/vr/ - Retro Games

...and before the "unfinished game" comments roll in:

Generally, when media is produced, the people making it don't only make the resources they need to make the very next part of the game. When an author writes a book, it's likely that they're going in order, but a video game needs many different people who work on different aspects of the project. Character models, BGM, backdrops and 3D environments, etc. and to have them all come in on a given day and work on only the resources for a single part of a game would be silly.

>>2272602
the game is already 40+ hours even with being 'unfinished'. a fully realized Xenogears would have made the game 80+ hours easily.

plus if you weren't playing Xenogears largely for the story, you were playing the wrong game.

>>2272326
>>2272602
>>2272614
Yeah its a shitty JRPG thats so heavily story focused you may as well have been watching an anime.

Hell, it has Anime cutscenes. Honestly its a snore to play and there is so much exposition and dialogue that its incredibly boring and near unplayable.

i honestly had more fun reading perfect works than i did playing the game. at least you could jump if you wanted to. jumping is fun.

just started it.

I killed one of the first bosses by using a strong attack every single turn and nothing else.

Does the combat get better?

>>2272718
I think the combat is average for an RPG the first couple times you play the game and deteriorates as quickly as you learn all the nuances.

Like, building up to attack level 3 can be fun, but there's almost no reason why you would really want to do this 9 out of 10 fights. 3 normal attacks, 1 level 3 combo < 2 normal attacks, 2 level 1 combos. Deathblows can also be power-leveled when you figure out what goes in to learning them.

>>2272718
And, uh, I guess I didn't really answer your question.

It gets better around the time you start to get a full party. As you get more moves, it gets more flashy and fun, but the combat is never going to be terribly complex.

>RPG for babies and hipsters that want to sound unique.

Whatever dude.

Reminder to use Gameshark.

The code (300B21D6 000?) can be entered with a final digit of 1-8, with a value of 8 providing the default text speed and 1 giving the player near instantaneous messages.

I fucking love this game.

Shame there aren't more extreme mecha games like G Gundam. I'd like SRW more if it wasn't an SRPG.

>>2272643
I actually kind of agree with this. Like, I think games *can* be a decent medium to deliver a complicated story, but while XG was definitely a visual journey it probably would have been better as an anime or manga. At least with that medium you don't have to pretend that you're influencing the outcome or having to have the plot be stilted by arbitrary difficulty and benign obstacles. The gameplay just wasn't good enough to justify coming back to. If someone ever asks me about this game, I tell them that they're probably better off just finding the script online and/or watching a LP.

>unfinished
>cd2 is mostly people telling you what happened
>shitty platforming
>annoying random encounters (which can screw up your timing while platforming)
still one of my fav PS1 games

>>2275178
Unfortunately, most viable options outside of Gundam Wing Endless Duel, Gundam Battle Assault 2, and a brief stint in SaGa Frontier's mec scenario are all not retro.

Xenogears was mind-blowing the first time I played it, and still enjoyable when I gave it another go a full decade later.

I always feel guilty though because I was so hyped for my little brother to play it too, and I spoilered the fuck out of it to the point that he just dropped it and told me to get fucked.

Yeah, I liked it enough to play through it twice back in the day; once in Japanese and then the English version. I was really happy about the undub, the original battle voices are one of the things I really liked about Xenogears (Billy's JP voices are great).

Still love it and think it's unfairly maligned, although I'll be arsed if I have the time to play it again. I still think the story's mostly great and it has better character development than most Square rpgs.

>>2276843
But its a -game-.

Gameplay should never be sidelined for sound, or story, or graphics.

Which is what happens in Xenogears. You will often spend the majority of a play session mashing through text, and watching cutscenes, followed by more text.

Its pretty much the way to make the story as un-engaging as possible. If Chrono Cross has a poorly presented story because its huge blocks of exposition, then Xenogears takes the cake, because the majority of the game is huge blocks of exposition.