Since Xenogears is such a front-heavy game, and I got lucky with timing beating SO3 tonight, I decided to cut my review in half.
So, anyway, the party sets out on how to bring down Solaris, but first we have to re-save Margie and Nissan. To do that, Fei, Bart, and (let’s be honest), Elly go down to Nissan. I should have taken Elly to the portrait of her doppelgänger, but I forgot. Instead, they go down into a mausoleum filled with dead nuns and princes because that's where the great treasure of Aveh is housed. They walk through halls that look like “ancient” civilizations until they come to a gear hanger filled a great red gear with a giant mohawk. After turning the lights, they learn the crypt was a giant floating gun. And then Aveh attacks. We fight them back and Bart gains the first Omnigear in the game, Andvari. They use it to defeat Shakhan, the puppet king, and Bart declares himself king while blowing up Solaris Gate 1. And then he quits and institutes democracy which the people immediately ignore and declare him president or something. It’s not brought up again. Then they re-plan to the bring down Solaris.
First, they fire the crypt gun at the tower of Babel where Elly’s magic friends lose to us while Billy blows up his church’s headquarters because that’s where Gate 2 is.
Billy’s plot relevance is now over.
The third gate is in the ocean so the party hangs out with the MAN! OF THE! SEA! who helps them out allowing the party to go into the Mariana Trench. There they find the naked 4008-year-old nano girl, who is now clothed, and in a gear. Her name is Emeralda, her gear is Crescens. and we beat her up, she joins the party and she calls Fei Kim because they look, coincidentally, alike.
With all the gates destroyed, Solaris is finally visible on the map, along with the other random lands they’ve been hiding for some reason. The party goes there, Maria breaks the weird gravity barrier.
Maria’s plot relevance is now over.
Fei gets sucked into a tube while Elly and Citan (not sure if it matters who you bring) go elsewhere. Fei ends up in, yet, another prison until Elly saves him and takes him to her house where Fei meets her parents. It’s real romantic. Until they hack into Elly’s dad’s (who is a high ranking solider) computer to learn where everyone else is (jail). Fei leaves Elly behind because she’s too nice and Fei hates women, meets back up with Citan. Elly catches up because her dad called the cops and she peaced out because she's a wanted criminal which makes her parents rethink their lives.
The three of them fight through several strange labs, learn Solaris eats zombie people, which Citan knew, and said nothing about. Eventually, Elly and Citan randomly disappear. Fei gets trapped, again, and we see him turn in to the red-haired guy who’s been plaguing us who Citan has named Id because he liked Sigmund Freud. Here we learn Fei’s past and, ohhhhhh boyyyyyy.
So this Fei isn’t real, but is a construction of child Fei's mind who was made because real Fei’s mom beat him. Not only did The Coward, as Id calls him, make Fei, but he also made Id. The Coward is Fei’s ego, Id is his id, and Fei is a three-year-old superego created after Id fell asleep for the first time three years ago. We later learn there’s a fourth persona somewhere, but that's not expanded upon. Fei wakes up, everyone is there. Citan admits he’s been sent by Solaris to stalk Fei and that’s why he knows everything.
They go to an exit, forgetting their plan to destroy Solaris. Hammer kills Elly’s mom. Ramsus’ right-hand woman, Miang, kills her dad and Fei turns in to Id who blows up her home. Mission Accomplished!
Back in Shevat, they plan to put Fei into carbonite like Han Solo, but he escapes along with Elly to go retire to a farm. Until Ramaus shows up and kills them and that’s the end of disk 1.
Disk 2 sucks. Square took all the budget from Xenogears to finish Final Fantasy VII and the devs turned it into a visual novel. It starts with a flashback to a previous incarnation of Fei and Elly named Lacan and Sophia. The painter who painted the Holy Mother of Nissan. Afterward, we return to Fei and Elly being revived by a really old dude named Taura. Citan shows up because he still knows everything. Taura also allows Fei to tap into Id in his gear. We now ride Weltall-2 to beat up Ramsus while Elly shoots a missile into the air to remove a limiter implanted by Solaris into the land dwellers somehow. It goes poorly as everyone turns in to zombies. A lot of scenes happen and it’s all confusing Elly acts like a savior to the zombies. Everyone loves her. The party looks for Omnigears and finds Billy’s. The zombies grow in number. The Solaris Emporer, Cain, is killed by Ramsus. Rico gets his Omnigear. The ship from the opening cutscene I didn’t talk about rises from the ocean. We kill god. The stupidest scene in video games happen.
Okay, so Miang and her friend Krealian kidnap Fei and friends, minus Elly who’s helping the zombies, and crucifies them. Well, not them, their gears. All the gears are crucified. All the robots are tied to a stick. This includes Cui-Chu, who can just changer her size, and Maria, who sits on the head of 17. Everyone else has s just sitting in the cockpit of their crucified robot. Stupid.
Elly shows up in her Omnigear, the same ridden by Sophia, but loses and Krealian lets us go as he kidnaps Elly and she leaves our party for good. I replaced her with Emeralda. More confusing stuff happens and Fei is frozen in Carbonite for real this time until Id breaks out and goes to the place where the Zohar fell to the planet 10000 years ago. There we learn all about Fei. We learn his mom was possessed by Miang and that’s why she beat him. Eventually, all the personas combine again and Weltall turns in to Xenogears after learning Graph is Lacan, Wiseman is Fei’s dad and Fei and Elly are reincarnations of the first humans on the planet. Or, more apropos, Fei (Abel) was the only survivor and Elly was his dream girlfriend/mom while Cain and the Solaris Gazel are the first people made by the Zohar/Deus. Like, I said, confusing.
Then the final dungeon when all the zombies combine into god. We kill him, then Miang. Fei hangs out, nude, with Elly and Krealian and the games over. Everyone on the planet is gone so...happily ever after?
I’ll wrap this up fast.
The music is top-notch and one of the reasons why I’m a Mitsuda fanboy, but the combat is where Xenogears shines.
It’s turned based, ATE, but with a fighting game-esq combo input. Attacks are inputted with a three-button combo and, if inputted in a certain way, creates a super attack. Gear combat is kinda similar, but you need to build-up to the special attacks. It's easy, through; 1 rank (up to three) is just one attack. Eventually, you get the ability to perform super combos which are more damaging and easier on the fuels but only for a limited time.
Xenogears used to be my favorite game. It’s still top five (four) and I don’t see it dropping much further. Even though the convoluted story which takes several playthroughs and even more wiki-dives to get, budget cuts, and dropped plots (The Slayer of God?) Xenogears shines unlike game before, or since.
And hour and a half, believe or not.
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