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Livingtrope posted:I tried playing this game a few years back, but it always felt like a slog and I just stopped after a few hours. I am curious about it, because I heard the later games get pretty Best of luck ScurvyKip. This trilogy has a reputation for wearing out LPers, probably related to it's ultramarathon qualities. There's some sort of value buried there, but it's long, boring, unrewarding, and when your toenails start falling off halfway through Episode II DVD 2 you begin to realize that it may not be the best justification for pushing the limits of human endurance.
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May 23, 2013 03:03
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Honestly, the opening section (and ep. 1 as a whole) does a pretty bad job of getting you into the game. I know people have mentioned disc 2 of Xenogears, but it's pacing isn't nearly as awful as anything in Xenosaga. We've already invested hours in this game and we've just finished the basic combat tutorial and advanced the plot about as much as the five-minute opening cinematic in Xenogears. Ep. 1 is basically paced like the Kislev section in Xenogears, and many months from now when we're through with it we'll look back on where we've been been and realize we've barely done anything at all. The only character development we've seen is establishing Shion as an suicidal (and annoying) idiot who we're going to have to babysit for the rest of the trilogy. I'll admit the "lost battle" aid was pretty cool even if the writers could barely keep the Gnosis' powers straight, but it'll all be invalidated soon when it's revealed that the real reason for the sacrifice a massive plot hole. 100 series realians (the source of the Hilbert effect for most military units in the game) are not at all uncommon. They're loving everywhere, and a multi-trillion spacebuck fleet going into gnosis territory without any is kind of ridiculous. Oh, and if there's anything so far anyone thought was loving stupid or anime as hell, just wait until you see the 100 series. I can see what they were trying to do with the gnosis and they do look sort of alien, but they fail on pretty much every other level. They look goofy, they're completely unmemorable (I can't remember any gnosis from when I played the trilogy, just that they had names from legends/mythology and looked like a bunch of geometric objects someone lumped together in Blender), and their design is never used to serve a gameplay purpose.
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Jun 12, 2013 07:27
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You pretty much hit the mark that U-TIC as a whole is fairly incompetent. I always though of them as the Team Rocket of Xenosaga. They're a small force of substandard faceless goons whose only strength is their inexplicably hyper-competent leader, which kind of makes them fall flat as an antagonist. In Xenogears they established early on that you were up against a seemingly invincible army of teched-up sky-Nazi supermen. Here, you're just kind of baffled why anyone takes U-TIC seriously. Also, am I the only one who finds the  textures in the curry scene hilarious? I know it can be hard to make curry look appetizing, but the formless brown texture makes it look more like Bristol type 7 than food.Spiritus Nox posted:Oh Margulis, I loving love you. I love how, where the game had thus far had a fairly grounded presentation of ordinary humans' combat abilities (IE they don't really have any outside of gameplay), Margulis shows up with a sword stuck under his crotch and mystical super-speed fire powers. And Margulis hasn't even really gotten going yet.
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Jun 25, 2013 06:33
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Ziggy, because he's the only character in this game who isn't incredibly annoying chaos, because it's not sci-fi if it doesn't involve skinny androgynes in form-fitting latex piloting not-gundams and pick your poison for the last one
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Jul 8, 2013 23:38
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This update really shows that Xenosaga can actually be pretty entertaining when it drops the pretenses of sophistication and just goes for straight camp. When it's actually trying to be serious (oh no flashback KOS-MOS incident) or funny (*~anime hijinks~*) it's just painful and awkward. But when it just goes straight over the top you can't help but watch with a poo poo-eating grin. Take how they show that Junior is compensating for something. It's not enough that he loves guns, down to his giant robot being equipped with a similar set of pistols. It's not enough that he pretends to be an anime space gunslinger. It's not enough that he's got an entire crew of female hirelings. Someone at Monolith thought he needed to ride around in a giant metal penis that fucks other spaceships. Then you've got NAME REDACTED who's a compelling villain precisely because he's ridiculously over-the-top and steals every scene he's in. In some ways the only times Xenosaga becomes good is when it's an outrageous satire of Xenogears.
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Jul 16, 2013 07:21
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NikkolasKing posted:Now for me to be a total Xeno nerd: I feel like the inability to establish scale is one of their biggest mishandlings of the "space opera" setting. They can throw out big numbers in perfect works all they want but everything in-game feels rather tiny. Compare it to how Xenogears treated the Eldrige (100-270 km long and 42 km wide). It really feels huge when you realize the remains of one of the tiny point defense turrets in the opening cinematic is being used as a region-dominating military fortress, that the front section of the ship has become wedged in the earth forming a tower reaching into the upper atmosphere, and that just about every other large vehicle seen in the game was carried over on it. It also amplifies the pacing issues Xenosaga suffers from. It can never use physical movement to convey plot advancement, and our protagonists don't seem to be able to make plans or plot out their next course of action. We're left with being forced into boring dungeon after boring dungeon for reasons outside the protagonist's actions. In Xenogears, the player may not have agency, but at least the player characters do. (Except D block. gently caress D Block.) They both fall short of Xenoblade though, probably had the best use of scale in a video game to date. \/\/\/ That's definitely an...interesting opinion. Xenoblade had plenty of glaring flaws (mostly that 90% of the quests should have been cut and level shouldn't have been factored into hit calculation) but I've never heard someone complain about there being too much colorful scenery to explore and wish they were back in a featureless grey spaceship corridor. Microcline fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Dec 13, 2013 |
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Dec 13, 2013 11:48
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NikkolasKing posted:I agree with the post that the use of the Eldridge was excellent and perfect for establishing the vast gulf of technology between the planet's inhabitants and the unnamed civilization that made the ship, but Xenosaga is a very different setting from Xenogears. It's basically nothing but that unnamed civilization with nothing like the primitive Xenogears planet to be seen anywhere. Everything is ridiculously big and powerful because...well, the Federation and U-TIC are ridiculously big and powerful. It might wear thin after a while but I don't think everything was intended to amaze and impress. The Dammerung's size isn't actually important - what was important was the Rhine Maiden, which is a prett powerful weapon and the only thing to come close to it so far is KOS-MOS. The size is definitely fitting for the conflict depicted, but the player never feels it because they have no reference. The colossi in Shadow of the Colossus feel large because we see how tiny Wander is when he climbs them. We know that Mechonis and Bionis in Xenoblade are huge because all of the massive open-world sections we explore are a fraction of their bodies, and vistas are constantly used to reinforce where exactly each section is. In Xenosaga we've got no frame of reference other than empty numbers in the database and everything we explore consists of a few narrow grey corridors and 10-20 people, so it all feels tiny.
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Dec 14, 2013 00:27
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NikkolasKing posted:It depends on the series.
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Dec 17, 2013 01:05
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ScurvyKip posted:Hey guys if you could stop talking about poo poo that happens in the sequels that would be great. If only someone told that to the game's writing staff...
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Dec 22, 2013 22:10
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CmdrKing posted:Yeah, episode 1 went way overboard indulging Takahashi's love of 2001. We're not even close to peak Kubrick. There will be things that will make the 2001 references in Episode 1 look tasteful and restrained. Captain Bravo posted:Why don't Shion and the gang just... walk over to the nearest airlock, hop in their super spiffy space mecha, and ignore the dude in blue altogether? For the same reason the Xenogears crew can't just use their flying mecha to skip the platforming sections in the Tower of Babel. Because gently caress you player.
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Feb 4, 2014 09:48
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PleasingFungus posted:Speaking of which: I can't believe I never noticed that. It's like Xenosaga truck nutz.
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Feb 10, 2014 08:41
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Anonymous Zebra posted:I'll be the lone voice to say that this game is really terrible, and represents the nadir of how to use new technology to make JRPGs. I have no opinion on game 2 or 3 since I never played them because why the gently caress would I spend money/time on a sequel to a game I didn't like? You're not alone there. Xenoblade is a game I'd recommend to anyone who has ever enjoyed a JRPG. Xenogears is a game I'd recommend to anyone who has a high tolerance for PS1 JRPG bullshit, as I do think the TDI LP is funnier if you've played it yourself. Otherwise you can watch an LP and be happy you'll never have to play through the tower of babel or triple back-to-back bosses a half-hour unskipple cutscene away from the last save point. Xenosaga is a game I wouldn't recommend to my greatest enemy. I can see that it had some ambitious ideas, like a truly alien enemy or an utterly titanic scale, but those translated to lovely "five minutes in Blender" monster design and bland grey spaceship corridors. This isn't Kickstarter so empty ambition isn't going to get you very far. Zebra was dead on about the snail-crawl pacing and poorly made cutscenes, which is still miles above the awful gameplay. There are some good points, like that ep. 3 was actually decent, but if you want to sift through spotting the good ideas it might be better to let someone else take the bullet of actually playing the game.
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Mar 19, 2014 02:08
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Ziggy, chaos, and Jr.
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Sep 8, 2014 07:16
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NikkolasKing posted:Xenosaga does a few things better than Xenogears but, yeah, symbolism isn't one of them. Most things in Xenogears fit intot his larger framework of the Gnostic Allegory or Metaphor or whatever you want to call it. A lot of the names used in Xenosaga are more akin to how Final Fantasy uses mythical names ie. they are just there, with no deep significance or meaning. That's what I thought when I first played the game. It felt like someone tried to re-create Xenogears using it's superficial aspects (Long cutscenes! Bad gameplay! Giant robots killing god! Anime! Cryptic conversations with mysterious -emphasis- on -undefined- words!). After reading some of the supplemental materials I found that there's actually a coherent, symbolically consistent plot hidden underneath it all, but Takahashi let his ambition get ahead of him so there's just a massive gap between the game he wanted to make and the game Xenosaga is. Proto Merkabah is actually one of the better ones as it gets and in-game justification towards the end of Episode 2. Even in the terrible battle systems you can see some of the roots of what will become Xenoblade's gameplay. It's like a novice carpenter had the blueprints and all necessary materials to build a house. You can look at the resulting mess, identify the components of a house, and see how it was supposed to be a house, but at the end of the day it's not a house and it won't protect you from wind or rain.
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Sep 13, 2014 20:01
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Glazius posted:Well, if you're going to do sequel bait, the credits is a good place for it at least. Metal Gear does that all the time. It's okay to have a sequel hook after the credits. It loses a bit of its punch though when every conversation before the credits consists of  : First Miltia. : Lost Jerusalem.: Song of Nephelem.: Y-Data.: UUUUUUU-DOOOOOOO.: Yes. Thank you. Goodbye. Mr. Representitive.
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Sep 23, 2014 03:49
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NikkolasKing posted:Jin's okay in my book. Not my favorite party member or even my third or fourth favorite but he does have some interesting parts in the next game. Jin is a pretty fun shadow archetype to Citan, but this kind of undermines the trilogy in that 1. You have to have played Xenogears to get the full effect of his arc 2. Before it goes into full swing he's just a boring but reliable guy wearing a trashbag We've now got the three "calm and collected" characters stuck in one place creating a singularity of dullness. The action pauses and potentially entertaining information is read in monotone voices in out-of-character conversations. NikkolasKing posted:Oh we're in complete agreement then. It's just that, when people say a character is an rear end in a top hat, they usually mean it in a bad way. Like they're saying they hate the character. rear end in a top hat is the wrong word for Shion. From what we've seen, she's an objectively good person who tries to do the right thing, who sticks up for realians and doesn't shy away from risking her life to save the world. The problem is that she also has a tendency to whine and complain, and while audiences can appreciate entertaining jackasses like Citan, they have a hard time liking a character who is right but petty about it. Drachir D Nalem posted:I'm still only at episode 17 and I've made the mistake of looking at the comments each episode. Is that mad hatter person going to keep on pretending they're commenting with you all on every single one? R.I.P. NietzscheDerp (and other, less Xenosaga-relevant comments replacers) nine-gear crow posted:(not Kunihiko Tanaka, mind you, he's good). His "bug-eyed porcelain doll" style is overall less creepy than a literal hentai artist, but I wouldn't call it good character design.
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Oct 25, 2014 06:22
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The reason we talk about the gameplay and characters of Xenoblade is that their quality took us by complete surprise. Takahashi had established that he could write an entertaining story (not deep and not anything meaningful about the human condition, but there probably isn't a non-Taro Yoko JRPG that is). He knew how to balance a number of plot threads, pull off a twist, and tie everything together at the end, even if he had trouble writing non-villain characters (half the cast of 'gears being forgotten immediately after introduction and half the cast of 'saga being some combination of obnoxious and boring). The thing is that Takahashi didn't know the first thing about game design, and that spoiled everything else. The pacing was screwed up by long sections of boring gameplay (e.g. Kislev, Babel, any dungeon in Eps. I&II) and overly ambitious design goals (e.g. the majority of the plot of 'gears being crammed in disc 2 or the plot of 'saga waiting for episode III to actually start). Pre-Xenoblade, even his biggest fans thought he should get out of interactive media. While Xenoblade kept the 10% of the game where the the villains steal the spotlight, chew the scenery, and spew plot points about a very anime interpretation of gnosticism and finding God to kick his giant robot rear end, the 90% of the game we spend with the protagonists was actually enjoyable this time. Despite a few flaws, battles are fast and tense (unless you're a fun-hater who uses Sharla), the pacing works with the plot instead of against it, and the protagonists are all likeable people (even the Chu-Chu analog). And like Persona, it's all tied together by the goofy fact that the power of friendship is a tangible force capable of healing wounds and granting power-ups.
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Oct 28, 2014 03:07
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Great Joe posted:I predict it'll be boring and stupid CmdrKing posted:As someone who has a lot of negative words for Xenosaga 3, "boring and stupid" apply to only a small percentage of it. He's 50/50.  (See also: Kingdom Hearts 2)
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May 15, 2015 02:31
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nine-gear crow posted:It's basically (in this game anyway) the source code for the universe. The thing from which everything spawns and everything will return to once its time physically existing is finished. Jung is completely appropriate for Xenosaga. He was a master of cool-sounding nonsense and giving religion/fantasy a scientific veneer. Despite 'saga having a lot of flaws, the UMN is still my favorite Xeno reference (for reasons which will become clear in Episode 3).
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Jul 3, 2016 10:25
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