/vr/ - Retro Games

there was no controversy at all, it was a small niche title and everyone else was waiting for ff8

>>2185524
So how were the reactions from RPG gamers in general?

>>2185557
aww man tower of babel is so hard :(
i wish they finished the dungeons in the second cd so it I didn't have to just read a visual novel
kinda like that

>>2185557
aww man tower of babel is so hard :(
i wish they had finished the dungeons in the second cd so it I would have something to play rather than just read a visual novel
kinda like that

>>2185557
We took to the streets, crying that God was dead and someone finally "got" it. We didn't wear fedoras at the time, but if we had, it would have been called the Five Thousand Fedora Footslog.

>>2185568
which is funny because god actually exists in xenoniggers
it's some sort of ethereal energy called wave existence that lives inside every single creature
xenonigs was more about criticizing organized religion institutions than the beliefs themselves, just like ff tactics

>>2185592
also spoiler warning

>>2185557
The second disc can only be described as BROKEN
MIRROR, A MILLION SHADES OF LIIIIIIIGHT

>>2185557
I heard they weren't going to release it stateside because they thought it's themes might stir up controversy with religious groups, but they released it anyways and nobody really cared.

>>2185514
People thought it was unfinished. Because it was.

I'm just gonna say it. The Xenosaga trilogy is better than Xenogears.

I don't know if it was true or not, but I can attest that around when this came out I was reading gaming news about it and several sources said it "almost didn't come out in the States", so that rumor is at least as old as the game itself

Personally I didn't take any issue with it nor did I know anyone who did, IIRC Silent Hill released around that time too and was a much bigger deal in terms of potentially offensive content

Wasted potential the game, essentially. It could have been a really interesting RPG, but it turned into a poorly-paced Masato Kato plot dump with bad dungeons, a boring battle system, and some completely superfluous platforming elements.

>>2187045
>Platforming elements

God damn tower of babel. All my rage.

>>2185514
Going to say no considering I never heard of one and played the shit out of the game.

Fighting god(s) theme? I mean that is common in JRPGs even then and Calvin and Hobbes contributed more to my eventual atheism then any game.

Wish Square's niche shit got bigger budgets so many of those titles back then were so good. Company is total assholes though and often C&D fans trying finish/fix their broken crap.


Only games I recall getting real attention/controversy were an old car arcade game, Doom (which was 6 years old at the time that happened), Mortal Kombat, and GTA. I think Carmeggedon got it too a bit.


>>2185592
It was more that 'god' was a 4th dimensional being that got stuck in our world which is basically spill over from the 4th dimension. And if you want to break your brain consider that a shadow cast by a 4th dimensional being would be in 3D.

>>2185557
It was well received by critics and lots of people I knew bought it although I didn't. It sold a lot, by this point Square was the Rockstar of the 90s, every game they released was a big deal and got hyped and became a Greatest Hits title.

>living in Europe
>no Xenogears

Thank god modchips existed.

>>2185514
The only controversy it had is about what a clusterfuck disc 2 is.

>>2185514
I was in college when that was released in the US. There was no controversy at all. Within the gaming/anime world the themes were already cliched and no one even batted at eye at the killing god stuff. Outside of the gaming/anime world no virtually one had even heard about it let alone cared.

Besides, it was hardly the first game where you go and kill God.

>>2189406
Also this.

I was a small kid (7 or 8 in 1997) when I got the demo disk for it and loved the shit out of it. I always enjoyed the jumping mechanic a lot. When we finally got it (my brother bought it) I played really far but could never get past the early section in those caves in the desert. Eventually, just a few years later, I beat the first disc but couldn't find the second for a while. Finally beat it when I was like 11. At that point I beat it a second and third time because it was right around when I actually watched Evangelion and understood some of it... I think it was 2002 (13 years old). I read Dune when I was a kid and knew a bit about Nietzsche and Freud so this shit was amazing to me.

I had a PSM with previews for it, and I had an EGM that had a bunch of details about the cut content.

>>2187045
Much of that is due to it being rushed because Square wanted to unload the pile of shit known as FF8 in time for the holiday season.
I thought the combat system was good, though.

>>2192478
FF8's story and characters are complete horseshit, but I do really like the battle system. Junctioning, drawing and casting magic, I swear I use more magic in that game than any other FF, it's so satisfying to rip Flare out of an enemy and throw it in their face. Also I really like what they tried with the leveling, where grinding actually makes things more difficult. So if you want to do everything it's actually sort of challenging as opposed to most RPGs where if you do everything you become so powerful nothing in the game can touch you.

I remember in FFVII I had killed Sephiroth before he used Supernova and then heard everyone talking about it. So on my next playthrough I decided to wait for him to do it. But I'd min maxed the game so hard by that I had Cloud covering and then counter attacking everything for around 150 000 damage and I forgot to unequip him so my party spent the entire fight throwing Megalixers at Sephiroth to keep him alive long enough to cast it. It was pretty ridiculous and after that I found FFVIII's system pretty refeshing.

Ohh and Triple Triad was fuck awesome as well.

>>2192834

While I like the junction system a lot too I think the game was too exploitable because of scaling the enemies with your party. Get the Card command, which you can do just moments before you get the first two GFs, and you won't have to gain a single XP from random battles while farming AP and being able to upgrade your weapons.

>>2192947

Moments AFTER the first two GFs*

>>2192947

I meant after the first two GFs

Yeah, whatever, more Xeno less Final.

>>2185514
There was no controversy. It was a secondary Squaresoft game people played between Final Fantasies. It had a story that seemed very deep and overall impressive to 12 year olds and made everyone else laugh. Graphics were pretty good, Yasunori Mitsuda wrote the soundtrack and Elly was hot. The only thing even remotely controversial about it was the "lol Eva clone rofl - shut the fuk up or I punch" type of discourse.

>>2192951
Xenoblade, nigga.

I don't know how it's connected to Xenogears, but apparently it is.

It's also a better game

>>2193290
They're probably as connected as Xenogears and Xenosaga.

Meaning:not really

>>2185592
>xenoniggers
Seriously? That's what you're gonna go with when "Xenoqueers" is readily available?

>>2193334
Kid's just learned how to be edgy on 4chan, let him be.

>Thief stole my lockpick
>Can't get it back
>Have to start chapter over

Well, there goes my SS playthrough. Time to go play something else.

>>2193334
If you were gonna throw in a nigger insult, Xeniggers fits way better than Xenoniggers.

>>2193334
>>2193419
damn it i wish i was hardcore like u guise

I think I got it for Christmas a year or two after it came out. Ended up becoming my favorite PSX game.

>>2185514
Personally I loved it. also european but got a copy from someone selling burned CDs online and made my own PAL conversion.. now can't believe I actually did that and it worked, how could there have been such a problem making an official version.

My main beef with Xenogears, aside from how unfinished it was is how a good 3/4 of your party members are useless. They do nothing for the storyline and are also completely hopeless in battle.

Pic related

>>2185514
Everyone got mad that you had to fuck your own mom in the game

>>2196659
I fucking love her battle idle animation, it's hilarious. But I can't find a gif of it anywhere

>>2196659
She's cute, that's of utmost importance.

>>2196691
Dude, wtf?!

>>2185514
It would have been controversial if it had been popular. Its content is probably what got it's budget pulled in the first place.

>>2196691
This is not Shadow Hearts.

>religious themes
>controversial
'murica

>>2192967

The story is throwaway but enjoyable in a weird way. For me the complexity of the plot made it hard to predict what would happen next even when in hindsight many of the twists were painfully obvious, or maybe I just read into it too hard and didn't expect simple solutions.

>>2196659

She's probably pointless to the story because of how unfinished the game is.

>>2197010
Well, these days America is like that. But the 90's was a much less controversial age than the crazy pants post 9/11 American culture.

>>2199738
Then explain why some of the localizers left the project because they were afraid of the potential backlash.

>>2199747
Well America has always been a little bit religiously nutty with some people. But the complete lack of any actual backlash or controversy when the game did come out shows you that those people were outlier nutbags anyways.

However these days, I wouldn't be surprised if a game with the same content was more controversial.

>>2199738
Just because there wasn't an overt lightning rod doens't mean it wasn't shitty. People bitched that Single Moms on TV shows degraded the family, or that Bart Simpson was corrupting the youth. Games were automatically scoffed at and viewed as Childrens toys, and then somehow every "expert" asshole was around to talk about how Night Trap was an accurate representation of the evils of gaming.

People were god damn morons back, there just wasn't an Internet to call bullshit with - the media and the institutions were interested in pitching narrow focus stories that fit their preconceived biases which they knew would package and sell well with willfully ignorant boomers (who were too busy chasing money, being addicted to prescription meds, getting divorced, et al to properly raise and be involved in their own childrens lives and actually care about what they were interested in, opting instead to dump them off at Daycare or in front of the television to watch Nickelodeon and play video games), meaning video games were evil, moral society was degrading, and could your neighbor be a homosexual? Find out at 11.

>>2199889
Xenogears only got a pass because it didn't get noticed. Video games were still niche and obscure-ish, and companies mostly tried to dodge controversy entirely by flying under the radar and being overtly pro-censorship. Sony started letting in games from Japan with far more relaxed censorship standards (NoA wouldn't even touch religion) and marketed the Playstation as the console for teenagers and 20-somethings, and the rest is history. People went apeshit over moral panic garbage back then and were played like fiddles by Talk Radio but there was less visibility and awareness of everything going on around them (hence the paranoid circle the wagons approach with "everything is bad!")

If they knew about Final Fantasy Tactics and Xenogears they'd have had a fucking stroke.

>>2185514

>Those eyes
>That pose

Goddamn. This picture is much more arousing than seeing her naked.

>>2185514
I think there was a bit more controversy with Final Fantasy Tactics, which made allusions to the catholic church in the medieval ages.

>>2187027
Yes, I read about this too in video game mags.

>>2196659
Her gear was pretty good when you first got it and it held up pretty well toward the end of the game.

A reminder that Chu Chu died for your sins

>>2196659
She's a loli with drills, so she's good enough.

I loved this game when I started playing it for the first time last year.

Then I got to the second disk, and I dropped it. It felt as if someone stabbed me in the back and jumped all over my bleeding body.

>>2202414
i love the game but never made it to the 2nd disc even after 75 hours of play... and by all accounts i'm better off

>>2202414
Yeah, I powered through it on willpower just cause I wanted to see the ending.

It's a shame because the game would have been great if they'd actually let you do the things the game tells you that you did. As is I got the feeling that the second disk was basically the devs being passive aggressive about the game being rushed for release.

>"And then your characters would have gone to this awesome dungeon, and fought this cool boss fight."
>"But our funding got cut and the game was rushed so here's Fei sitting in a chair telling you how cool it was".

>>2192104
>As a child, liked Evangelion, liked Dune, liked Zenogears, and liked Nietzsche.

Same. Weird.

I'm 30 and bought it the second month after it came out.

I very clearly remember that it had ZERO impact in "mainstream" gaming circles at the time. However, it was wildly popular with the type of people who played good JRPGs. It frankly had nearly-universal critical acclaim among that crowd (though everyone acknowledged that the game was incomplete -- it was known as a diamond in the rough).

Nobody really talked about the religious "controversy." Never really was an issue.

>>2200094
Elly is one of the most sexual creatures in video gaming, no discussion.

>>2204259
When is she ever sexualized in the actual game though? Aside from the kinda lewd drawings in the artbook, she's not really made to be sexual at all.

>>2204264
Come on, that crazy killing spree was pure unadultured high octane sex.

>>2204281

>>2204282
Look me in the eyes, look me straight in the eyes, and say you wouldn't.

>>2204286

>>2204290
Then we have a gentlemanly agreement.

Gotta agree though, despite actually having sex in the game, she's not sexualized at all. It's just something about her and her design and possibly her Holy Mother sort of role within the story that makes everybody think so. I prefer that over T&A anyway.

>>2204295
I lold when I saw Big Joe.

>>2204281
That's a serious stretch.

>>2204286
Of coruse I would!

>>2204307
Sorry but if you're not getting sexually aroused by the thought of Elly ripping your face off, I have the duty to inform you that something is wrong with you.

>>2204295
its the pantyhose, mang

>>2199958
Japan sending out media that basically said "the church is corrupt" largely got ignored because all the various sects of Christianity in America actually do think the others are corrupt. That and "video game atheism" isn't as alliterative as "video game violence".

'hurr durr 2nd disc sucks' is a giant shitty meme that gets spouted by people who never actually played the game but have to justify why they won't play the game somehow so they feel good about themselves.

Sure the 2nd disc plays a lot differently than the 1st, but holy shit disc 1 was already 40+ hours long. Did you seriously want Xenogears to last 100+ hours? Because if you wanted a fully realized 2nd disc, that's what it would have been.

Plus the 2nd disc isn't even that long. Plus it's not even that bad. Again it has transformed into a terrible meme of sorts because people on the internet can do nothing but complain. Ya go ahead and ignore the 20/10 first 40 hours of the game and just focus on the 7/10 last 10-15 hours of the game, where the very last bit of the game had some great dungeons.

>>2204365
>Did you seriously want Xenogears to last 100+ hours?

Yes, I want to kill myself when an RPG doesn't clock past 40. I also thought disc 2, while mostly unplayable, was the best part because that's when everything in the very confusing plot came together and started to make sense.

Just how much truth is in the statement that Square wanted to throw more bodies at the FF8 development so the Xenogears staff was reduced and they had to cut the second disc short?

Sounds plausible but it also smells like one of those self-perpetuating internet legends.

>>2204375
>I also thought disc 2, while mostly unplayable, was the best part because that's when everything in the very confusing plot came together and started to make sense.
yes thats why disc 2 shouldn't get hate. at the 40+ hour mark, I just wanted the plot to further progress.

I think most of the people hating on disc 2 are those who very specifically want a gameplay-centric experience. In that case Xenogears was the wrong game choice in the first place (although I think Xenogears is one of the better JRPGs out there in terms of gameplay).

>>2204365
I'm masturbating to the butthurt in this post.

>>2204445
go back to /v/ if you get off to hating video games

>>2204449
I'm doing just fine here, thanks.
you're tears are delicious

it kinda fits as an evangelion tie-in that they would run out of budget and have to resort to deliver the climax thru an in-character ego trip monologue, just like how episodes 25 and 26 turned out to be
i mean how fucking ironic it had to be a videogame with the exact same aesthetics and themes as evangelion that does that

>>2204471
Even Alanis Morrissette has a better idea of what irony constitutes than you do.

>>2204480
you must be the same faggot that think the second cd was totally not halfassed and too much gameplay was a bad thing that i just rek'd a few posts above

>>2204487
you must be from /v/

>>2204491
yeah man there's this crazy 4chan feature where people can post in two boards at the same time and you have no way of telling
amazing how that works

im also from /jp/, /a/, /sp/ and /int/

>>2204493
wow all the shitposting boards congrats.

>>>/qa/

>>2204501
this a good one for you
>>>/lgbt/

>>2193334

Dude say Say Xenoniggers out loud 5 times fast.

>>2204502
rekt him good brah

This thread sure could use a cleanup!

>>2204521
I hate these lame trolls fresh out of /v/ like everyone else but more than anything I hate the people who keep feeding them.
Then again OP's question was already answered days ago, this thread is pointless.

>>2204528
I agree but we can still make this a Xenogears appreciation thread or something along those lines.

Actually there's one thing I need to ask:

did that giant Xenogears bible ever get a non shit translation?

Last time I check only the first chapter had a decent release while the whole thing got a "Google-quality" hackjob.

>>2202746

>75 hours

How can you take so long and not even reach disc 2? I finished the whole game in 50 hours on my first playthrough.

>>2204365
I wanted to play a video game, not read a visual novel. That's why I don't like the second disc.

>>2204856
no idea, just fooled around and explored a lot

disc 2 is unanimously a disaster so i don't really regret it

>>2196659
>Stands outside her mech
>in a battle with fucking god

Maria is the biggest badass in the history of mecha

>>2204471
xg ain't an eva tie-in though bub

anno wrote the whole thing while losing his mind with depression and mental illness and has been quoted that it has no real meaning so i'd say xg wins out for writing quality anyhow

Okay, general discussion time.

Xenogears failed in some aspects and stumbled over itself more than just a couple of times, but I love it simply for the reason that it exists. There was a short time when ridiculously overambitious high concept JRPGs seemed to be the future; I miss that time.

>>2207238
>disc 2 is unanimously a disaster
says people who've never actually played the game

>>2208204
you again, faggot? suck my dick

>>2185514

I don't recall any controversy but I did hear about the game first through some yearly game awards in a popular magazine that mentioned the religious themes which being an edgy "atheist" teen at the time made me go out and buy it like I bought Evangelion etc.

Was fun until disc 2 killed me with dialogue.

>>2208204
I played the game and hated disk 2

>>2209176

everyone did

Playing XG was a great experience I had as a gamer, it's a one-of-a-kind game that I'm really glad I played.

I found the transition to Disc 2 jarring but I'd read about it beforehand so I had adjusted my expectations accordingly.

Suddenly every bit of gameplay became precious whereas in Disc 1 I had grown tired and by the end of it I was just going through as fast as I could, keeping grinding to a minimum.

The thing that really bothered me isn't in how Disc 2 plays like a cliff notes version but rather that I was so interested in the story that, from time to time, I would get the feeling they had cut stuff important parts out so it was hard to keep up at times.

I'm also a tremendous fan of its OST, I still listen to June Mermaid from time to time. The scene where it first plays, with Emeralda in her gear was one of many wow moments where the game showed a lot of soul.

And the whole ending is amazing.

>>2209204
Wrong.

You don't speak for everyone.

>>2204365
>>2204375
>>2204382

Which of the Xenogears episodes that were briefly shown but never realized would you have loved to see the most?

Episode III with Kim would have been based.

>>2209803
Forgot to post this.

>>2207723
>There was a short time when ridiculously overambitious high concept JRPGs seemed to be the future; I miss that time.
I miss the feel some RPGs of this time had, good or bad.

>>2209350

Disc 2 was disappointing. A lot of major plot points simply skimmed over. I wanted to know more about people turning into monsters and all that. I still enjoyed it. Storywise it was great, even if the gameplay lacked. I'd still love to see a complete Xenogears with a completely playable disc 2. But even as it is, Xenogears is my favourite game of all time. It fails in many ways, mostly due to trying to be bigger than it could, but goddamn it's amazing.

Xenogears isn't a good game. The combat is shallow as hell and features abolutely no customization whatsoever, the dungeons are not worth talking about, the sound design is godawful, the story is way too silly for it's own good, the characters are nothing special at all and the writing/translation is godawful.
Still, it's got some really fucking neat ideas and has a certain charme to it, but I certainly wouldn't call it a good >>2209803
All except the first and the last episode would have been completely wasted. We already know what happened in them, we don't need to have them be stretched out over 40 hours.
>>2209808
How the fuck would you even turn that into a JRPG?

>>2187017
That's like saying swallowing liquid shit is better than swallowing solid shit. Either way, you're still eating shit.

>>2211109
>>2211141

Careful, you could fall off one of those edges.