“Stand tall and shake the heavens”

Xenogears is certainly one of the most ambitious rpgs the folks at Square have cooked up. The game heavily on its complex and intriguing plot. The story is really well written and interesting, but can be difficult to follow and to understand at some points. The dialogue is good and real funny at some points and the characters get well developed during the game.

The world of Xenogears relies heavily on gears. Gears are huge machines controlled by human pilots. They are leftovers from ancient civilization and the technological information to construct new gears is now out of reach for most countries. The ability to repair old gears is limited too, as barely enough skill and parts exist to fix damaged ones.

Fei is a young man living in the village of Lahan. His life has been peaceful and calm despite of his mysterious past. Fei was brought to the village years ago, badly injured. Although he recovered, memories of his past were completely lost. This doesn’t seem to bother Fei too much anymore and he’s been able to enjoy his life in the village. Fei’s situation changes soon. When unknown military forces are transporting a newly discovered gear by air, they suddenly lose control of the gear. It lands into the village of Lahan.

Once the crash site is discovered, the military forces send out units to retrieve the lost gear. The events lead to tragedy. Military units attack unarmed villagers and Fei enters the abandoned gear and plans to fight back. When huge machines fight in the middle of a small village, the result isn’t going to be pretty and this time is no exception.
Although the attack was stopped, the price was terrible. Village of Lahan is destroyed. Fei feels responsible of the destruction and leaves the remains of Lahan. He takes the gear along, hoping to find out what to do next…

Xenogears is one of first true 3D-rpgs for the PlayStation. Instead of pre-rendered backgrounds (like in Final Fantasy VII for example) Xenogears uses the game engine instead. The result is not as pretty as in FF games, but it allows fully rotating camera, for example. The character models don’t look as out of place as in FF7 either. The graphics are OK, nothing spectacular, but good enough.

The only difference to other RPGs in controls is the ability to jump. This is also used heavily in the game, there are lots of places to exercise your platforming talents. Despite of jumps, Xenogears doesn’t resemble a platform game. There aren’t any endless ancient chasms of doom for you to fall into, and it isn’t possible to jump to instant death.
World map can be traveled either by foot or by gears. The biggest difference is that with gears you can avoid battles on map screen and are able to move faster.

The best parts of Xenogears are the story (as mentioned above) and music. Yasunori Mitsuda, the man who composed majority of Chrono Trigger’s songs is responsible for Xenogears’ soundtrack. He certainly doesn’t disappoint and delivers one of the most impressive videogame soundtracks ever created. The songs very from calm and soothing to powerful and energetic. Tracks like Shevat: the Wind is Calling, The One who is Torn Apart, Omen, and Awakening make the soundtrack worth of purchasing by itself.

Combat complexity

Xenogears has two battle modes. The regular one where the characters fight like in any RPG games and the second one where the characters fight inside their gears (Gears are those huge robots which you see in a couple of the screen shots here). These modes are different since when using gears you also have to worry about fuel. Gears use fuel and each attack consumes a certain amount of it.
The only way to gain fuel during battles is by charging it, but it only restores a little amount per turn and you can’t attack while charging fuel. Once the fuel is gone, gears can only charge (or use magic) which kinda makes them sitting ducks. Therefore the gear battles require a bit more strategy than regular ones.

Gears can’t do their strongest attacks at the beginning of a fight. They have attack levels and each gear starts the battle in attack level 0. Attack level 0 attacks are basically just kicks and punches. Once a gear damages an opponent with level 0 attack it’s attack level goes up. When attack level rises, gears can do combo attacks which are way powerful than the normal ones.
After a gear has reached attack level 3 it has a chance to enter hyper mode (attack level infinite). Gears in infinite level do insane amounts of damage, but unfortunately the hyper mode only lasts for three turns. If this sounds difficult to understand, it really isn’t. It’s a simple system, but difficult to describe.

As I said before, there are both hand-to-hand battles and gear battles. Interesting thing about regular battles is that if things are looking grim, you can call your gear for help. That’ll change the odds a bit, since fighting regular enemies with gears offers the challenge equal to stomping an ant. That works both ways, trying to battle a gear-sized foe by hands is asking for trouble. To maintain the challenge in hand-to-hand battles, the use of gears is limited in some areas, you usually won’t be able use your gear in small dungeons for example (for obvious reasons).

Xenogears is a great game and definitely worth buying. Completing Xenogears takes well over 40 hours of your time, so prepare to lose your free time for quite a while, since it’s difficult to stop playing this game once you’ve started it. The first prequel game to Xenogears, Xenosaga – Episode One was released in 2004 and the sequel to it, Xenosaga Episode II was released in 2005 . Although the connections to Xenogears are slim, those who liked Xenogears should check Xenosaga out too.

Konami’s surprise

Suikoden (Titled Genso Suikoden in Japan) was one of the first RPGs on PlayStation. It is published by Konami, the company which created the marvelous Castlevania series, but Konami isn’t known for their RPGs. When Suikoden was released, many people thought that it was a stupid move from Konami to use 2D graphics instead of 3D.
I think Konami was right; RPGs don’t need beautifully rendered 3D graphics to deliver a great gaming experience, what RPGs do need is a great, long storyline, good music and playability. While Suikoden’s graphics aren’t that great and the game looks a little bit like 16-bit RPGs, the graphics are definitely good enough and there’s lots of small details.

What Suikoden lacks in graphics, it fixes in the storyline and characters. There’s an incredible amount of characters, 108 overall! While about 100 of them are playable, the rest are NPCs which add something to the story. Graphics aren’t the most important thing when it comes to RPGs. Music is one of the most important ones. If the game has bad music, you can bet it’s not fun to play (at least with volume on). Suikoden doesn’t disappoint in this area either. It has one of the best RPG soundtracks I’ve heard. The songs are well done, not repetitive and fit the game really well.

The story is set on the Scarlet Moon Empire, and the main character (referred as the hero or McDohl from now on, as no default name is given) is the son of a great imperial general Teo McDohl. The story starts as the hero and his father visit Emperor Barbarosa who assigns Teo to set off the rebellion on north and the hero joins the imperial guard at the same time. After Teo has left, young McDohl starts working at the guard with his father’s servants Gremio, Pahn and Cleo and hero’s childhood friend, Ted.
The assignments they first receive are lowly, but while working at them, they realize how corrupt the empire really is. During one mission they are attacked by a powerful monster, but Ted saves the day by using mysterious magic. One imperial commander sees this and believes his superiors might be interested in Ted’s power, asking Ted to accompany him to the imperial palace once they get back home.

Not suspecting anything, Ted agrees, and once the party reaches capital city Gregminster he leaves for the palace. Ted comes back in middle of the night, badly wounded. He tells McDohl about the source of his power. As it turns out, Ted has one of the true runes, the Soul Eater, and therefore the empire is so interested in him. Ted refused to give up the rune, knowing that it’s power should never be allowed to evil hands. He barely managed to escape from the palace and is in no condition to flee Gregminster.
He asks McDohl to take the rune and protect it from the Empire. Young McDohl reluctantly agrees and escapes Gregminster with Pahn, Cleo and Gremio, while Ted stays to distract the enemy. They get out of the city with the help of stranger named Viktor. Viktor later introduces the hero to the leader of resistance movement, Lady Odessa Silverberg. As Odessa is mortally wounded in an imperial assault at the rebel headquarters, McDohl is eventually chosen to be her successor. After a while the news of his son joining the rebels also reach imperial general Teo McDohl…

A call to arms

Suikoden isn’t a really difficult game, in fact, it’s a bit on the short side, but there’s lots to explore and search. It’s great fun to play: easy to learn, no places where you can get stuck (Well except the dice game which annoyed me for a little while.), funny dialogue (Though a bit odd sometimes, still funny….) and the story moves pretty fast. The biggest downside in the game is shortness of it. Fortunately there’s lots of replay value, and the game lasts even when completed many times.

Besides the large amount of characters, one thing that makes Suikoden different from another RPGs are the army battles. In these battles you lead the whole Liberation Army (Rebels) against the forces of Scarlet Moon Empire. They offer a bit of a change and are not too difficult. Basically the large battles are just a variation of ‘paper, scissors and rock’, i.e. magic is strong versus melee attacks, but weak against arrows. Bow attack is strong against magic, but weak against melee, etc. The strategist-feature available boosts the power of infantry attacks for few turns. The use of thieves and other special attacks offer a bit more strategy to the mix, nothing overcomplicated though.

In army battles all your playable characters form units which they then lead into battle. Each unit has one commander and two vice-commanders. If you’ve recruited all characters in one team it’s more powerful than having just one or two of them. The units are sorted by their leaders name, for example Commander’s Team for the main character and Viktor’s team for Viktor. Something that needs to be kept in mind is that if you make a really bad decision – like using your weakest infantry team against enemy’s strongest magic users, not only will they get completely wiped out, there’s also a chance that a commanding officer from that team dies in that attack.
And yes, once he/she is dead, there’s no chance of any resurrection besides the mighty load-rune on your memory card. Some characters are more vulnerable to this than others, and major characters never perish in the battle. Nevertheless, if someone does die, he’s out of your 108 characters. If that happens, it sucks and there’s no chance getting the best ending anymore, better to be careful.

The normal battle system is quite traditional turn-based RPG-battle, besides the usual ‘attack’ ‘defend’ ‘rune’(magic) ‘item’ and ‘run’ there’s also ‘Free Will’, which lets the character choose the enemy and the attack by him/herself. There’s also an option to bribe enemies to let the party escape, but it costs too much money to be useful. Certain characters have powerful combo attacks called ‘Unite’ with others. Most unite attacks involve two characters, but some have even more, up to five.

Magic system is rune based. You can attach a rune to character’s hand and that gives him/her the ability to use magic. Each character can wield only one rune, and the only spells characters can cast are those granted by the rune. Wind Rune gives wind magic, Fire Rune fire magic, etc. Runes can also be detached, but after the rune is removed, the character loses the ability to use the magic of that rune until it’s reattached.
There are also special runes which can’t be removed from a character, the most notable example is the main character who wears Soul Eater rune. It can’t be removed, and therefore the main character is stuck with it for the rest of the game.

There are no magic points, but spells have limited number of uses. The more skilled character is with magic, the more times he can use the spell. Magic is restored after a nights rest at an inn. Some special runes and unite attacks make the character to lose balance, which makes him/her unable to attack next turn and vulnerable to enemy attacks. This needs to be kept in mind in battles.

Besides the battles mentioned above, there’s also a duel system. At some points in the game, you’re challenged to a duel, which leads to it’s one-on-one battle between your character and the enemy. In the duel you’re given a couple of choices: ‘attack’, ‘desperate attack’ and ‘defend’. Like in the army battles, one of these attacks is strong against one and weak against another. (e.g. desperate attack deals lots of damage, but when opponent chooses to defend, it’s not that effective anymore.)
You make choices either by choosing randomly, or by listening what the opponent says, since the opponents always use same sentences before certain attacks (when the opponent says things like “Go ahead and attack!”, something tells me he uses defend next turn…).

One of the best aspects of Suikoden is the Headquarters system. At one point in the game, you’ll acquire your own castle which serves as the Liberation army base of operations. All characters you recruit hang out at the castle, often bringing changes with them.
For example, one character builds an elevator, another brings an item store and one guy even builds a bath to your castle. The HQ expands as the number of recruits increases. If you have managed to recruit all 108 characters, you’ll see the castle in it’s finest and also get to see the best ending.

I think Suikoden is definitely one of the best RPGs for the PSX. Unfortunately it wasn’t very popular, and there are lots of RPG players who’ve never played it and that’s a shame. In my books, it’s even better than Final Fantasy VII. (Don’t know why, maybe I’m just a loony…) It is my favorite RPG and if you like traditional role-playing and don’t mind the bit aged graphics, then it’s really something worth checking for. Suikoden was also released for Sega Saturn with added features, but it was never published outside Japan.
Suikoden spinoffs Genso Suikoden Gaiden I & II: Swordsman of Harmonia & Duel at the Crystal Valley never made it outside Japan either. GBA game Suikoden Card Stories may still have a small, but unlikely chance to be translated.

For those who already have played the first game, don’t forget the sequel, Suikoden II. Remember to keep Suikoden I save games on your memory card because they’ll change the sequel a bit, i.e. there will be cameo appearances by some of the original one’s cast. The third game in the mains series, Suikoden III is going to be released in Japan in fall 2002 for the PS2 and takes the series to complete 3D. Then well see how Konami has managed to handle the changes, hopefully the magic of the prequels is still there.

‘Expel’led (aka. the almost clever headline)

Star Ocean is the first RPG by Enix for a while that has come to Europe. Also a sequel to SNES game titled Star Ocean (figures…). One of the most interesting things in Star Ocean 2 is that you get to choose between two different scenarios. Although the storyline is mostly similar, certain events are different.

The story sets in planet Expel, a remote planet far from earth and you can choose to play it as Expelian girl named Rena, or Earth Federation ensign Claude C. Kenni, who was investigating another planet near Expel and was transported to Expel in an accident.
These scenarios relate very closely to each other and the basic story is the same, with few differences. Some characters are only available in Claude’s scenario and some in Rena’s only. Those who’ve played Star Ocean might be interested to know that Claude is the son of Ronixis J. Kenni, one of the original Star Ocean’s characters. He will also make a few appearances in Star Ocean 2.

While ago a meteorite had crashed to Expel, and soon after some strange events have started to occur. When Claude appears to Expel, he has no idea where he is or how to return to home. He meets Rena and hears about strange events near the meteorite. He decides to go to investigate the meteorite with Rena, hoping to find some information about his whereabouts.

Star Ocean’s story is quite interesting and offers challenge for about 30 hours. (That depends, of course. Experienced players may play through it faster while inexperienced may need more time.) The game comes in two CDs and they’re filled with good graphics, music and story, so the game should bring entertainment for a while.
It can also bring lots of challenge. The bosses are hard to beat as they share the same experience level as the main character does. Leveling up won’t help beating them. Completing the game unlocks new difficulty settings (They’re REALLY difficult) for masochists who like to get beaten up in the fights.

The game has an interesting battle system. Battles happen in real time, and you control one character during the battle and let the computer control the rest (If anyone has played Tales of Destiny, they know what I’m talking about.) You have full control over your characters movement in the 3d battlefield, and sometimes the game reminds me of some action games as I make my character run across the field and beat the crap out of bad guys. While you get to control only one character at a time, you can give orders to computer controlled ones, such as cast spells with them.
Too bad that the battle system doesn’t work too well. Many times controlling your characters is too confusing and difficult and the computer does some weird stuff while controlling your other characters, like attacking the biggest monster with party healer… (Fortunately such cases are rare). This is bad, since it really pisses off in areas with lots of fighting.

A test of patience

Xenogears has two battle modes. The regular one where the characters fight like in any RPG games and the second one where the characters fight inside their gears (Gears are those huge robots which you see in a couple of the screen shots here). These modes are different since when using gears you also have to worry about fuel. Gears use fuel and each attack consumes a certain amount of it.
The only way to gain fuel during battles is by charging it, but it only restores a little amount per turn and you can’t attack while charging fuel. Once the fuel is gone, gears can only charge (or use magic) which kinda makes them sitting ducks. Therefore the gear battles require a bit more strategy than regular ones.

Graphics are quite pretty, especially the backgrounds are very nice. And the movie sequences are also beautiful, as usual. Music is good, but not all of it. Some pieces are average and there are some songs that just annoy. But there are some real gems there and many good tracks. And battle theme is a good one, which is good, since it gets played a lot.

The sound effects are OK, but during battles comes up the voice acting. Now, this can be a good thing, but on Star Ocean, it isn’t. Some voices sound damn stupid and overacted. Usually every character in the party have something different to say at the beginning of the fight, like “We can win this!”, but unfortunately they only have about two different sentences. That starts pissing off when you have to hear the same words at the beginning of almost every fight, not to mention the other things the character has to say… Fun at first, but since the game has lots of fighting, it gets annoying fast.

Star Ocean characters gain levels as other RPG heroic-like-people do, but there is one thing different from most RPGs. As characters in SO2 gain levels, they also get Skill Points. These Skill Points are used to gain new skills and become better in old ones. There’s wide variety of skills ranging from cooking to animal training. Even if it may not seem like it, even these skills are useful, thanks to the item creation SO2 is using.
Let’s take cooking, for example. You get to buy cooking ingredients from various shops in the game and with cooking skill, the character makes food out of them. Same with alchemy. Combine items to make new ones. You can modify your equipment or weapons by adding special items to them. You can write books and sell them for money. It feels like endless amount of new items can be made. There are also many other skills which don’t involve item creation. Combat skills sometimes rise characters speed, defense or attack power for a while, allow ignoring enemy’s defenses and causing larger damage. Animal training allows player to summon an animal who goes shopping on players behalf. This is particularly useful in dungeons.

Star Ocean: The Second Story has moments when it can be boring or frustrating, but mostly it keeps players interest high. And with the multiple endings and the two different scenarios it offers, SO2 has more replay value than most other RPGs. It’s a good buy if you’re looking for a new RPG to spend your time with.

As an interesting sidenote, Star Ocean: The Second Story has also spawned an anime series, Star Ocean EX. Unfortunately I haven’t seen anything from the series besides a short clip, so I really can’t tell you much about it, but those interested might want to check it out. Let’s hope there’s an English translation available. The third game in the series, Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time has also been released in Japan, and hopefully we’ll see the English translation soon. The series has also appeared on Game Boy, but Star Ocean: Blue Sphere was never released outside Japan.

Long awaited sequel

I’ve been waiting for Chrono Cross for a long time. A sequel to Chrono Trigger, one of the best RPG’s ever made. The expectations for this game have been huge and the developers have taken quite a task. Even though Chrono Cross is a sequel, not many of the original games characters appear in it and the ones that do, aren’t playable and don’t play a major role in the story.
Nevertheless, once you start the game, you’ll notice the similarities. Even the music has lots of familiar tunes from the first game, although in a remixed form. The development team behind Chrono Cross, is almost the same one as in Chrono Trigger, and many of these people have also been working on Xenogears, so they’ve proved themselves as makers of great RPGs.

The main character is Serge, a young boy from Aruni village. Serge is a frequent visitor to the peaceful beach near his home. One day he visits the place, as usual. This time something strange happens. Nothing seems different from usual, but something’s definitely changed. This seems obvious, because once Serge returns to his village, nobody knows him anymore. The villagers tell him that there indeed was a kid named Serge in the village, but he died years ago.
Serge decides to visit the boy’s grave, hoping to find some information of what’s going on. At the grave he is attacked by villains for an unknown reason. Serge seems outnumbered, but then young woman named Kid appears, helping Serge to defeat the attackers. Kid accompanies Serge and the two start investigating what has really happened to Serge.

All-new battle system

Battles are different from Chrono Trigger. Although there aren’t random battles in CC either, only thing that’s left from CT’s battle system are the techniques and certain spells. For example, main characters for both games, – Serge in Chrono Cross and Crono in Chrono Trigger – learn the Luminaire-technique and both are of white element. There are other big differences to other RPG’s as well. No traditional items to be used in battles, healing is done only with magic and there are no stat boosting items to be used in battles.

The spell system is element-based. There are six elements: white, black, blue, yellow, green, and fire. Each of them represent nature: white represents light, blue is water, green is wind and so on. Every character an innate element color. The innate color effects numerous things in the game. Every color is resistant to spells and attacks of same color but vulnerable to opposing color. Let’s take an example: If the innate color is red, that character doesn’t take as much damage from red spells as others with different colors do, but blue spells damage him/her more.

Other significant difference is the creation of weapons. You don’t just walk to the blacksmith and buy a shiny ‘n spiffy new axe. You have to collect the parts for it first. There are different ways of acquiring parts: from battles treasure chests or trading them for elements in towns. If you want to make weapons, you’ll need things like iron, fangs, mythril and denatorite. Same thing with accessories. Although you can obtain some weapons and armor from battles or treasure chests, you’ll have to make most of them by yourself.
I think they should’ve just stayed with the traditional RPG Commerce Systemâ„¢ where the blacksmiths have their own damn materials and don’t force you to run across the country looking for them, item shops sell items and not just elements and so on. In addition to that, I also like to have the possibility to use items during battles instead of spells only.

Chrono Cross has an amazing soundtrack composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, who has composed music for games such as Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, Tobal No. 1, just to mention few of them. The music in Chrono Cross has many different genres and the tuned have taken influence from music all around the world.
Graphics that can easily be considered as one of the finest ever seen in Playstation. The world is very colorful and background are really nice. Even the characters are well animated.

The game has an exceptionally large amount of playable characters, around fifty. The only RPGs with more playable characters (If strategy RPG’s are not counted), that I can think of, are both of the Suikoden games. The downside to this is that only a few characters actually play a big part in the story.
There’s no need to play Chrono Trigger first to enjoy Chrono Cross. I recommend that you should, however, as there are numerous references to the first game. Regardless, Chrono Cross is a great game and is, alongside to Legend of Mana, the first Square product for a while that I’ve really enjoyed playing.

Not your basic Final Fantasy

“Lead epic battles in a new Final Fantasy world. Betrayal and darker dealings await in Squaresoft’s game of war. Fight hundreds of battles across dangerous 3D terrain as an ancient blood feud awakens a deadlier foe.
Command knights, mages, ninjas and more. Based on Final Fantasy characters and magic. 19 character classes ; 400 abilities. Deep customization options.”

If the text on the game box is to believe, it doesn’t sound like Final Fantasy. Yet it is, kind of. Tactics should not be confused with other Final Fantasies as it’s completely different. In other Final Fantasies the battles are fast action, but Tactics delivers another view. Tactics’ battles are long and turn based, more like chess. Final Fantasy Tactics isn’t a traditional RPG at all. You don’t run across cities talking to people or wander in the world map as you like.

In FFT the towns are only places to buy items and recruit new characters. There are taverns which can be visited to find out the latest rumors. But these places are just chosen from the menu as you enter the town. You can’t walk around the place. And the world map is much alike. You walk from one place to another instantly and there aren’t random battles although there are places where battles occur such as forests between towns.

Tactics’ characters are customized with class-system. If you’ve played Final Fantasy V, you’ll know what I’m talking about. There are a lot of classes, a knight, a mage, an archer, and a lancer, for example. Each class has its own special abilities and weapons (Knights can use break-techniques to destroy enemy’s weapons and armor, mages can cast attack spells, archers use bows and lancers use spears, etc.) Each character in the game belongs to a class and can use the skills of his class.

Let’s take an example to clear this up a bit, shall we? Our character, Marcus the Knight, for example is a knight (What a surprise!). As he gains levels and develops, the player gets to buy now abilities for him. Player may also decide to change this characters job and change the knight to a mage. Now he doesn’t get to keep his nifty knight equipment, but he may, however use knight skills alongside mage’s skills, if the player wishes so.

Let’s customize

The system may sound complicated but it actually isn’t and the class system is one of the best parts of Final Fantasy Tactics. It allows you to customize your character as you wish. You can make a ninja-skill using priest or a lancer with abilities of a dancer (dancers, by the way, aren’t as crappy characters as they sound like…), possibilities are countless.

Tactics’ music is collaboration between composers Hitoshi Sakimoto (Legaia: Duel Saga, Vagrant Story, Ogre Battle series) and Masaharu Iwata (Ogre Battle series) and offers one of the most impressive soundtracks ever on the PlayStation. The quality of the instruments used on the tracks is amazing and it’s difficult to believe that they’re done using the simple PSX synth.

Final Fantasy Tactics’ graphics are nicely detailed, but not amazing in any way. Also, you don’t get to explore any cities, forests or caves as mentioned above, since the game’s completely linear, turn-based fighting.
But even though walking in beautiful 3D rendered landscapes, isn’t something that Tactics has to offer, it has a very good plot and excellent features such as the class system I promoted earlier on. If you enjoy slow paced action with more strategy involved than in other FF’s (or RPGs in general) then Tactics might be your game.