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| Topic | Post a game you like and if I've played it I'll talk about it |
| Yaridovich 07/24/17 12:42:02 AM #44: | JosefuJustice11 posted... Xenogears Oh boy, here we go... Jump back to May 1999. It had been a pretty bad year and I was glad to be out of school for the summer. I became a kind of lonely bit of human fluff, just floating around and not really doing much other than playing games and sleeping. It was a pretty dismal time. My main rotation was Final Fantasy VII, Grandia and Vandal Hearts--alongside my old SNES games. I'd heard of Xenogears through various gaming publications and while it looked okay, its art style and general appearance didn't really resonate with me at the time (I was fourteen). Then, I got the game. I was at a Best Buy with my mother and sister and my mom was just like "Let's buy you this!" and gave of me a copy of Xenogears she'd pulled off the shelf. It was a complete surprise. A good one, it turned out. Because I loved the game and it really...hmm...I don't want to say it changed my life, because it didn't, but it was something so different tonally to what I'd been playing that it really opened my eyes, I guess. As an adult, I can clarify this a little more by comparing the themes of the games I was into at the time: Final Fantasy VII had a theme of light identity on a base of general good v. evil, while Grandia was all about exposing your life to adventure in chase of fulfillment while Xenogears was about staring into the face of your personal 'God' and trying to understand whether or not you exist for it, or it exists for you. It's pretty striking. Not to mention there was a lot of violence and nekked ladies. In fact, I read online (and old BBS for vidya games, I was a brain-dead AOLer) that you saw legit boobs and while that wasn't true, I was excited for it anyway. I really liked the story, is what I'm trying to say. I'm a fan of all of his works, but Xenogears is my favorite. The cast is great, the world is great and the writing, even if the localization is iffy at points, is pretty good. People say that the story is cluttered, and while I don't disagree, it's not that bad. The biggest fish in the room is certainly that second disc. I liked it, but also really wanted to go through all that stuff. It was kind of a bummer to only get back to the world map so close to the end, but it is what it is. If you're not into the story, I feel the second disc is for sure a bigger killer than it otherwise would be. Before I talk about gameplay, I'd like to discuss the music. It's fucking incredible. It's the first soundtrack I ever imported. That was pretty great. I used to listen to those discs front to back all the time. It's so good. June Mermaid, Blue Traveler, Star of Tears, Lost, Broken Shards, Flight, Shevat, Bonds of Sea and Fire, Small Two of Pieces and I'm gonna stop here or else I'll just list the whole soundtrack. It's easily in my top 5 video game soundtracks. And the Orchestrated Myth Album was just so perfect oh my lord. I know this is stirring the pot a little, but I think it's better than Chrono Cross' soundtrack when comparing Yasunori Mitsuda works. I love on-foot combat and I wish the game focused on it a bit more. There was a lot of it in disc one, but disc two and the final dungeon really were Gear-centric. Gear combat is fine, I like it a lot, but on-foot was more vibrant for me, I dunno. Hey! Remember The graphics are muddy, maybe haven't aged well. The platforming segments are dumb bullshit I give Xenogears a 9/10 --- Talk about backseat fishing http://i.imgur.com/VqWjuCs.png ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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