queen who looks like she's 12, an ACTUAL 12 year old forced into your party, and MORE PLATFORMING. But the boss rush is cool so. Yay?
- CHICKENSHIT CANDYASSED MAZE WHILE DRAGGING AROUND A LITERAL CHILD WITH 1 DAMAGE ATTACKS: I think I want to go back to the fucking sewers.
- UNDERGROUND DUNGEON BELOW THE BRATTY GIRLPOPE'S CATHEDRAL: Come for yet another chickenshit candyassed maze, stay for the icky incestuous subtext. Also leads to beating up the Giant Robot Pope and Bart showing he's a comrade of the glorious proletariat by abolishing the fat and corrupt monarchy before he's forced to marry his cousin. I wish I were lying.
- SECRET FLOATING SKY FASCIST CITY WITH AN ANCIENT EMPEROR RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING MANKIND SEALED INTO A LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM THAT IS SHAPED LIKE A THRONE WHO IS IN NO WAY A 40K REFERENCE THAT'S ACTUALLY RUN BY ANIME JOSEPH MENGELE: Super long, super story dense, super full of constant random battles, aggravating puzzles, and the looming threat of Games Workshop lawyering up. Also: child abuse! Murder! Cannibalism! Eugenics! Boobies! And MORE!
Hope you like narrative dissonance and violins. And, you know, never having Elly in your party again. Surprise!
The thing is, I could go on forever hammering away at points that have been made ad nauseam about all the ways Xenogears sucks, the reasons behind it, the utterly overambitious dreams of a team who had never made a video game before...but it's been done. As said - this is not a sacred cow. It's a unique specimen. We know it sucks and why, and how badly it sucks and how, and yet...many of us will still claim it is our favorite anyway. Why? How could that possibly be?
I think that what makes the difference here is that same overwhelming ambition, huge ideas, depth of themes and the purity of the vision this team had. They poured all of that into absolutely every second, every word, every moment of this first disc of the game, crafting something that is in a class of it's own. There is nothing like it, and there never will be again. Xenosaga, Xenoblade...no matter what they did after? It will never be Xenogears. It will never approach the promise it had, and the execution on that promise that was aborted halfway due to realities of scheduling, money, and a parent company quickly running out of cash despite the success of FF7 and countless other classics and dancing with insolvency. Xenogears is earnest, and it's honest, and it believes in itself so fucking hard that we can't help but believe in it too. It's stained glass on an abandoned cathedral - untended, uncared for, crazed and cloudy and surrounded by crumbling ruin, but still undeniably beautiful. It's Rudy. It's Rocky fucking Balboa. That's the real power of Xenogears. It makes you BELIEVE in it. Flaws be damned. If you want to play it today? I seriously suggest getting the Perfect Works mod build. Just set your expectations beforehand and love it for what it is, and also what it is not. Stand tall and shake the heavens, you magnificent, half baked bastard.
"At last you understand. The power you sought? That we sought? It was never contained in the likes of Sonic 2, Final Fantasy VII, or even the much lauded Super Mario Bros. 3! It was contained in something flawed, something uncertain, something that rises above those humble origins and becomes everything it can possibly be. Even if it isn't what they thought they could be, or what they wanted to be, they clawed their way forward inch by bloody inch with ragged fingers and became something! That is the true power I've sought, King of Cheese Mountain! The power of unity! We suffer - together!"
EXT. CASTLE GRUYERE, CHEESE MOUNTAIN
