"Xenogears" walks the line between adventure and role-playing

February 10, 1999
Web posted at:2:30 PM EST

By Brad Morris

(CNN) -- "Xenogears," from Squaresoft, is an epic anime inspired adventure/role-playing game which delivers first rate action and story telling for the PlayStation. Its strengths are good game play, a fun fighting system, the ability to rotate the scenery 360 degrees, and a great soundtrack. Its weaknesses are sometimes blocky graphics and a fixed linear plot which does not allow skipping movies and non-real-time fight sequences. Overall it is an enormous game, both in size and scope, which delivers rich story telling and fun battle sequences.

There's a fine line between adventure/action and role playing games (RPG's). An action adventure game is primarily a puzzle game, heavy on the graphics, in which you have to find numerous objects and solve puzzles to make progress. RPGs have traditionally been about questing. Exploring dungeons to find new monsters and more powerful weapons, ultimately killing the meanest monster. These genres are rapidly coming together, with role-playing games getting more sophisticated graphics and plots, and adventure/action games getting more monsters and weapons.

"Xenogears" feels like an adventure game, with complex graphics, movie quality animation sequences, and a healthy dose of exploring and puzzle solving. But it has many important RPG elements as well including well integrated battles, a host of martial arts style combination moves for your character to master and a number of magic spells to learn.

"Xenogears" uses hand-drawn anime in some of the movies

The hero of the adventure is Fei, a young man with a mysterious past who has been living quietly in a small village called Lahan for the past three years. Everything changes when a group of Gears (large metal robots with drivers controlling them) lands near Lahan and starts destroying the place. As the plot progresses, you will learn where Fei came from, and about his amazing destiny.

The graphics in "Xenogears" are a mixed bag. The animation sequences are stunning (though badly dubbed), and the ability to fully rotate the point of view enhances game play tremendously. The tradeoff for this rotational freedom is that the graphics often look chunky, especially during close ups. Another problem is that the characters aren't well proportioned. The main character, Fei, looks shrunken and too short to be a warrior. In fact, when Fei jumps he looks a lot like Mario from "Super Mario Brothers." The music and sound are excellent, providing just the right counterpoint to the action. Sometimes the limited resolution of the television made images on the character status screen hard to read. It would also be nice if "Xenogears" could make use of the Playstation analog joystick.

The fighting system in "Xenogears" is turn-based, meaning that each character gets to attack in order, and the computer waits as you decide what to do. The fun part of this system is mastering the different possible attacks, and grouping the three primary moves into combinations, which deliver more damage. Adding to the fun is that sometimes your characters fight as humans, while sometimes they fight in the giant metal hulking Gears. Skills that you master in hand to hand combat won't work as a Gear, and vice versa. It seems that a real time fighting system might be more fun here. As soon as a fight sequence starts the background changes so that you cannot use terrain to hide behind or to trap your enemy. The advantage of this system is that you don't have to memorize battle commands. The greatest combat fun comes from battling the bosses, who come along at crucial plot times and provide most of the challenge.

Battling in the Gears

"Xenogears" is primarily plot driven, and has a complex story line which unfolds through flashbacks, character interaction, and cartoon sequences. The disadvantage is that things all proceed in a preset manner, and there is less of a feeling of exploration and freedom. The up side is that the plot of Xenogears is much more sophisticated than your typical RPG. A major annoyance is that there is no way to skip through long conversations or movies if you need to go back and replay a section.

As with any adventure game, save early and often. Sometimes it is possible to get all the way through a sequence only to discover that you didn't do something crucial and you have to go all the way back to the beginning. Although you cannot die from falling, you can find yourself in a difficult situation if you leap before you look. It's not important to find every item in this game but finding hidden or bonus items can increase your strength and make fighting battles much easier.

"Xenogears" delivers a wonderful plot, great game play, and a huge variety of characters, locations and gear. It walks that fine line between an adventure game and a RPG with ease. You will need a memory card with plenty of free blocks (one per saved game) to save your progress. Be forewarned that it's very easy to loose many hours playing this game.

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