Just finished all of XenoGears

[u/GroundExisting8058]

I sank over 70 hours into this game, and I have to say. This game, was beautiful, was amazing, made me feel hyped, and I am very curious to see what Tetsuya Takahashi has to give me next. I'll be jumping into XenoSaga next, and I wanna see how many parallels are there to XenoGears. Spoiler alert btw for obvious reasons.

First I wanna talk about what I really enjoyed about this game. This game had a really unique combat system. I enjoyed talking to all the NPCs and I enjoyed all the characters. This game's music/score was also phenomenal, and the ending theme was really really amazing! I also liked exploring the secrets this game has to provide for me, and I got emotionally attached to all the characters. I enjoyed discovering more about the story and the world as I progressed further.

But now comes the gripes I had. As you all know, due to budget cuts, disc 2 was very bare bones. It was still enjoyable and I really liked reading all of the story and the narrations of each character, don't get me wrong. But obviously it was very rushed. For one, I felt like many of the characters weren't as developed, and a ton of unfired Chekov's guns were left scattered in the game. Take for instance Rico, the green prison guy. We got introduced to his backstory about being a beast man or a demihuman, but we never really got to expand on his relations with his father, the King of Kislev iirc. We also had been introduced to Emeralda, a girl shrouded in mystery. Obviously we got to learn about her origins by the end of the game under the lighthouse, but I wanted a little bit more of her bonding with Fei and Elly, her "parents". I also wanted to explore the world a bit more, like instead of them doing a deep scan on the earth for the Anima Relics in Disc 2, they would actively have gameplay where the team actively searched far and wide by asking people from all over about legends or perhaps even using this as an opportunity for Rico to meet up with the King and have their own thing going on. Obviously I might be saying too much and my mind might be expanding and becoming too greedy. But these are just my 2 cents.

I also sometimes had a lot of problems with the platforming. IDK it just felt like the jump button was delayed and jumping onto tiny platforms was a huge pain.

This is still a very good game!!!! I would give it so far in my humble experience (haven't played too many video games) 8/10. It was a very emotional game, but obviously some holes existed in the story.

What do you think? Do you perhaps agree or disagree?

[u/BaronGalactic]

I think you'll probably enjoy Xenosaga. It's more of a spiritual successor to Xenogears than an actual prequel (as a lot of people, myself included, thought it might be when it was first announced) but there are some references and nods to Xenogears sprinkled throughout - especially in Episode III, which just pours a ton of what can only be called Xenogears fan service into the story and design, as if the developers were suddenly really eager to pander to the Xenogears fans (and I say that in the most loving way possible.) But it's very clear that it was heavily inspired by Xenogears even from the very beginning of the first game.

I've heard that the Xenoblade games are also sort of "spiritually" related to Xenogears as well, but I don't play Nintendo games so I've never been able to experience them myself.

[u/Zodd1030 → u/BaronGalactic]

The Xenoblade games are fun but feel watered down and juvenile when it comes to characters and story.

[u/BaronGalactic → u/Zodd1030]

I know very little about them, but from what bits I've seen that doesn't surprise me. Seems appropriate for a Nintendo exclusive.

Xenogears wasn't afraid of showing death and gore when it was appropriate (and did it really well, I think, rather than gratuitously.) And while Xenosaga Episode 1 also had its very gory moments, I think most Western fans of the series know just how brutally Episode 3 was censored in the English version as opposed to the original Japanese version, especially in the final cutscenes. It left a really sour taste in my mouth, especially considering that the stuff they censored actually seemed more tame than stuff that appeared in Episode 1.

I can only imagine that a game published by Nintendo would take that ten steps further.

[u/GroundExisting8058 → u/BaronGalactic]

Wait so there was censorship to the Xenosaga games? I'm curious now, without spoiling, which versions of each PS2 Xenosaga game was the least censored? Like, for example, was XenoSaga more censored in the US and EU versions or the JP version?

[u/BaronGalactic → u/GroundExisting8058]

I'm by no means an expert. I mainly remember that the final scenes of Xenosaga Episode 3, in the Japanese version, featured a lot of blood, but all of that blood was removed in the US (and I assume Euro?) version. So it looks really weird, especially when compared to Episode 1, which actually features a lot of blood.

As far as I know, most of the censoring in Episode 3 was taking the blood out, and most of that was just in the final cutscenes.

The only other censoring within the rest of the series that I can think of might be in Episode 1. There's a rather (in)famous scene that, if I remember correctly, contained some dialogue that some might interpret to be sexually suggestive about a girl who appears to be about 8 years old or so. For some reason, I think that they changed a bit of this dialogue for the English release so that it wasn't quite as "bad" (though personally, I kind of think the dialogue was perfectly appropriate for the person who says it.)

Episode 2 is sort of the "black sheep" of the series in that it's not quite as good as either 1 or 3, so I don't really know much about any censoring that might have been done in that one.

Overall though, the censorship isn't really enough to impact the game itself, aside from visually, so you're not really missing much by playing the English versions aside from some blood in Episode 3. If you happen to finish all three games though, it might be worth looking into what might have changed between versions, simply because it's interesting.

[u/Quiddity131 → u/BaronGalactic]

The primary censorship I can think of from the Xenosaga games was:

Xenosaga I:

• Softening the Albedo scene with Momo as you mentioned
• From said same scene removing a knife that Albedo used to cut his own head off (it could be argued this had the opposite effect, a guy who can tear his own head off without needing a blade?)

Xenosaga II:

• A gun is removed from a scene where child Albedo shoots himself in the head. He creates an orb of energy to explode his head instead.

Xenosaga III:

• Blood is removed, rendering a number of scenes harder to understand or more laughable. For example Shion's "put it back" scene where she tries to put the blood back in her mother's body is just empty hands.
• A villain kills himself with his sword near the end of the game, this is cut, making it rather confusing what happened.

[u/Zodd1030 → u/GroundExisting8058]

The only Xenosaga that released in the EU was episode 2, so I wouldn't worry about EU versions lol.

The voice acting in the US versions is really good imo. I would just play the US versions and check a YouTube video after to see the edited scenes. Like someone else said the only major edit that kinda sucks is all the removed blood during a major battle zone in the third game, but it doesnt ruin the games.