With this year being the 20th anniversary of the
release of Xenogears on the PSX, I figured it would be a good time to take a
look back on it as fans of the game hope for a remastered version for next gen
systems. Xenogears was, and still is,
called one of the best RPGs of all time, with its number one competitors in the
console world being Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, both of which came out
on the SNES system in 1995 and 1994 respectively. It tackled religious and Freudian themes with
its narration, creating a very thought provoking experience.
The story centers around protagonist, Fei Fong Wong, an
amnesiac young man who was left in a remote village three years prior to the
events of the game. When a battle using
giant mechs called Gears erupts between two waring nations and threatens to
destroy the village, Fei climbs into an abandoned Gear. In his attempt to defend the village, Fei
accidentally destroys instead and is ostracized by the surviving
villagers. This event is what sets the
whole story into motion. Over its
course, Fei is introduced to an interesting blend of characters that join him
on his quest. Each character is
extremely well developed and experiences growth over the course of the story
and that is a very good thing considering the amount of two dimensional
characters in today’s games.
Graphically, by today’s standards, the game suffers but at
the time the game came out, they were pretty good, if a bit cartoony. I believe that is this game were made today,
it would probably have been made utilizing cell shading technology which was
not available in 1998. The game world
itself is 3D, unlike the Final Fantasy of the time which were 3D sprites on 2D
backgrounds, so there are occasionally clipping issues as well as a couple of areas
where the environment obscures sections of the screen but, considering the time
the game was made, these were very minor inconveniences.
The performance of the game was phenomenal, I never
experienced any crashes or freezes, and only got a slight stutter in the frame
rate in a couple of area.
The music and sound were all top notch for its time and even
holds up to today’s standards.
As good as the music and the graphics were, the gameplay is
where this game really shined. The environmental
movement of your characters was smooth, with a good range of motion and easy to
control for the jumping portions of the game.
The combat was an interesting blend of active time and turn based combat
that incorporated martial arts move sets which allowed for the creation of
powerful combos. The combat was easy to
pick up and learn but took time to really master.
All in all, I would say that even by today’s standards,
Xenogears is still a contender for the top spot as the number one RPG of all
time and with this year being the 20th anniversary, who knows, maybe
a HD remaster (and hopefully not a remake that will screw it up like what is
currently happening to Final Fantasy VII) is on its way for a new generation of
gamer to experience this masterpiece.
(The scores take the standards of the games at the time of
release into consideration as opposed to today’s standards)
Graphics – 9
Performance – 9
Sound – 10
Gameplay – 10
Story – 10
Replayability – 9
Total – 9.5
out of 10
- Arylin Michelle
No comments:
Post a Comment