For anyone who is completely unaware of what Xenogears is, all that you need to know is that it is a PS1 RPG with Giant Robots, Philosophy, Psychological themes, and Religious themes, but perhaps not in the way that you might expect. Usually when a piece of media uses such themes they are very surface level or only used as a way to dress the set. In Xenogears, Psychology, Religion, Philosophy, and Giant Robots are what make up the entire story and world. Basically, think about how Moony would describe Index, except that it isn't gay (btw Moony, if you're reading this, I think you would really like the Xeno franchise in general).
Xenogears suffered from time and budget constraints and as a result is rather unfinished in many ways. This perhaps speaks volumes about the game given that despite those issues, it is still easily in my top 3 games of all time. The framework and ideas of Xenogears were later expanded upon by it's spiritual prequel series "Xenosaga" (which ultimately suffered a very similar fate) and it's spiritual reboot series "Xenoblade Chronicles".
This playthrough uses the Resonant Arc Podcast as a general basis for where to split parts. The first episode of that podcast is included as the first video in this playlist because it is helpful for understanding why this game is the way that it is, but it is not absolutely necessary. If you are interested in better understanding Xenogears though, I highly recommend listening to the corresponding episode of that podcast after watching any given video in this playlist. While not everything that they discuss is 100% accurate or relevant, enough of what they discuss or point out is poignant and of high enough quality that it is helpful at the very least as a jumping off point for understanding Xenogears better.
Turn on subtitles for improved clarity of what is happening. The subtitles are a combination of what is heard and what it would say if it was translated better. Here is a video that helps explain the changes that I made: Xenogears Story Analysis (Ep.2)
This is probably my favorite opening from any videogame ever. Great animation quality, high quality voice acting, music is extremely fucking good (track is called 'Dark Dawn' for anyone interested, the soundtrack for this game is fantastic in general and is easily in my top 5 video game soundtracks of all time), and it intrigues like no other opening has before or since. Plus it's just really fucking cool in general. It's also cool how everything that happens in this intro is relevant to the game (and franchise) as a whole but that all the pieces don't fall into place until much later. Did I mention that this game is pretty fucking long?
This part covers Lahan Village and Blackmoon Forest.
This episode has annoying letterboxing because Radeon ReLive is fucking retarded and refuses to just work correctly. Besides the letterboxing though I think this playthrough might be the highest quality recording of this game on YouTube. Normally that expository text crawl at the beginning would be sinful but the music makes it work, which is a relatively common occurrence in this game. I really like the intro to this game, I feel like a lot of these sorts of intros where the MC is in their peaceful village that then gets destroyed by bad guys kinda overstay their welcome but this one feels like it's the correct length plus it's Fei that destroys the village not the bad guys. Elly is good. She is one of my more liked female characters in videogaming. I love the scene in Blackmoon with Fei and Elly casting blame away from themselves. The dialogue writing there is great, especially for this game with it's wonky translation and questionable at times script writing, plus that FMV is cool. I like repetition as a literary technique. Kinda an Evanjelion moment (4.0 is out............). I really like the song that plays in Blackmoon but it has that stupid intro bit that plays every single time that kinda ruins it. I missed a few items in Lahan such as the RPS badge and Midori's ring. I might use the power of time travel to go get them.
This part covers Dazil and the Stalactite Cave.
Through the magic of time travel I went and got Midori's ring and learned Fei's first Deathblow. Dazil's music cums. Grahf's introduction is so fucking good. His design and his gear's design are both sick and the backdrop of the red moon is fucking rad. Grahf is probably in like my top 3 videogame villains of all time, everything about him is so fucking great. You'll understand why in about 40+ hours. Bart and everything involved with his story is very middling for me, just kinda feels weirdly disconnected from the rest of the game despite taking up a big chunk of disc 1. It's even weirder given that I generally really like Bart-esque characters. I actually quite like Margie, who is introduced in the next episode, which makes it weirder still that I don't like Bart given how connected Bart's and Margie's stories are. All the stuff with Balthasar in the cave is great foreshadowing. The lack of human fossils prior to 10,000 years ago, the talk about the Omnigear, and the mentioning of Weltall being the host for the slayer of god. Calamity's design is fucking sick, I love when giant robots are BIG. This game is cool. Love the shot of the capital too, this whole game looks really cool. Probably my favorite looking RPG from the era. Next episode and beyond should have less if any lag, changed some settings in ePSXe that were fucking it. I also increased the volume level because it was a little quiet.
This part covers Bart's Lair, Bledavik, and Fatima Castle.
This episode has the honor of being copyright claimed by Condor Music Publishing for the song that plays at 31:06 that is supposedly called "Opening" despite that song being called "Bond of Sea and Flame" on any release or version of the soundtrack in recorded history. The game crashed twice in the marketplace after leaving the gear workshop around 1:17:30 so that's what the cut is because of. Had to replay through the battle against the Gebler forces in Bart's Lair as a result. I had to download a video editing program besides Windows Movie Maker in order to stitch the recordings together satisfactorily, truly a sad day. As a side note, if you are looking for a decent free video editing program, HitFilm Express is actually not bad. For whatever reason I'm actually liking Bart a lot more on this playthrough than I previously have. His character moments have landed better with me. Several Neon Genesis Evanjelion moments with Fei this part. This game often gets compared to Eva but Xenogears actually has depth to it unlike Eva which mainly uses the similar ideas as set dressing. Bledavik is great. The festival music is classic Mitsuda, so good and brings back memories of Chrono Trigger's fair. Slight spoilers perhaps but Bledavik is the most fleshed out town in the game as a result of the time and budget constraints that were put on the developers. That really sucks because it is pretty fucking good with everything to do and all the people to talk to and it's just another reason that makes one lament the sad fate that this game suffered. All the dialogue in Bledavik is great, several moments of good comedy too like the fortune teller Dylan moment and Ramsus' dislike of gay revelry. Miang's comment about Fei being handsome is also funny to me for whatever reason. Gotta love a tournament right? The Resonant Arc Podcast brought up the idea of what if it was Timothy or Alice who survived the glassing of Lahan rather than Dan and I feel like either would've been way more interesting. Wiseman is kinda an interesting character, you'll see. Had to pause a lot in Fatima Castle because it's kinda confusing, cut out the pausing using my new video editing program because I am built different compared to the casual let's player who leaves in long ass pauses. The imaginary viewership of this playthrough better appreciate all the effort I am going through. Actually I'm enjoying making this playthrough so far despite the really annoying crashes. I'm also pretty sure that the lag issue from previous parts is fixed, it probably would've lagged in several scenes from this part. After getting more used to the combat system, I can say that I actually quite enjoy the on foot combat with deathblows and combos and ether. The gear battles though are really shallow by comparison. Even later on when we know more deathblows they still just kinda boil down to "normal attack to raise attack level, normal attack to raise attack level, deathblow" every single battle, unless you are abusing the Ether Doubler. We finally meet the most important character in the game in the last seconds of this video, and I'm not talking about Margie.
This part covers the escape from Bledavik and Nisan.
The fight against Ramsus is kinda annoying and tedious because he kept spamming Mirror Stance which will virtually one hit you if you attack him during it. Bart kinda based for hitting on Miang while rescuing Margie. Margie's rat powers will never be explained but they clearly grant her infinite power and it is a mystery why she didn't escape by herself earlier. I like how Elly's reintroduction is handled, just a couple little scenes with her to remind you that she exists before escaping with her assistance. The most important character in the game is properly introduced now too. Chu-Chu is unironically one of the most powerful characters in the game if you use the correct items on her. Got turned around heading towards Nisan lol. I did "a bit" of farming off screen to get enough money to buy an Ether Doubler for later. Rendering after editing stuff out takes so much fucking time for videos that are this long. It took over two hours for this video to render even though it's "only" like 1.3 hours long. Didn't feel like farming more to get money to upgrade the gears which I probably should've done instead of buying an Ether Doubler. Nisan's "world map" looks cool, wish that it was bigger/more in depth once you're actually in the town though. Inside the cathedral looks sick. Everything in the cathedral is really important information, the discussion of the two angels, the painting of Sophia, and the little bits of info given about it and her. Got a little lost trying to find Agnes' room lol. It's a relatively shorter part this time because I decided to split it in half given that the Resonant Arc Podcast did the same and also because the farming took a while even with turbospeed turned on.
This part covers the rest of Nisan and the first half of Fei's decoy mission to allow the recapturing of Bledavik.
Another relatively short part this time as a result of the Resonant Arc Podcast's episode splits. The initial render of this video didn't have any sound. It took two hours. Both times. I like how Margie comes to cheer Bart on in such a cheeky way. As a reminder, Margie is a blood relative of Bart. Dare I say that this game is based? Sigurd is a pretty cool character in theory but in practice he doesn't really do much. I do really like his dialogue with Bart on the top of the submarine though. The way that Fei looks back and forth while they're discussing strategy is charming in a PS1 RPG kind of way. Gotta love 90s CGI FMV cutscenes huh? I really like the exchanges between Elly and her 80s/90s mecha anime subordinates. I actually really like all of the dialogue between the subordinates and Fei and Elly and also the flashback scene is cool and expands on the FMV that Elly got back in Blackmoon but I died to Vierge like 7 times because the subordinates kept getting good RNG and hitting me despite having three mirror coats equipped so I had to sit through it all 8 times. Then on the last try they barely even scratch me. Sick. I really like the bit where the subordinate says, "You're looking at... the real thing boys!" gave me slight chills on the first of 8 viewings. I really like the dialogue between Fei and Elly after the battle, reminds me of the scene from Silent Hill 2 where Angela is on the burning staircase ("Or maybe... you think you can save me. Will you love me...? Take care of me...? Heal all my pain...? ...Hmph... That's what I thought") but with a more positive viewpoint of the same idea.
This part covers the second half of Fei's decoy mission to allow the recapturing of Bledavik and the first part of Nortune D-Block.
The initial render of this video also didn't have any sound. Sick. Had to extract the audio from the original video files using Audacity and splice it in because it refused to just work. The cuts in this part are a lot more sloppy because I got fed up with how many times I had to fuck with different things so that's why there is a repeat at 20:48. I don't like the goofy rescue of Bart's team at all. It doesn't land whatsoever for me. 20:52 tfw you still have that. Grahf is fucking cool. His, "My fist is the divine breath!" scene is fucking cool, one of those scenes where you feel compelled to do the motions and say the quote as it happens. At least, I do. When currently un-named red gear shows up, I cum. Everything about it, every scene that it is in, kino. Miang's gear is one of my favorite looking gear designs in the game, just looks cool. Does Ramsus job or is un-named red gear (henceforth referred to as u-nrg) simply too rad? I hadn't pointed it out until now but its funny to me how basic a lot of the 3d animation is. The scene where u-nrg annihilates Ramsus is just kinda goofy looking, but I love that multistage zoom cut into u-nrg's face. Do you prefer unwinnable fights were the enemy has super high stats and is unkillable or unwinnable fights where you win the fight and lose in the cutscene? God this whole section with u-nrg is so fucking good, currently watching back through the footage and I'm still cumming. The scene where u-nrg lifts up the sub is probably a direct reference to the scene from End of Evangelion where Asuka lifts up the boat but it's a cool scene so who cares. It's actually one of the only direct reference to Evangelion in this game, pretty much everything else is circumstantial. Almost forgot that this was when our first proper Fei flashback scene happens. Pretty good scene that might instantly make you question my recent statement that most Evangelion references are circumstantial. Kislev kinda sucks in my opinion. It feels barely connected to the main story, notably less than Bart's stuff does. Probably my least favorite part of the game and also (spoilers) my least favorite party member with Rico. His backstory is set up decently and could be interesting-ish if they ever followed through with it but they never do, probably because of the budget and time constraints. Don't really have much to say about Kislev yet despite it taking up the entire last half of this video. The area itself is decently fleshed out I suppose, good amount to pretty colorful NPCs. I forget whether we've learned who the floating ball niggas are yet or not, but they're pretty cool. They feel very 80's mecha anime. They namedrop a lot of things and ideas that won't make sense for many more hours.
Been procrastinating on making the next part for a couple reasons, mainly because idk if anyone will even watch this far or if I'll even make this playlist public and also because I don't really like this section of the game until near the end of this section of the game. So if I do make this playlist public and you do watch it this far and you do want to see more episodes, please tell me so.
This part covers the Battling Arena, the Nortune Sewers, and Nortune Central District.
This part was kinda rough because it's been a while since I last played and I had kinda forgotten how to, especially in regards to the combat and what my keybinds were given that I'm using an Xbox controller not a PlayStation controller. Battling is sick. They ran out of development time but at least they've got the arena brawler minigame. You can come back later in the game and it is literally a multiplayer minigame where you can choose what gear you want to battle in. Xenoblade X wishes that it's mecha combat was this sick. Speaking of Xenoblade X, that game could be the best game ever made if it had better combat and the story didn't get rushed by development deadlines. You would think Monolith would've figured out how to not do that in the 17 or so years between Xenogears and Xenoblade X, but I digress. I'm pretty sure that the battles are supposed to run at a lower framerate than they do which is why the "fighter title card" is only on the screen for like a split second and why the movement seems so fast. Kept my losses in because I figured I may as well. Was trying to remember where the fuck Hammer was before entering the sewers because I wanted to buy Citan and Rico some armor then remembered that he is in the same room that you start the day in... I like the sewer dungeon but maze dungeons in general are pretty hit or miss, luckily you get a decent in-game map here. I didn't have too much trouble with it on this playthrough mostly because of luck rather than any sort of plan. Can't believe I ran into the fan blades twice, how embarrassing. Redrum is a cool boss and we actually get some more lore on him later in the game that makes him cooler. I really like his design too. Looks fucking sick. I thought he was gonna body me because he is kinda fucking really strong and can just spam 'Murder' (what a powerful name for an attack btw) if he gets good RNG. I like how Elly's team respects her a bit more after she fought Fei. I like Elly's team's dynamic in general and I wish they were a bit more prominent overall. I like how Rico acknowledges that Citan and Elly both just had scenes that took time in universe that kept him waiting. You have gotta fucking love the textureless silver reflective nigga. Screams 90s so loudly it's not even funny. Except that it is funny and I laugh every time. Wiseman is pretty cool. I forget if I really touched on him all that much last time we saw him, but admittedly I know that the game didn't so it's not too big a deal if I didn't. The dialogue writing in this scene with him is kinda goofy but not terrible. Some cool foreshadowing that you wouldn't notice until replaying. I though Rico was gonna kill the shit out of me and embarrass me after I lost to him in the second round with the third round being way too close for comfort but I managed to clinch the fourth round. The battling combat is the sort of combat where you get *really* locked into any movement you make, with a lot of wind down frames after any given action. You'll try to block after whiffing a combo and you just won't put your hands up for like a second and a half plus. Left in a bit of crane hell just so that you could get a taste of the anguish I went through. Gotta love how Rico essentially does just walk right in the front door. Rico's backstory is actually pretty interesting but like I mentioned in the last part's description, he doesn't get a proper resolution, most likely because of the game's unfinished state.
This part covers the Nortune Residential District, infiltrating the gear storage facility, defending Nortune from Gebler forces, and infiltrating the Goliath factory.
What a long ass part this felt like to make. It was originally recorded in one session without any breaks because I realized it was gonna be long as fuck so I didn't want to have to edit it and spend 5+ hours rendering it but Radeon ReLive in it's infinite power decided to fuck up this time even though it was fine for the previous 5 parts so I had to edit in anyways. Epic. I really like a lot of the stuff that happens in this part Around here is when the game starts to get really good in my opinion, even though the pacing here is a bit goofy. I haven't really commented on it until now but I love the environment details in this game, especially inside buildings. They add so much to making the world feel lived in. That shop with all the weapons on the walls and shelves with the visible rafters or whatever they are, it just looks sick. The Wildcat Bar also looks sweet. The dude who is fawning over the kitten is funny. That waitress is annoying as fuck though, she stops you from being able to progress dialogue until you get out of her way. This is probably my favorite Big Joe interaction in the game, though they're all really good. Big Joe is an incredibly powerful character in general and I recommend reading Perfect Works just for the expanded Big Joe backstory. You have gotta love jumping into the shitter chimney. D-Block doctor lady scolding Citan is funny. It's kinda unclear what is happening during the jumping on the train scene because of the kinda weird ass dialogue. Something about, "Pretty unreliable train." is really funny to me though. Sadly I missed a couple of the scenes that are shown when you look down the grates while in the vents. They would show a guy looking for that 100G and another would show a guy playing with that Minigear. I was trying to look at a map of the vents on my phone while going through them so as not to miss them but ended up missing them anyways... I love the guy who was playing with the Minigear. He gets it. Bought new gear parts and then forgot to refuel/heal because it doesn't automatically top you up when you upgrade which is so fucking stupid I can't even put into words how stupid it is. I did the same thing again later when upgrading Vierge and Heimdal. Luckily Fei is still kinda over leveled from farming for that Ether Doubler. I love the expression on Rico's face when he sees the Rankar. Rico is my least favorite party member but I do still like him in general, just wish that his story got a proper resolution. This whole section of Nortune being attacked by Gebler is so good. The camera work is so sick. Got pretty close to dying because of not remembering to heal Weltall. Luckily they heal you before the fight with Dominia. Dominia is, as Dylan might put it, exceptionally rapeable. I love all the Elly scenes in this part. I love the dichotomy between her and Fei. She feels so trapped by her circumstances, like there is nothing she can do. She's trapped just like Fei was after Lahan, but she's been trapped her entire life. Elly is an exceptional character in my opinion. I really like her. I could've made the fight against Dominia even easier if I had equipped two Beam Coats on either Weltall or Stier which would've made her do literally zero damage because all of her attacks are beam based but I forgot. Fei, Rico, and Elly trying to stop the Hecht from crashing is so reminiscent of Gundam CCA. Elly's engine's failing with that music always gets a bit of a chuckle out of me because it is just kinda overly dramatic. Grahf saving Elly is fucking sick. Shows up out of nowhere as a fucking shining light in the sky with his bat wings edgy ass gear, saves the babe, and disappears. What a chad. I probably could've/should've just bought 99 Omegasols just because they're so cheap here. The interactions with the guards here are quite funny. Elly and Vierge are so fucked in combat because of acquiring the Ether Doubler and Power Magic. She hasn't even used 10% of her full power yet. Something about stealing such a massive aircraft so easily feels like clumsy writing but its funny so whatever. I love the foreshadowing of Grahf saving Elly and then not targetting her in combat. The animation of Grahf's gear falling off the Goliath is so funny to me. Classic Bart moment of blowing up vehicles that Fei and Citan are in. Grahf and Miang's interactions are always interesting. The episode is ended with more indecipherable on a first playthrough jargon and foreshadowing from the Gazel Ministry. Interestingly, "Knigret" is a translation of a typo in the original Japanese script where they tried to use the english word "neglect".
This part covers Fei and Elly lost at sea, the Thames, the Yggdrasil II, the Ethos HQ, and Billy's Orphanage.
This shit took so goddamn long to render. Rendering is typically about 0.5x speed for me so this took like 6.25 hours to render. Lots of stuff in the part that I really like, and lots of stuff that feels clumsily executed. Starts off very strong with the stuff with Fei and Elly stranded. These scenes of them are really great. Really, any time Fei and Elly interact it's fantastic. I think they are probably my favorite couple in any game I've ever played. Their relationship feels so uncontrived and real. I strongly relate with just about everything the two of them discuss in any of their scenes together. I can't go super in depth here because it would be entering spoiler territory but I just love how their relationship develops. Character interactions are actually probably one of the biggest reasons that I would love to see a remake of this game. After experiencing FF7R and seeing how much the characters in that game are just given more life, as well as the spiritual sequel Xenosaga showing how well the same team can write characters when they have the resources, I would love to see the cast of Xenogears get the same sort of treatment. There's only so much an unfinished PS1 game can do, though what it does do really is great in my opinion. The Thames is a pretty cool "city". I forgive the camera here because I'm pretty sure it's intentionally obtuse to sell the "cluttered cargo bay" aesthetic. I wonder how much inspiration for Xenoblade 2 came from this part of the game? Salvagers salvaging ancient treasure from the sea is a relatively important aspect of that game. The card game is hell. I can not even begin to describe how hard it actually is. The AI plays so fucking fast that your brain just starts to shut off and your pattern recognition dies, you have to manually draw cards (literally why?), you have to walk around on the board rather than just having like a cursor or something (literally why? It's kinda charming but it just adds to the fuckedness), etc. Plus it can be really luck based. I cut out a lot of losses against all three opponents. Probably spent like 20 minutes trying to beat Big Joe. The Captain of the Thames is pretty good in a basic way. The first boss fight in the water goes smoothly because Vierge with Power Magic and Ether Doubler is fucked. I ended up running out of EP with Elly though because this game is so harsh with not healing you or replenishing your EP. It almost never does it, even if you have canonically gone to sleep off screen, which would heal you if you manually did it yourself. I keep forgetting to heal myself/replenish EP when I have chances. Similar thing with gears in that they never refuel/repair them for you except under certain weird circumstances. Like, going to the bridge of the Yggdrasil from the overworld refuels/repairs your gears but it doesn't heal your party, and like yeah, ok, it's more realistic, but like, come on. Kelvena is cute. All of the Elements are quite decent fishing lures in unique ways. Elly getting captured here is fine but her returning so fast just feels kinda silly, even if it's because Miang let her go. It just feels kinda sloppily handled and paced too fast. There should be a scene where they're talking about having to go rescue her and then they detect her gear and they're all like "wtf". Bart is already obviously suspicious but he doesn't do anything about it. This is the first time we really feel Miang's direct influence on the plot too which should be a very important moment. I really like the gear that Dominia uses here. I also really like the camera here where it cuts between in the cockpit and in front of her gear. Elly was out of EP during these fights because of what I mentioned earlier. This section where Fei is in a coma is kinda funny because we have a brand new cast member introduced and as we'll see in the next part even more important info around him and the Ethos is revealed that Fei just ends up not being directly involved with. I really like Billy. He's introduced as this stuck up kid but as you learn more about his circumstances it starts to make more sense why he is that way. Jesiah is also great. They both feel very Trigun. Prim is good too. Gotta love silent PTSD lolis. All this stuff with the Ethos and the Wels is some of the more important world building for the "modern era" that the game takes place in so pay attention to it. For anyone wondering what the sped up section is, I went and bought another Ether Doubler for Billy from Nisan. The orphanage is a good location. Adds to Billy/Jessie's Trigun-ness while also adding some character to Rico with his interaction with the kid with the bell. Billy is one of my more favorite party members. He's probably #4 after Fei, Elly, and someone we've not yet met. His gameplay is also really unique with his ammo requirements.
This part covers the Reaper ship, Ethos HQ, and the Zeboim ruins.
The sequence of events in this part and the next two parts is probably my favorite sequence on Disk 1. I like the light horror elements onboard the Reaper Ship. I don't think it's actually scary but it's just kinda fun. The Reaper Ship might be the best dungeon in the game just because it is so well put together and concise. Western magic gunslinger priest infiltrating what is essentially a haunted ghost train is also peak fiction. Kinda lame that the boss is a recolor of Redrum but it makes sense from a lore standpoint I suppose. Billy hits really hard currently, especially with his Ether Guns because of the Ether Doubler. He's really fun to play because he's the first character where his normal attacks and his Ether are both properly good and useful. Renmazuo's launch sequence is great. The shot where he lands on the Yggdrasil II framed by the catwalk of the reaper ship looks so sick. Renmazuo is also sick looking. I can't think of a single giant robot with a cape that doesn't look fucking sick. Getter 1, Escaflowne, Crossbone Gundam, EVA 02 in it's first scene, etc. Renmazuo's revolver gauntlets are also sick and so is his stupid pointy head and ribbon. He also looks sick in his overworld sprite form. Renmazuo is probably my second favorite Disk 1 party member gear. We'll see my favorite one in the next part. I refrained from one cycling the gear sized Wel boss with Elly's Aerods just because. The attack on the Ethos HQ is a pretty good sequence but the random encounter rate felt really fucking high for some reason. It's definitely exposition dumpish when you get to the computer room but also it's a cool reveal about the Ethos' true intent imo so I think it balances out. It's worth pausing or rewatching to read what all of the text boxes that pop up at the same time say. What would the Ethos/Solaris have done to Big Joe if we didn't save him? Perhaps the better question is what would Big Joe have done to the Ethos/Solaris if we didn't free him? I feel like there should definitely be a section where we help the Thames fight off some Wels instead of getting there and they've already saved themselves. For anyone wondering, the sped up section was just me fucking with gear parts for like 6 minutes. The Zeboim ruins are so sick. Lost super advanced civilization sunk beneath the ocean is also peak fiction. All the stuff pertaining to Zeboim reminds me of Macross for one reason or another, particularly "Macross: Do You Remember Love?" but also "Macross Plus". All the enemies here are annoying and hit pretty hard. Really it's mostly because Elly is squishy because she is a glass cannon. They're still annoying though and all of the encounters have a bunch of participants. First Fei and now Elly is remembering things from from many centuries before she was born, even longer ago than when Fei remembered. On the topic of Fei, he is still missing all of this while in a coma on a hospital bed. Gotta feel bad for the guy that he didn't even get to experience this super solid section of the game. It's kinda funny that the party isn't predetermined here. IDK if you can swap out Billy here but I'm nearly positive that you can swap out Elly which is just odd given that Elly and Billy are both quite pertinent to the scenario. Brown skinned test tube nanomachine loli in da underground hyper advanced civilization ruins moment. Every psychological/philosophical story needs a brown skinned woman or else it isn't real. That's why Evangelion isn't good. That's the real reason that Xenoblade 1 and 2 aren't as good as Xenogears or Xenosaga too (I don't count Sharla in XB1 and Perun is too much of a side character in XB2). Xenoblade X got the memo though. I like Tolone and Seraphita's banter. They also have good animations. You can tell that the animators had fun with a lot of the female characters in this game. Kinda funny how Seraphita just squats when defeated. Now for the real important stuff; which Element do you consider to be the most attractive fishing lure? Personally I am a Tolone man myself though Dominia is quite good too.
This part covers the rest of the Zeboim ruins and Babel Tower. Before watching this part, you should go rewatch the opening cutscene for reasons that I will make clear later in this description.
UNRG continues to make me cum every time it shows up. It is so fucking cool. FUCK it is so fucking cool. The red color scheme, the gold highlights, the blue energy wings, the sheer intimidation that it emanates, everything about it. So good. For me, Id's battle sprite is kinda unfortunate. His offical art looks really fucking cool, easily one of my favorites, and even his world sprite looks good but then he looks goofy in his battle sprite. Id is still really fucking cool though. I absolutely love his theme, enough that I used it in my Twitter resurfacing post, one of many "references" in that audiovisual experience (can you name them all?). I think it's probably pretty obvious now who this red haired warrior is, right? His name is pretty on the nose. This game kinda has a thing for back to back boss fights huh? How does Bishop Stone look so different in such a short amount of time I wonder? Krelian truly works miracles I guess. On the topic of Krelian, it may be slight spoilers to say this but he is probably my favorite villain in this game, maybe even my favorite character in this game outright, which should make it obvious that he is one of my favorite villains of all time. Back to the fight with Bishop Stone, I really like the dialogue from Jessie here, a lot of it is very similar to my own beliefs about god and spirituality in general. It feels like Jessie probably should've actually died here, I feel like it would've allowed Billy more closure and also a point to move forward from. Instead this is pretty much the last bit of development that both Billy and Jessie get which makes you wonder why they even kept Jessie alive instead of just having him leave a journal or something like that. Jessie's robot that transforms into a gun is still good though lol. The sped up sequences here are going to Nisan to buy another Ether Doubler and 2 Holy Pendants before they both disappear forever and also buying some gear stuff before heading to the gear heavy Babel Tower. Holy fuuuuuuuuuuuck I love Babel Tower. The slow realization that (relatively big spoilers maybe but I feel like it is pretty obvious? I realized it on my first playthrough at least, hopefully my Twitter post and the start of this description helped you make the connection) this is the spaceship from the opening cutscene is so fucking cool. All the sideways control rooms and passageways and then you get to the city that was shown through the glass in the opening. So fucking cool. Then the next time you see the world map you realize that the islands around Babel Tower were all formed from the impact. So fucking cool. I cut out all the battles and the audio in the first room with the platforming because the music that plays here deserves to play because it is so fucking good. It's one of the songs that is used as part of the opening cutscene's music and is one of my absolute favorites. It's called 'Foreboding' but it's also sometimes called 'Omen'. The battles were just scripted random battles with the enemies that show up later in the city so you didn't miss much. The platforming here is hell on earth without savestates. The platform that swings down is such a classic Squaresoft moment. Some of the platform enemies in the city are aids to land on. I accidentally pretty much one shot Ramsus with Elly. She is simply too powerful. I had to hold back against Maria and Seibzehn so as not to do the same thing. I love Maria. Everything about her. She is the genre of 'giant robots' embodied. We will see that more in the next part but if you look closely here you will notice that she is riding on top of Seibzehn's head rather than piloting it which is classic Giant Robo. Seibzehn's big jetpack is classic Gigantor/Tetsujin 28. Really, almost everything about Seibzehn is a reference to classic giant robot shows. Light spoilers but Seibzehn is my favorite party member gear on disk 1. Pretty much everything about Seibzhen's design is my favorite sort of giant robot. I love the absolute girth of this lad. Maria is also one of my favorite party members, particularly from a gameplay standpoint which I believe will be demonstrated in the next part.
This part covers the entirety of Shevat.
Shevat's theme is so good. It's got such a classic Mitsuda sound. Reminiscent to 'Schala's Theme' from Chrono Trigger. With Shevat and Zeal both being countries in the sky it makes sense I suppose. I love the architectural design of Shevat, kinda reminds me of the the city in the sky from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Smooth masonry with moss or other such things making it look weathered, with a "dumpling" sort of shape to structures. Aphel Aura is such a 90s RPG feeling location. The Chu-Chu that says that he can't give me the treasures would let me have them if I had all the Badges but I never got the RPS Badge because the treasures aren't really worth it and they can be bought pretty soon anyways. Something about how the sidequest with the three stones gives you so many rewards is funny to me. Catching the fish first try was a god moment. It isn't guaranteed to happen and you can even snap your "fishing line" aka the spiders web that is found in the storage room in Fei's house at the very start of the game. There is so much fantastic dialogue all throughout Shevat to the point that I can't really go over all of it so make sure to pay attention because it is all important world building and foreshadowing for stuff that is revealed later. Lots of info about Krelian's relationship to Shevat and the events of 500 years ago including the Diabolos Collapse as well as several characters who cast doubt upon Shevat. Chu-chu... My friend... Midori is epic lol. 500 year old legal-loli queen... It is kinda funny to me that lolis are so prevalent in the Xeno franchise. Every entry except for Blade 1 has them to varying degrees with Gears probably having the highest quantity. On that topic, Maria is epic. She is my favorite party member besides Fei and Elly for reasons that should be obvious. She is the genre "giant robots" embodied. I fucking love all of her animations so much. I love her stupid running animation, I love the way she taps her shoes and sweeps dust off of her skirt after battles while wearing a massive grin, I love the way she fails to jump back up after being knocked over, I love her big drill hair and goggles, I love her funny fisticuffs stance in battles and how she is just a little girl blindly swinging her arms at enemies until she calls in her giant robot to fucking annihilate them with all of its classic giant robot attacks. Beams from the eyes, missile pods, rocket punches, chest cannon, fingertip missiles, Seibzehn's got it all. I love both of them so much. Who knows why she is able to summon Seibzehn here despite the fact that the whole point of what they're doing is to get to Seibzehn's hangar to prevent it from being stolen. Maria's story is really good (perhaps a bit short but that's better than just never finishing it like Rico's). An estranged citizen of Solaris made to see the horrors that her country has committed, including ones against her and her own family, forced into a fight against a brainwashed version of her father, while riding a robot that literally contains her father's will to protect her. Maria and Seibzehn are peak fiction. The enemies in the maintenance shaft dungeon are interesting. They're all kinda gimmick enemies. This Big Joe appearance is probably the least interesting and yet it is still interesting because why the hell is he here, in Shevat, in the maintenance tunnels? The world may never know... I farmed for like 30 minutes in fast forward for gold nuggets and bullions at the end of the dungeon because I knew that I would have to upgrade a bunch of gears and I still didn't really have enough money to buy all the upgrades that I wanted to. I wonder what Dominia was about to tell Maria about Seibzehn before Jessie cut her off? I also wonder how Dominia infiltrated Shevat... Chu-Chu is no lowly animal, she is a lady at a dangerous age as well as the most powerful being in all of existence as she demonstrates here. If Achtzehn didn't have plot armor she would've won easily. I don't like Achtzehn's design as much as Seibzehn's. It's still pretty cool though. The stuff after the fight against Achtzehn is the first point in the game where its unfinished nature really shows. It's worse than most of the other unfinished stuff because it is so completely out of left field. I'm talking about how they gloss over the celebration spurred on by Chu-Chu, the removal of the party's limiters, and Elly having an Evanjelion episode 1 moment where an Omnigear in the possession of Shevat moves according to her will without her being in the cockpit. As far as I remember it's the only egregious omission on Disk 1 and the way that Disk 2 handles it's own unfinished nature is generally a lot less in your face, so that is good in a way I suppose. We are slowly approaching the end of Disk 1 though so...... I personally still really love Disk 2 but I'm interested in how you will react to it.
This part covers the invasion of Nisan as well as the gate generators in Ignas, Aquvy, and Sargasso.
Realized I missed a room in Shevat while editing the last part. Getting the airship is such a classic RPG moment that really doesn't exist nowadays and actually the closest thing I can think of in a modern RPG is in Xenoblade X when you get the flight unit for your mech. I guess I forgot last episode but apparently there is still some weirdly egregious stuff in Disk 1. The events in this episode feel pretty clumsily woven together which is unfortunate because it is a cool section of the game. It also doesn't help that the translation is really strangely bad during almost this entire section of the game. I have no theory for why that's the case either. I had to rerecord the battles in Nisan because as soon as I entered the mausoleum for the first time the first encounter wiped my entire team because there's a significant difficulty spike and I forgot to equip the armor that I purchased. First time through I told Margie that I would find the way in myself but I think it's funnier if you ask her to do it for you. Actually most of the humor in this part lands pretty well for me. I don't remember if I ever said as much previously but Margie was originally intended to be a playable character but she was cut during development. Quite unfortunate, but I love how she assists you in battle by summoning rats that do like 1 damage. I love how Ft. Jasper is one of the laser cannons from the intro cutscene ship. I like Bart's stupid word vomit about how he definitely meant to press the button that he pressed that fired the cannon. I really really appreciate Margie's 'slumped over dead' sprite. It's really funny to me for whatever reason lol. Andvari is pretty cool but it's not my favorite Omnigear/Disk 2 party gear. The fight against Shakhan can actually be one of the more difficult fights in the game because of that healing he's able to do but Elly continues to simply annihilate 99% of all resistance that stands in her way. Bart's story is now pretty much completed with his ascension and abdication and the reveal that Sigurd is his brother. I like the party sitting around the table discussing plans. Should've gone with Chu-Chu's plan to dig a hole. I had to rerecord the entirety of the fights against the Elements because the only Ether that can damage Kelvena is fire and so on my first try Elly literally could not do damage to Kelvena and so Fei died and I had to reset. Very epic. Why would they make Elly a mandatory party member here and then make Kelvena heal from any attack she does unless she uses a fire element rod? Squaresoft moment. It's pretty cool how you get an idea of how massive Babel Tower really is when the Yggdrasil III pulls up to it and you know how tiny the party members are when they're in the gear hanger on the Yggdrasil. Sorry Chu-Chu but the world is not ready for your power just yet. Fighting on top of Ft. Jasper is a pretty cool looking scene even if the size of the gears is definitely not to scale. Seraphita's dialogue feels particularly unintelligible here which I suspect is the translation acting up more than anything. This is the first time where you can really appreciate Seibzehn's attacks and deathblows. I love them. I really like the design of Sargasso. Funnily, as far as I remember this is the only time you ever have battles underwater despite there being a decent number of underwater specific gear equips. I can never tell whether or not I like how Krelian essentially just gives you Emeralda. On one hand it's cool because it reveals something about Krelian's character in that he is extremely confident that he won't lose and that he only sees it as a way to acquire more data but it also still just feels kinda weird that he just gives her to you right now. It feels like maybe it should've been delayed for just a bit longer until you invade Solaris but then you would only have Emeralda in your party for like under 2 hours before Disk 2 so IDK what the solution is. I like Emeralda, she's a funny little brown skinned loli. I like how she calls Elly an old lady and I like how Elly is actually insulted by it. Emeralda's method of attack is pretty sick, I might show it off in the next part or I might wait a while just because Elly and Citan are the set party members for the Solaris infiltration and I would have to just go fight random enemies on the overworld to show her off.
In my opinion, around here is when the game starts to suffer a bit from it's relatively small soundtrack. There are a lot of tracks that are reused for multiple areas or scenes and some of them start to get a little grating and/or boring which is unfortunate given how fantastic the majority of the tracks actually are. Disobedient niggas get sent to the pit. Samson looking like Timothy is funny because it's completely irrelevant and is never brought up again. What an odd plot point that really has no purpose to exist. Watching back the footage I probably should've cut more of this bit out but I forgot to so oops. I like that Fei saying that Elly's acting like Bart is a proper insult to her. I actually really like the music used in Etrenank. It helps show just how disconnected they are from reality. Going on a date with your ex-Nazi gf in her hometown while your friends get captured. Left in the shopping because what's a date without having to wait for your gf to pick out what she wants? The Elly poster for sale in the shop is pretty powerful and I love how Elly has one in her bedroom. There's also a poster of Tifa from Final Fantasy VII in the apartment. Speaking of the apartment, Big Joe is eternal and I love how Fei and Elly join in the dance for just a moment. I'm jealous of the little girl's Gear toy that really flies. The scene of the ships in the sky is so cool looking. So Krelian has ties to not just Shevat and Solaris, but Nisan as well... I feel like this flashback could've been handled a bit better but it's still cool to see Krelian and Lacan interacting. Tfw you're on a date with your ex-Nazi gf and the military police try to apprehend you so you have to go back to her place and take a shower. I really like the shower scenes, mostly because it's more Fei and Elly interacting and being cute together. There's a vocal version of the song that plays in Elly's house on the 20th anniversary concert album that is sublime but it doesn't exist online and also it has some out of context spoilers for lyrics so I can't link it. I feel like it is a somewhat cruel thing for Fei to try to leave Elly here. Like, they have clearly become at least very good friends and they generally support one another so it's just kinda odd that Fei doesn't try to fight more to take her with him. He's ignoring her feelings about the scenario when she clearly wants to go with him very much. I wonder how Citan is able to get past the security scanners... Elly's scenes with her parents are nice. Can't believe that Fei, Elly, and Citan got eviscerated in the trash processing unit and died. The encounter rate for the rest of this part felt so unbelievably high. Pretty above good that Citan lets them eat the food. I mean, obviously they have been eating such things for like their entire lives so it doesn't really matter but I mean come on lol. Knowing Citan, he knew exactly what he was doing by letting them eat that food before showing them the Soylent System. I didn't point it out earlier because I wanted to wait until now to do so but it's really funny to me how this game just outright name drops shit like "positronic photon brain", "carbonite", and "soylent" without even attempting to come up with less copyright infringing versions. The food is mutated people, quite delicious and highly nutritious. Fei's flashback at 1:40:00 is important foreshadowing but its strange that it's put here given that it shows the next area, Krelian's Lab, rather than the Soylent System. The Omnigear shown here is cool. Upper body of a humanoid, lower body of a snake. I don't think we actually met the guy in the cage who says he had a dog because I couldn't figure out how the hell to get on that section of the roof in Kislev. Quite unfortunate as it's one of just a few things that I've missed in any given area. Krelian's Lab is a really cool dungeon in concept with all the experiments and test subjects and it does look really cool but holy anticum the enemy encounter rate. The way that some of the test subjects lose their ability to talk as they're trying to speak to you is ""really cool"" in a horrible gut punching way. The cage with all the dudes is really funny because it's likely harder than the majority of bosses in the game if you aren't able to mash the menu button fast enough to heal between battles. 2:51:06 hmmm.... it feels as though I've seen this thing somewhere before in a different lifetime..... How interesting that Solaris/Krelian has such detailed records of all the party members. I will now reveal something of a minor spoiler. Emeralda and Maria both don't have Omnigears. They were both intended to have Omnigears and there are some fucking rad as fuck designs in the artbook for them but they ran out of development time. Supremely unfortunate. No flippin way... How could this be... Citan was a spy all along!!! The pieces of info discussed in the rest of the cutscenes on Disk 1 are the most important we've heard so far so pay attention!!!
I ran out of space in the description to give my thoughts on the scenes at the end of this video. Just be aware that the translation there is definitely a bit rough. If you want me to post a comment outlining my thoughts leave a comment but keep in mind that I can't go into too much detail on it because a lot of it will be revealed in more detail later.
I love this discussion between Elly and Krelian. Krelian is so cool to me, especially on a repeat playthrough where you know his goals and past. He seems so unfeeling at first but as he reveals towards the end of this part it seems that he only does it for an undisclosed 'her'. Something I love about this game and really the Xeno series in general is that I can play this game and my favorite character can be Krelian but I would expect only maybe 1 in 15 people to share my opinion and yet those other 14 would have correct opinions too. Everyone in this game is so varied and so fantastic in their own ways. BTW Urobulos is a (pretty obvious) mistranslation of Ouroboros, just so you know. I absolutely love this discussion between Citan and Fei. Everything that Citan says is not wrong and yet it feels so disgusting. Gaslight, Gatekeep, Gear Fight. I wonder why Ramsus is so mentally tormented by Fei's very existence? No flippin way Citan was on Fei's side all along unless he decided that he wasn't in which case he wouldn't have been. Bart the voice of chaos, Billy the voice of reason. Weird video artifact at 10:45 where Bart's name is blacked out. I can't believe Ramsus got caught in a gate explosion and died. Something about Elly really quickly walking after the gang in that short tunnel is really funny. Incredible, Hammer did something after sitting dormant for 20 hours. It's alright Chu-Chu, even when you're not giant you leave nothing to be desired. Some of Citan's sword deathblows are pretty cool. I love Billy's deathblow 'True Dream'. In case you didn't catch it, he pulls out a pillow to muffle a huge blast with his big gun. What the heck Hammer is a traitor!!! I really love Elly's mom in this scene as well as the dichotomy between the 'normal' Hammer and the 'normal' Medena. Hammer is making excuses while Medena is doing everything that she possibly can. The sequence of scenes after the fight against Grahf and (gasp) Miang is either THE longest or one of the longest cutscenes in the game. Miang has an instant kill move which is why I focused on her but as a result we ended up not seeing a single one of her moves... This fight can be relatively difficult if she uses her instakill but given that she didn't it's a relative cakewalk instead. Fei's heartbeat here gives me chills. Dude. The fucking scene where Weltall transforms into Weltall-Id? Cum. The scene where Fei turns into Id and Weltall-Id crashes through the bridge? Cummestest. The scene where Weltall-Id is fucking obliterating Solaris? Cummer. The scene where Solaris falls and fucking explodes like a nuke? Cummest. The flashforward flashback in the middle of all that feels kinda funny but I also have no idea how else they could've done the scene. I love how for the entirety of Disk 1 Solaris is the biggest threat, the controllers of the whole world, and Id destroys 95% of them in a single moment. Elly saving Fei is such a great scene. The action is at the highest level it's been all game with Id bearing down on everyone with nothing they can do but Elly still believes that Fei is in there somewhere and that she'll never let go of him. Elly uses a bit of good old ECT and it works like a charm. The info that Citan divulges is super important so make sure to try to remember it!!! I really REALLY like this interaction between Citan and Id. It's the first real look into Id as a person that we get despite him being very relevant to the story and present since the very first part of this playthrough (ignoring part 0). I love how they waited this long to delve into him. Citan calling Id schizophrenic is unbelievably funny to me. Id is so cool. He has some really great quotes/one liners. Id is probably the "coolest" character in the game. He's cool enough that I want to make art of him. I like how Citan uses computers to explain Fei/Id/the coward as if that would somehow make it clearer to anyone in the party in universe or the average player of the game. How could they decide to freeze Fei just like that? I actually absolutely love the smash cut to black at the end of this scene. It is just so directorially cool. So Grahf and Lacan were/are the same person... very interesting given everything we know about the two of them so far, especially the fact that Fei seems to have memories of Lacan's life. I love that Elly chooses to still support Fei and stand by his side after everything that's happened. I do wonder if when she says "...Because... Because..." if she was about to confess or something along those lines. Pretty sad that Chu-Chu and Maria get left out of the goodbye scene. Who is Rico? This is probably the most straightforward discussion that the Gazel Ministry has had so far and as such I don't feel that I really need to touch on it. It is pretty powerful how Ramsus just annihilates Fei in spite of his orders. Doesn't it just make you wonder why he is so obsessed with Fei? I can't believe that Elly died from a shrapnel wound in the forests of London…
So, what do you think of the game so far? The uploading of this playthrough will be moving to a weekly schedule as I've finally caught up to the Resonant Arc Podcast.
This part covers Taura's House, the Mass Driver, defending Ignas, the Soylent System, Anima Dungeon 1, Anima Dungeon 2, and Mahanon.
Welcome to Disk 2. Disk 2 is best compared to a rollercoaster, it's on-rails balls-to-the-walls insanity, boss fight to cutscene to boss fight to cutscene to boss fight to mini dungeon and repeat until like 6 hours in. Where do I even start? How about by saying that I love Fei and Elly just as much if not more than on Disk 1. It's probably just me because I'm weird in general as well as having been in a generally weird mind state lately as well as this game meaning a lot to me personally but I teared up several times while recording this part, basically every time Elly and Fei's relationship is the main subject of the scene. I absolutely adore repetition as a literary technique so I love how Disk 2 opens up with both Fei's and Elly's perspective of the same memory, so similar and yet different. Have I made it clear enough yet how much I love Fei and Elly? No flipping way it's Yoda. It's kinda funny how much of an 'Empire Strikes Back' reference the opening of Disk 2 is, they're in the tanks, they crash landed in a heavily wooded area, Yoda's there, etc. This is so sad... Fei and Elly cockblocked by Yoda. The bracelet that Taura gives Fei is definitely pretty deus ex machina-y but it's not a huge deal I guess. No way, mid-season upgrade time. I love Weltall-2's design. I wish it turned red when System Id was used though. I wonder what the 'mother' and the 'antitype' are... The mass driver facility was planned to be a proper dungeon but was cut. It would've been interesting to explore a Zeboim Era Nuclear Missile launch facility with Emeralda and it surely would've given her some more chances for characterization but what can you do? There's definitely also supposed to be a sequence for Fei and the gang getting back together and saving the entirety of Ignas but instead we just get a massive 'Macross' reference and I mean massive in more ways than one. It is admittedly a pretty cool scene, there's nothing quite like city sized giant robots beating the shit out of each other. The Yggdrasil Cannon is so fuel inefficient but sometimes you just gotta. No way Xenogears predicted Covid-19!!! I like the stuff here about the haves and the have-nots. I kinda forgot but Disk 2 has way more anime/cg cutscenes per minute than Disk 1 does. Elly's speech to the people is very good. Anima Relic Dungeon Shakespeare Puzzle. It is funny to me in an ethereal way that they just randomly have decently difficult puzzles out of nowhere when the rest of the game hasn't had any puzzles whatsoever. The doors opening up on the path up to the Anima Relic is cool. El-Renmazuo is pretty cool looking but I don't like it as much as I liked Renmazuo compared to it's contemporaries. I don't know how to feel about it's beetle theming. All of the Omnigears are more organic looking but "beetle" seems like a strange-ish choice. Idk. G-Elements is epic. Pure cheese. Love it, even if it probably doesn't fit to have such cheese for such an important group of enemies. I do love how it was foreshadowed by all of their gears being animals though. I also love how you get their sword although it looks different when Fenrir equips it. How interesting that Ramsus was a designer baby created to be above all other humans and yet Fei and Elly seem to be above him... Miang and Krelian gaslighting Ramsus into killing Cain is a very good moment. The puzzle at 1:50:55 is actually pretty difficult if you don't know ahead of time where all the buttons are. I have a feeling that at 1:56:22 you can inspect the wall mural behind the chest but I'm not certain of that. I believe it's Cain with some other people. Water level puzzle lol. Who's Rico? I guarantee that the one attack that Hammer has that flashes the screen has given some kid a seizure. After Hammer starts glowing red you have to defeat him in a certain number of turns or else he self destructs and you don't get the very important item that he drops, the Trader Card, which makes rare drops more common or guaranteed to drop. How interesting that Cain seems to have trusted Krelian... No way Ramsus' real name is Ramses. Dan, Joseph, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Judah, Dinah, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, and Naphtali (with the exception of Dinah which supplants Benjamin) are the names of the twelve descendants of Jacob/Israel. Just a little fun fact for you. I like how the Gaetia Key has a broken texture when it activates.
This comment is a continuation of the description. Don't read it until you have finished the video/got to the part of the video that this comment discusses.
This Fei and Elly scene had me real crying. Not ugly crying, but real crying nonetheless. It's really good. Fei is very harsh with Elly when trying to convince her to stay behind but you can tell that it's because he is scared of what might happen to her if she comes with. Then how he tries to say that it's for the people in Nisan when it's obvious that it's because he loves her. The things that Elly says in her room... I don't know how much I can or want to go into detail but it hits very close to home. Fei wanting Elly to be his reason to return, to be his home that he can return to... so good. God Fei and Elly are so good. If you look closely on the Eldridge's bridge you can see the Captain's locket from the opening cutscene. I wonder how it stayed in place during the crash? It can't be that Deus, which was the cause of all of the events of the past 10,000 years, could be defeated so easily? Razael's Tree is really cool looking. The reveals here about the original purpose of the Eldridge and Deus are hugely important so pay attention!!! "Yabeh" is an intentional misspelling of "Yaweh", God's name as revealed to Moses in the book of Exodus. Deus, the nucleus, and Zohar, the central neural circuit and power source controlling the entire system... Very interesting. Alpha Weltall is the one and only super boss of this game, you progress whether or not you beat him. He has 100,000 HP and will one shot you almost guaranteed so you need to build a strategy around evasion rather than defense. Terraria Empress of Light reference. I actually had to replay both Anima dungeons because I forgot to buy the correct equipment for Andvari and Seibzehn to defeat him but you actually have to start near the very beginning of the game by buying Magnetic Coats from Bart's Hideout/the early game Yggdrasil. I forgot to buy enough of them so I had to go to the fallback strategy which ended up working fine. I beat him first try but I attempted it like 6 more times to see if I could do it with everyone still alive but I couldn't. Alpha Weltall was revealed a couple scenes ago to have been an Omnigear the entire time so it's probably pretty close if not identical to what Fei's Weltall would look like as an Omnigear but Fei didn't get an Omnigear but instead "just" the Mark 2.
This part covers Golgoda and Merkava.
The imagery of everyone crucified is a very powerful scene, particularly Chu-Chu. It isn't made clear in game but the gear on the right at 5:05, the one that Ramsus later fights you in, is Krelian's Omnigear. I do wonder why the devs chose to crucify Chu-Chu but didn't put El-Renmazuo, Andvari, Crescens, and El-Stier. Admittedly, Crescens would be difficult to crucify given its lack of arms. Either way, crucifixion in giant robot media is always good. Can't believe that Fei and Citan would slander Krelian in such a way. Krelian would never do something underhanded. Elly partially awakening and defeating these two gears is good. I can't believe that Elly fucking died in a Gear battle trying to save her boyfriend. Elly losing here is actually canon because I stole her Power Magics and Ether Doubler to give to Bart for the Alpha Weltall fight. Krelian shutting down the Nazi think-tank Discord server now that it has outlived its usefulness. Little bit of a 2001: A Space Odyssey reference, foreshadowed by the system being called "SOL-9000". I kinda think this scene would be better if the text boxes were automatic and the camera more prominently showed the memory banks being removed. Every time someone references "terminal interface weapon" or similar, it essentially just means that it is a part of the Yabeh Invasion System and/or something that Deus created. Fun fact, Project Noah was the development title for Xenogears. I think that it's neat how the villains are framed as legitimately having true power. It's a cool way to humanize them, in that they are strong because of their beliefs with the matter of whether they're good or evil being secondary. I also like that even after Wiseman gives Fei advice that Fei is still hesitant, further displaying his weakness. No way... God's ark Merkava... it feels as though I've seen this thing somewhere before in a different lifetime..... I wonder how those 2 weeks would've passed had Disk 2 been more complete. 22:52 is a directorial cum scene. How very interesting that within Merkava there is symbolism that appears to be analogous to the teachings of Nisan... (it's not made very clear in game but Merkava was one of the pieces of the Yabeh System that crashed on this planet 10,000 years ago, with it's name being the same as Judeo-Christian God's Throne/Chariot from the Book of Ezekiel). The texture work inside of Merkava looks really really cool in my opinion. Tfw you've been gaslit since you were a fetus. The spell that Ramsus uses to put your HP to 1 is lol. I didn't realize at first but Fei was so fast that I wasted several of his turns because he went 3 times before everyone else despite accidentally toggling booster off and back on. Jessie Cannon is a perfectly balanced special option. Deus' chrysalis or whatever you want to call it looks so fucking sick. Elly crucified moment. We're kinda at the point in the game where everyone is so powerful that the only way you can lose is if the boss cheeses you so it is somewhat lucky that Miang didn't attack a single time. I really like how Opiomorph looks (plus its serpent design has an amount of plot relevancy if you know about the gnostic concept of the Demiurge). During the fight with Opiomorph I'm pretty sure that Deus' eyes are definitely not supposed to be open but whatever. I think it's really cool how Krelian and Miang are introduced almost as side villains but are slowly revealed to be the puppet masters behind it all. Do you think they rehearse how to best gaslight Ramsus? I love this entire scene so much. Ramsus killing Miang and then kneeling over her corpse is really good. Chapter 4 of the Xenogears anthology manga fleshes out that scene and Miang in general a bit and I definitely recommend reading that chapter after finishing this part or the next part of this playthrough. Hooooooooooly. How could Elly do this? Miang's name in the original Japanese is Myyah. Elehayym = myyahelE = Myyah ele, which means "Myyah exists here" according to the artbook/lore-bible, and her last name "Hawwa" is the Hebrew name of Eve. It is indeed foreshadowed that Elly and Miang are related in some way but it admittedly is pretty damn subtle if you don't know ahead of time. I'm interested in hearing whether any of you had any clue that this plot twist was coming. With Miang's explanation, everything starts to come together and stuff truly begins to make sense. By the end of the next part, almost everything will be explained. At 49:16 it should probably say something more like "even now she still isn't the 'true Miang'". Merkava rising out of the ground and firing its laser is cool and I wish the cutscene for it was longer. At 53:09 it should probably say something more like "in a catatonic state" or "in a coma" rather than "in a state of suspended animation". Shevat being a believable empire moment by selling out its allies. Sophia epic suicide moment.
This part covers a flashback to 500 years ago, the crash site of a certain object, an awakening, the crash site of a certain object, and an awakening.
This part is like the Fei/Id & Lacan/Grahf episode. Even though a lot of the visuals are unironically quite similar to some of the visuals in Evangelion, something about how this game handles Fei's mental breakdown upon seemingly losing Elly is so much better. Fei shutting himself off from the world and receding into himself... I'll just say that I can very much relate to Fei in a lot of ways. I have suspicions that there might have been an intended playable section here set 500 years ago that would've fleshed out all the characters from that time period a bit more. Zephyr and the two Fatima brothers in particular don't have much development as is so it would make sense if there was supposed to have been more. Monolithsoft has also gone on to make several flashback arcs for their later series so there is something of a retroactive track record to suggest it. Could've been fun playing a section as Lacan with a party made up of Krelian and Roni or Zephyr and Sophia. I do like what little we get though, with them sitting around the bonfire talking about girls. There is definitely a certain factor to this game where you have to fill in the blanks by using your knowledge about the media and literature that inspired it as well as the games the devs have made since, even after reading the artbooklorebible. I sorta bring that point up specifically in reference to Krelian because while I love Krelian, it definitely would've helped his characterization if this flashback section was longer and really fleshed out his relationship with Lacan and Sophia. As it is in game Krelian's initial motives come off sorta as cope seeth but with the artbook and filling in some stuff in your mind, it is a lot more understandable where he is coming from. Krelian was orphaned at a young age and his job prior to meeting Sophia was as a spec ops soldier/assassin. The way that he met Sophia was that he was ordered to assassinate her due to a power struggle within the Nisan church but when he was about to kill her, she, a ~13 year old girl at the time, gave him a smile and thanked him because she hated seeing people getting hurt in the power struggle because of her presence so he ran away with her and they lived together in exile for seven years. There's also the factor that despite the love triangle, Krelian and Lacan are supposed to be each others' closest friends besides Sophia. Speaking of Lacan, besides him just being a fantastically written character, there is a lot that he says that I can relate to on a very deep level, even the frame of reference being art and the mirroring of one's self within ones art. I absolutely adore the scene of Lacan and Sophia in the infirmary. Some of my absolute favorite character writing in the game outright. Sophia sacrificing herself combined with what she says to Krelian and Lacan and the way that "Lacan! Live!" pops up in one instant rather than slowly scrolling in gives me chills. Krelian's monologue afterwards is great. The way that Lacan is drawn to Miang due to her existence being similar to Sophia's is cool. The way that Sophia's "phantom will" shakes its head in vain trying to stop Lacan from listening to Miang is so good though sadly I advanced the text boxes at the wrong time and it split it up kinda weirdly. No flippin way..... Agni Fire Punch is a Grahf Xenogears reference. Pretty cool how Midori can still sense Fei below Id. It's never explained why Midori is psychic but she is a pretty based child. This description is already long but if I go into as much detail as I can on the rest of this part it's going to be like 20,000 fucking characters. It's really cool how Id has control over the memories of previous lives and was the one showing Fei the visions of them. U.N.R.G 2 looks fucking rad, the scene of it bursting from its egg and the Zohar rising out of magma is so fucking cool. Strangely this is probably the easiest fight against Id even if you don't have overpowered equipment, which definitely doesn't seem right. I kinda went easy on him to see if I could get any of my party into Hypermode but it didn't happen. No flippin way... Wiseman is Fei's dad Khan... Just a bit of father son bonding, beating the shit out of your son in order to cure his neurodivergency. Fei floating within his mind is a bit of an Evangelion moment. Fei almost giving into Id before remembering Elly is good. I don't know whether the use of the oldschool film projector has any lore/metalore relevancy but it's a bit of a directorial cum moment. This description will be continued in the comments so look there for 15,000 more characters.
This comment is a continuation of the description. Don't read it until you have finished the video/got to the part of the video that this comment discusses.
The camera work in the entirety of Id's monologue is soooo good. If you'll remember, Fei had a flashback of these torturous events during the party's infiltration of Krelian's lab in Solaris. Mother didn't come to Fei's assistance. Mother was Miang. Is Id the one at fault or is 'the coward' the one at fault for Id being the way that he is? Either way it is 'Fei' who is at fault. They contacted an 'existence' huh... Grahf is to Lacan what Id is to Fei. It's not a perfect parallel but it's close enough to understand it. All the scenes where the camera zooms out into the black void/Fei's mind is such a cool directorial cum moment. Karen overcoming the will of Miang that was encoded into her by Deus with her maternal instincts is a cool moment. Id coming to his senses and entrusting his will and memories to Fei in order to become complete is really cool. This sequence of flashbacks to Fei's past lives, all at the moment of each given Elly's death with every incarnation of Elly insisting every incarnation of Fei to live is sooooo good. Lacan's consciousness resurfacing just before his death after getting mindbroken by losing Sophia and experiencing a flawed awakening as the contact and then being unable to do anything while Grahf causes the Diabolos Collapse and kills everyone who he had fought so hard to protect alongside Sophia, Krelian, Zephyr, Roni, and Rene, combined with the fact that it's probably Roni who canonically kills him is so heartbreaking.
Hooooooooooooooooooooooly fuuuuuuck I could probably write 20,000 characters worth of description for this scene alone if I really wanted to. Where do I even start? I guess by saying that this scene is unironically at least 40% of why I even made this entire playthrough because:
A) this is the scene that i made the burrito edits of
and
B) it is really really really really really fucking cool
I'll approach this from two directions, the first being the more standard for my descriptions synoptic analysis structure and the second being me gushing over how fucking cool the symbolism and meaning of the scene is.
Fei's recombined psyche allows him to awaken as the contact and meet the Wave Existence, the true God of this universe rather than the man made god Deus. The aesthetics of the Wave Existence and the Path of Sephirot are so fucking cool, emanations of waves given form by the perception of the viewer. The framing of the scene and how the text isn't in text boxes despite there being two separate consciousnesses conversing is also cool. The explanation that the Wave Existence gives for himself and the 'Upper Domain' (the more specific term that Xenosaga uses for the same idea of the higher dimension) that he comes from is so cool. Imagine you are just vibing in the fluctuating void and suddenly you get sucked into a low dimensional big rectangle and are stuck there for 10,000 years. Fei's psyche being recombined also granted him access to the memories of all of his previous incarnations including his first incarnation Abel, a young boy and the sole survivor of the Eldridge's crash, who made contact with and perceived the Wave Existence, giving it form within his 4 dimensional universe. Tfw you just wanted a mommy gf but God gives you a 10,000 year long cycle of torment but you still come out of the other side of it with love and hope for humanity. To be fair though God did still give him a mommy gf. The high resolution design of the Zohar shown in this anime cutscene is so fucking cool looking. The dichotomy between Fei/Contact/Wave Existence and Elly/Antitype/Deus is really really really cool. Fei accepting responsibility for his fate despite literal God being willing to take the blame for it is pure Xeno kino. There's no other word for it. Extremely good display of how much Fei has developed as a person since the beginning of his journey where he refused to take responsibility for his actions. I literally can not put into words how much "Use...the....Xe...no....gears...des...troy...Zohar..." makes me cum. Thats right, the name of the game isn't just the name of the game, it's also the name of Fei's final machine.
Now on to the gushing.
What other videogame do you know of where the main character reaches honest to god literal spiritual enlightenment? It is so fucking cool and I don't think any other character in videogaming even comes close to the spiritual journey that Fei/the Contact experiences. Fei recombines his fractured psyche by accepting all of his actions, all aspects of himself, the good and the bad, come what may, and in so doing (with a little help from the Zohar) ascends to a higher plane of consciousness through the Path of Sephirot and meets God. Not the Demiurgic false physical god that Deus represents, the true, spiritual, unknowable, infinite, capital g God that is the Wave Existence. The Alpha and the Omega. The beginning and the end. The first and the last. In achieving this feat, Fei has become "AS GOD", just like was foretold in the opening. Who do you think it was that displayed that message? Was it truly Deus or was it the Wave Existence subtly influencing Deus' actions? It's 'Alpha 1' in the opening that is hacking the ship, with Alpha 1 being Kadomony (the original mother) and the Zohar while Omega 1 was Deus' main body so it could well be. "Ye shall be as gods" is a quote from the bible that the snake tells Eve to fool her into eating the fruit of knowledge and dooming mankind but in the Gnostic faith, which a LOT of the symbolism in this game is based on, the story goes that the tree of knowledge's fruit saves mankind from living under the false physical god's rule by giving them 'Gnosis', which is knowledge of the true purpose and reality of human nature as being something truly divine which allows them to ascend above their earthly existence. In a way, Deus using the humans as parts for its body would also make them "as god" which is quite interesting. Aside from Gnosticism and other Judeo-Christian influences, there are also aspects of the Contact/Fei's journey that mirror the Hindu ideas of Duhkha/Samsara and Moksha/Nirvana. How he experiences a cycle of death and rebirth, seemingly trapped to suffer terribly within that cycle eternally but in achieving enlightenment, in achieving Moksha/Nirvana, he frees himself from the cycle by realizing his true self and his relationship with God. Fei also displays incredible spiritual strength by taking responsibility over his actions and fate even while face to face with a God who is willing to apologize for them. To have gone through the 10,000 year long ordeal of reincarnation, the experience of losing the love of his lives over and over and over and over, the innumerable soul crushing and psyche shattering events during that existence, and to still have the will to continue to keep living with faith in the goodness of life is awe inspiring. It legitimately brings me to tears. In putting all of this to words I realize that Fei actually is my favorite character in this game but Krelian is still a pretty close second.
Xenogears looks so fucking cool. No flippin way... Darth Vader is Lu- I mean... Grahf is Fei's dad... Grahf being unable to continue living as a human after his contact with the Wave Existence because his Elly was already dead is really good in a sad way. Do Grahf's motives behind his plan to kill god make him an antihero or are his sins and the cost too great for him to be considered as such? Quite incredible how awakened Fei in Xenogears can solo Grahf in True Weltall despite the entire party barely being able to hang on against Alpha Weltall. I really like Xenogears' deathblow where he repeatedly headbutts the enemy. It's so good how Grahf/Kahn was not only a previous Elly incarnation's boyfriend but also a previous Miang incarnation's husband. "Fei... you have to bang my wife... your gf was your mom in a previous life..." This whole section of the game feels very complete and very polished. Could you imagine if the whole game was on this level? Kadomony looks really cool. It's not made super clear, nor is it super important, but Deus only added the compliment, Miang, to the original Elehaym that the Wave Existence created for Abel when he awoke and tried to take over the Eldridge ("Alpha 1 Genome... restructuring" as stated in the opening). With Fei having fully committed himself to saving Elly and humanity from the destiny that Deus has provided them, the gang gets to working on a plan. There is definitely a certain level of Evangelionism to the whole idea of Deus combining all humans together into one. Bit of a Code Geass reference in baiting out a shot by performing a suicide attack and having an extremely short time frame to cancel out the weapon of the huge aerial battleship and get inside its shields. The Seraph angels (no way evanjelion reference...) look really cool. You can kinda tell but the scenes shown of them here are definitely from like some cut cutscene or something because they are way higher poly than actual ingame models or they're drawn or something like the Wels that attacked the Thames many parts ago were.
Bart's whole plan is quite powerful. I will finish this description later but right now I am burnt out from writing this shit like literally all day and also the rest of this part is pretty self explanatory.
This part covers Snowfield, the Zeboim Ruins, and Duneman Isle.
The audio for this part didn't record so I recorded it again and it didn't record it again so I said fuck it and inserted the music except in the Zeboim Ruins which I re-recorded a third time. As a result there are some scenes missing such as going and revisiting Taura for a line of dialogue and some armor as well as a little bit of farming for an equipment item called "Speed Shoes" that automatically activate the "haste" effect in battle. Hopefully the missing bits and the music don't detract from the experience too much. Essentially everything in this part is entirely optional. You technically don't even need to explore Snowfield or talk to Zephyr. Snowfield is pretty cool, the world is on its last legs so of course its gotta be in the snow, and morale is at an all time low with many people cursing fate and giving up hope but Fei and the party continue onwards despite the possibility that defeating Deus might end up killing Elly. I really love how Zephyr as well as Bart and Sigurd tell Fei that he doesn't have to do it if he doesn't want to, and that they'll support him no matter what his decision. The ring that you give to Midori is an item that I went back and replayed the first part of this playthrough to get, you get it outside Citan's house in the flower beds..... 50 hours of game ago. The item that you give to the jeweler in the prison to get that ring for Emeralda is similar, it's received from a man in the bar in Lahan. There is actually a lot of really funny/odd/strange stuff that you can farm for in the end game despite the fact that you can probably beat the final boss at level 50 with the equipment sold at Snowfield. For example, Citan's best sword is dropped by dragons on Duneman Isle and you need pretty specific equipment to even survive against them let alone defeat them. Also, not really shown but hinted at at the end of this part, you can revisit the battling arena and use/fight essentially any gear in the entire game and it even has a multiplayer mode, thank god we have a full fledged 3d fighter minigame but god forbid disk 2 was actually completed. I'm touching on things out of order in this description but whatever, I'm gonna talk about Duneman Isle before the Zeboim Ruins too because I feel like it and there isn't much to say. I have suspicions that this area was supposed to have gone earlier in the game, ie somewhere in the Aveh desert, but that the devs felt that that part of the game was too bloated so they moved it here. Not much to this area other than getting a pretty good sword for Citan and Billy's best handgun. Onto Zeboim and a small discussion about the cut content for this part of the playthrough as well as cut content from the game. This video was originally gonna showcase Chu-Chu and Emeralda because I hadn't used them all game but as I had to re-record this section three times I ended up just speeding through it and using Emeralda's AoE Ethers to FTK essentially every battle. Whoops. The texture work in Zeboim is so fucking good, there are a couple of screens that unironically look like they could be prerendered. Big Joe sells the overpowered super expensive end game equipment. It's very interesting how relevant/poignant what is discussed in the slideshow and by Kim in the flashback still is to modern society.
At 1:00:08 the video freezes,
Elly says, "Kim... you're too loud."
Kim says, "I don't care if they hear me. All the people here are also fools!"
I don't recall whether or not I've said as much in previous vids but Xenogears was originally pitched as Final Fantasy 7. For anyone who even has cursory knowledge on the opening sequence of that game, I don't think I even need to go into detail about how similar what Kim monologues to Elly is to the opening of FF7. It's a bit of a chicken vs egg thing where it's impossible to know where the ideas originally came from but it is interesting to think about, especially combined with the fact that Xenogears, after becoming Xenogears and not FF7, was planned as 6 games. What would the Zeboim game have been like? The art-book-lore-bible aka Perfect Works goes into some detail on it, detailing that Kim becomes involved with Ravine and their fight against the government alongside his development of Emeralda and his interactions with the Miang of that era. The Zeboim game aka Episode 3 is probably the second easiest unmade part of the Xenogears hexalogy for me to imagine, right after Episode 4 (Lacan's Era). It helps that there is a somewhat similar game within the Xeno series that already exists; Xenosaga: Pied Piper.I think the best way to imagine it is if FF7 was combined with Ghost in the Shell, Ace Combat 3, and Macross. I don't know how exactly to explain why Zeboim reminds me of Macross so much but it really does exude the same sort of energy to me. No way... loli grew up into brown woman...... Yep, music box.
This part covers from the beginning of the final dungeon and ends after defeating the final boss.
I will say it again given that this place is technically sorta the same as Merkava, the textures here look so fucking cool. Foreboding is kinda an overused song but it is really good so I don't really mind. This dungeon is really lol from a gameplay perspective; a maze with switches to change what paths you can and can't take. Believe me when I say that without a guide this place is a nightmare. Even with a guide it's pretty difficult to navigate. It's saved by looking so cool and there being no enemy encounters in the screens with the switches and elevators. The falling tunnel "puzzles" are funny and remind me of the Labyrinth of Amala from Shin Megami Tensei III. Actually, there are a lot of things in this game that remind me of SMTIII, but there are way too many to list so just go play SMTIII. I was kinda surprised/impressed that I got through the first falling tunnel without taking damage, but then the second one freakin annihilated my ego. I think that showing the scene of falling between the two angels a second time here after receiving all of the information about the Antitype and the Contact and the reality of everything about the last 10,000 years on this planet and Fei's acceptance of all aspects of himself and reaffirmation of his determination to save Elly is really cool. I also really like that you walk through the rooms that led up to the fight against Opiomorph, with Elly's crucifix still planted firmly in the floor, before leaping down the hole that Citan told Fei not to follow Elly and Deus into. Holy fuuuuuuuuuuck this room looks and sounds so sick. Soooooo fucking sick. WHY DOES IT SOUND SO FUCKING SICK!!! So, there are two ways to approach this battle, you can either skip the four orbs and fight Deus at full power, or you can fight the four orbs and lower Deus' health as well as seal some of his attacks. I opted to defeat the orbs mainly just to show off the bosses contained within them because I think their designs are really cool. Maybe a little bit of an Evangelion reference in making such strange looking angels, but who cares they are sick looking. I really like how they all die by imploding into a singularity. They all have names that directly reference Torahic/Biblical/Quranic angels btw. Between the last part and this part I spent about 4 or so hours in fast forward farming for money to buy good equipment for Chu-Chu, Maria, and Citan so that they could fight these four without it being too close for comfort. How thoughtful of Deus to put this party changing station here. HOOOOOOLYYYYY CUUUUMM Deus is so fucking cool looking. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLYYYYY CUUUUUUUUUUUMM the song that plays during this fight (it's called 'Awakening' for anyone wondering) is so fucking sick. Gives me chills for literally the entire fight. I more than likely overprepared for this fight as Jessie Blasta and GNRS50 equipped OMEGA100 engined Xenogears are simply built different. I know it's just me being weird and liking giant robots too much but it is eyewateringly rad when the camera pans behind Xenogears as Deus is exploding after defeating him. Fei calling Xenogears "partner" is great, especially given the context of him not wanting anything to do with Weltall at the start of the game. I think I could take up the remaining 1571 characters writing "HOLY FUCK" with enough O's and U's to elaborate on just how much I love the song that plays during this sequence. It's called "The One Who Bares Fangs at God" and it is my absolute favorite track in this game as far as songs that play in the game and not during the intro or outro cutscenes go. Honestly though I like it enough that it might still be my favorite even taking "Dark Dawn" and "Small Two of Pieces" into account... "Dark Dawn" probably just barely edges it out though and "Small Two of Pieces" is a lot more listenable. This scene is so fucking cool with the music playing and the Path of Sephirot looking sick and Krelian looking cool as fuck while him and Fei debate their ideologies before he summons Urobolus. The discussion between Fei and Krelian here is so fantastic and so important to the message of the game and what this game means to me and why I even made this playthrough in the first place that I kinda want to write about it in its own video... I think I will actually.
Follow this link if you want to see a massive dissertation about Fei's/Krelian's discussion
I killed Urobolos in such a perfect way. 4 normal attacks to get into infinity mode and then all three infinity deathblows in descending order. Xenogears' infinity deathblows are so fucking good, just beating the absolute shit out of the enemy. I recommend going and watching a video showing everyone's on foot and in gear deathblows. There are some pretty cool ones that I didn't get a chance to show off in this playthrough.
This is the ending cinematic from the Playstation 1 videogame 'Xenogears'.
I kinda recommend going and finding an upload of the Japanese dub version after watching this video, but I do kinda have a soft spot for the English dub…
Where do I even begin to start with discussing everything I want to? Even more than the description for part 18, I could write 50,000 characters about everything... the game itself, the message behind the game, my relationship with the game, my relationship with everyone viewing this playthrough, my relationship with myself…
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