I've had this video in my Watch Later playlist for two years waiting until I actually played the game to watch and now that I have I find myself going "...damn I wish i took advantage of Maria and Chu-Chu more"
Xenogears really feels like a base that Tetsuya Takahashi has been building on for all his games ever since it first dropped with so many of them just taking ideas and concepts from gears wholesale. I've been joking for a while that Tetsuya Takahashi has been trying to finish the same game for the past 20 odd years now and It never became so obvious to me until I finished Gears.
I'm just gonna say this, Xenogears is my absolute favorite thing ever (not just video game, not just anime, not even just grand epic sci-fi storytelling spectacle). Everything about it just screams masterpiece from the world building to character interaction to mecha design and even the music is very much worthy of being called epic. That and y'all can guess where my pfp comes from.
I love it! As a HUGE Xenogears fan it's amazing seeing someone piece together some things even after all these years later! Absolutely fantastic, and I even learned some things I didn't know, I thought I knew everything at this point! This was very well done, informative, and honestly made my whole entire night the moment I seen it. Thank you so much for sharing and putting your passion for Xenogears into a video form. I can respect every ounce of it. Though I can't respect that chu-chu pick, shame on you.
This was the xenogears video I was looking for. A video about the more in depth specific mechanics like Maria’s ether doubler summing Seibzehn and Chu chu. Another TH-camr commented that he wasn’t impressed with Maria on foot and how he was waiting for someone to tell him she’s the best character in the game if you outfit her right. I can’t believe that’s actually true.
Awesome video man, Xenogears is so incredibly underappreciated. I'm a huge fan of RPGs, and I was blown away with what I experienced when I played Xenogears two years back. The ambition and scope behind this game, in my honest opinion, has been unmatched to this day.
Awesome first half so far, I thought I knew nearly most of the story after reading the wiki like a hundred times but looks like there are a couple details I didn't catch before. Well done!
Honestly, having an idea of what this game is actually about makes me want to play out more. This video feels like less of a substitute and more of a primer.
This is a great video. I played Xenogears for the first time back in 2017 after getting into ps1 jrpgs. It was one of the most memorable experiences I've ever had with a game. As a fellow mecha addict the game really filled a niche that many jrpgs hadn't.
10:49 English localization actually portrays this wrong elly was a lot younger in her first incarnation. This is even driven home by the fact that the cutscene in Japanese had her voice clearly younger and aged up with each time she says Fei, until it’s the adult one just telling Fei to wake up.
There's tiers that games should be ranked in for example game of the year game of the decade God tier game ect but there's one pedestal of greatness that cannot be reached or overcome and on that pedestal is xenogears
Just finished the game last night, mind blown, had the perfect works on hand to dive deeper when I finished. My GF was watching me play some and was equally intrigued by the story instead of me recount every story element or have her watch the 17hour cutscene “movie” this was great. You from Philly (represent!) my dude? Your “o”s make me think you’re from the NE
fei is quite powerful with an ether build, especially with weltall-2 having the strongest ether attack in the game, flaming hell. his later spells have far higher damage multiplier than anything other characters get for ether spells.
This was the first RPG I ever played, and the only reason I cared was because of the mechs. Once I started getting into the story, I went from "Oh my God!" to "What IS God?"
evasion ring is a permanent effect, all permanent effects over ride temporary effects. evasion ring is -40 while wild smile is -50, but it also cant be resisted like wild smile can, and doesnt require a turn to cast or bart in your party
iirc, the "FF8 taking away some of its budget" is an old rumor/misconception. 3:05 Myyah wasn't her name in the Japanese version either. Her name is Mian. 三アン. Myyah is from Perfect Works which was released several months after the game released in Japan and a few months before the game released in North America. So Miang is a good transliteration of 三アン. 13:21 One thing I think a lot of people misunderstand is this line that can be seen in both the english/japanese script and a few pages of Perfect Works, the "desire to return to his mother", but one page of Perfect Works, 170, actually further describes this "desire" as- his inner desire to return to the inside of (his) mother's womb. So Sándor Ferenczi, Sigmund Freud. Just gonna preface this with- I'm still learning Japanese, myself. The quote I'm talking about, translated ofc (not taken from any previous translations and kind of paraphrasing): "The reason why the Antitype always existed as the Contact's lover is because the emotional connection between the Antitype (born to be a mother to Abel) & the Contact (who inherited Abel's desire to return to the womb, which was fixed at the time of contact) took the form of mutual desire/affection, or love, between the 2 reincarnated people with no age difference" Inner desire, wish, in other words- phenomenon phase shift; fixed at the point of contact. So Abel's "desire to return to the womb" was what actually formed Elehayym and not any "desire to see/find his mother/return to his mother's side" as many translations give the impression of. Even the official english translation is one of those "your desire to return to your mother" translations that has no context to what this "desire" actually is, but that quote from the Wave Existence in the Japanese version I think is more like Perfect Works' description on pg170 because its "I am defined by the desire *within* you to return to your mother." as its 君の中の. (you [the young you, the contact, abel of course; just cut that part out of the focus here]) Its never "return to *your mother's womb* " in the game itself, only in PW, but I'm also getting that impression from the Japanese script as well from specifically the "desire *within* you" and "return to" part. It also isn't even that Elly is somehow modeled after Abel's actual mother either, that's just a theory I've seen one person mention (who thought it was fact). Like Fei said, "Elly's disposition was influenced by me?"; she was "given a mother's will". That's about the extent of Abel's influence: disposition, demeanor; hence the Antitype's tendency to feel the need to sacrifice herself to protect him as a mother would protect her child. 16:04 What does schizophrenia have to do with Fei? The English script literally rewrote Citan's line to incorrectly say "It is rare to be able to talk a real schizophrenic" whereas the Japanese line there just says "-someone with multiple personalities". For whatever reason people think DID and schizophrenia are one and the same when by definition they're completely different. Even though schizophrenia is widely understood as "hearing voices that aren't there" while DID is widely understood as "multiple personalities within the same mind that walled off from one another at a point of extreme trauma" somehow people equate the two.
the enemies taking a single damage just have higher defense, get your attack up and youll still be able to deal large amounts of damage, but they all also have very low ether def so any spell will one shot them.
the 0 ether damage horseshit you are talking about is a glitch where the game forgets everything you have equipped on your gear when you tune up your gear, for a single fight. can also fix it by going into the menu like you show. but its not just ether damage, its all gear equipment is essentially ignored for a single fight after tuning up
I’ve heard that squares focus on getting into film with spirits within also played a hand in the issues with Xenogears and ff8. I don’t have a source for this currently however.
taking elly to the hammer fight means you lose all of her equipped items permanently. 0/10 would not recommend aerods on him. he is also one of the highest ether defense characters in the game at 500 ether defense, so physical tends to be a much easier route for most players. you can stack enough ether to overcome his ether defense, and he is 60% weak to wind elemental magic so emeralda can hit him pretty hard with ether, but youll be stacking 3 power magics and losing a ton of agility to do so. easiest way is just store up to attack level 3 and keep using a level 1 deathblow followed the next turn with a normal attack until he is low hp, then split whatever attack levels you have when he starts flashing between your 2 turns you have to finish the fight.
To add more context to this, it doesn't say he died in an "unknown location" specifically, just that he sealed himself inside the room and "was never seen again", basically. So he *could've* very well died in that lab (especially as immediately afterward Myyah directly influenced the nuclear war and everything outside suffered from nuclear fallout) but nothing is actually said about it. Just like every other Contact's death.
no enemies are healed by Ether, they are healed by Elemental damage. this is another reason maria is quite OP, her controls are non-elemental so they work on everything in the game.
Ughhhh. I want to ingest your new content into all of my orifices, but I've always wanted to finish this game and have constantly failed to restart as I've forgotten too much.
you talk faster than the events your are explaining on video, dunno if its your editing or your style but had to pause your video multiple times and repeat your statements.
@@Fatbutnotflat Already got LoD recorded and I've been slowly chipping away away at ideas for its script, but Omega Boost will def be after it since it will give me a reason to briefly touch upon Shoji Kawamori.
Dude you speak fast as fuuuuuuuck. I dont speak english natively so it's been pretty hard to understand with all the names of stuff you also throw around. If it's not too much hassle, would you mind adding CC? Good video anyway. I really liked this game as a kid but I had no idea it was so deep.
Finished typing in subs for Part 1. Part 2 is giving me trouble in that it just stops updating my script into the closed captions after a certain point.
Even with stat drives, chuchu is weaker in big form than about anyone else with far less investment in them. On foot she is weaker than a properly buffed doc even with fei and bart at low hp.
why do you say the fei and bart jr dolls are emeralda exclusive? none of the dolls are emeralda exclusive. those 2 are chu-chu exclusive since she is the only one who can crit so only she benefits from them, but anyone can equip them. the OP dolls are billy and emeralda dolls.
Regarding Chuchu combat capability, I think the need to actively enjoy Xenogears' combat and be willing to experiment with it is already a tall order for most people, since the gameplay in Xenogears is not exactly good.
This game was good as well as a missed opportunity. Imagine if they didn't run out of time for that second disc and were able to finish the game properly. Xenogears was unfinished, Xenosaga was VERY unfinished(and terrible). Xenoblade was the most complete game they've made in that series and it shows.
I'd like to cover the entirety of Xenosaga in the future and reassess how I feel about it with a refreshed look, especially knowing more about its production now.
Xenogears is this irritating mess for me. It has brilliant concepts, no doubt, I love a lot of the ideas and designs (even when the inspiration is very obvious/ desert area & some enemies are star wars inspired,) but I see it on top 10RPG lists and I just, don't agree.... There's so much potential for it as I said but the game, isn't, done. They should have wrapped it up in a way that could have been decently satisfying but possibly continued. Final Fantasy Tactics I believe wasn't finished in some ways, but they managed to tie up the narrative brilliantly & it felt complete. Yes that's probably a lot to ask considering the depth of stuff that this video laid out & heck I didn't even gather a chunk of it from way back when. But goodness, Xenogears...that second disc is just a mess and even before all that, you can tell something was slipping- budget or time. It could have been great, there's so much absurd detail and the events that played out are so, freaking epic. There's a lot to love about it. But it's just, not, done. And when it stopped being a game, it stopped being fun. Like...I get it, some people can play an RPG with busted/bad gameplay and enjoy it because the story is good...I can't. It's a game so it at least has to be serviceable and xenogears just becomes a book with some pretend gameplay. I love character development & story but I am also there for a game and when that stops happening it just isn't, fun, to play. I was really frustrated when Rico both stopped being good as a fighter & story just kinda stopped existing with relevance in the story. Same with Esmerelda and so on. EGH. Thank you for this vid, it really cleared up the story for me since it's been a while and that second disc really took the wind out of my sails. Kudos to those who can look past that, I wish I could
![Xenogears Analysis: Left Unsaid [Part 2 of 2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8xcLf_vcfxU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Xenogears Analysis: Left Unsaid [Part 2 of 2]](/img/tr.png)
![Xenogears: Part 1 [JRPGs Told Long]](/img/n.gif)
I've had this video in my Watch Later playlist for two years waiting until I actually played the game to watch and now that I have I find myself going "...damn I wish i took advantage of Maria and Chu-Chu more"
Ten thousand years worth of Wave Existence made a sloshing noise as it flowed endlessly into Abel/Kim/Lacan/Fei and Elly/Elly/Elly/Elly
follow me back
Xenogears really feels like a base that Tetsuya Takahashi has been building on for all his games ever since it first dropped with so many of them just taking ideas and concepts from gears wholesale. I've been joking for a while that Tetsuya Takahashi has been trying to finish the same game for the past 20 odd years now and It never became so obvious to me until I finished Gears.
I'm just gonna say this, Xenogears is my absolute favorite thing ever (not just video game, not just anime, not even just grand epic sci-fi storytelling spectacle). Everything about it just screams masterpiece from the world building to character interaction to mecha design and even the music is very much worthy of being called epic. That and y'all can guess where my pfp comes from.
I love it! As a HUGE Xenogears fan it's amazing seeing someone piece together some things even after all these years later! Absolutely fantastic, and I even learned some things I didn't know, I thought I knew everything at this point! This was very well done, informative, and honestly made my whole entire night the moment I seen it. Thank you so much for sharing and putting your passion for Xenogears into a video form. I can respect every ounce of it. Though I can't respect that chu-chu pick, shame on you.
Glad to see you back in the thick of things, man.
Thanks man, I actually got started on this right after I wrapped up Catherine.
This was the xenogears video I was looking for. A video about the more in depth specific mechanics like Maria’s ether doubler summing Seibzehn and Chu chu. Another TH-camr commented that he wasn’t impressed with Maria on foot and how he was waiting for someone to tell him she’s the best character in the game if you outfit her right. I can’t believe that’s actually true.
Awesome video man, Xenogears is so incredibly underappreciated. I'm a huge fan of RPGs, and I was blown away with what I experienced when I played Xenogears two years back. The ambition and scope behind this game, in my honest opinion, has been unmatched to this day.
Always wanted to play this. But not on the original console.
This needs a dire remaster
Awesome first half so far, I thought I knew nearly most of the story after reading the wiki like a hundred times but looks like there are a couple details I didn't catch before. Well done!
So hype you are making new videos you are one of the best
You finally came back from the gas station!
Cain didnt kill Abel and Elly, only killed Elly.
Older jrpgs with hella interesting lore that actually spans multiple games including the more recent ones? Yeah I'll take some of that, thanks
This is exactly the kind of video I've been wanting on this game
Honestly, having an idea of what this game is actually about makes me want to play out more. This video feels like less of a substitute and more of a primer.
I don't know anything about this game at all but it's good to hear your voice again Pokey and to know that this second channel isn't also dead.
Yup, nothing to worry about! Still working on part 2.
This is a great video.
I played Xenogears for the first time back in 2017 after getting into ps1 jrpgs. It was one of the most memorable experiences I've ever had with a game.
As a fellow mecha addict the game really filled a niche that many jrpgs hadn't.
Damn. I was really want to watch your new video. But I don't want to be spoiled :/
I'll be back some day.
This was a very useful video. There’s a lot of information even I was unaware with in the game. I. Cant wait for part 2.
10:49 English localization actually portrays this wrong elly was a lot younger in her first incarnation. This is even driven home by the fact that the cutscene in Japanese had her voice clearly younger and aged up with each time she says Fei, until it’s the adult one just telling Fei to wake up.
There's tiers that games should be ranked in for example game of the year game of the decade God tier game ect but there's one pedestal of greatness that cannot be reached or overcome and on that pedestal is xenogears
I knew the story was fucked up, but with the context in plain view... HOLY SHIT.
Just finished the game last night, mind blown, had the perfect works on hand to dive deeper when I finished. My GF was watching me play some and was equally intrigued by the story instead of me recount every story element or have her watch the 17hour cutscene “movie” this was great.
You from Philly (represent!) my dude? Your “o”s make me think you’re from the NE
Jersey, you were close! Live close to the bridge to Philly. Also glad you and your girl enjoyed the game!
good use of the funky song from Space Dandy ep1
Haven't dug into its OST in a long ass time so I wanted to bring it back.
@@PerilsofPokey I showed that chase montage of sakuga to my animation class years back to show what the japanese are doing with animation these days.
Excellent video! Love this game and the discussion around it.
Hey, looks like dad bringing back the grape juice was a good idea, it turned to fine wine!
I'm thinkin' he's back.
After 22 years why am I just now realizing that ChuChu us a death goddess?
Oh hey he's back.
At work, but will watch tonight, love your content, missed ya fam
Hes back again
fei is quite powerful with an ether build, especially with weltall-2 having the strongest ether attack in the game, flaming hell. his later spells have far higher damage multiplier than anything other characters get for ether spells.
This was the first RPG I ever played, and the only reason I cared was because of the mechs. Once I started getting into the story, I went from "Oh my God!" to "What IS God?"
evasion ring is a permanent effect, all permanent effects over ride temporary effects. evasion ring is -40 while wild smile is -50, but it also cant be resisted like wild smile can, and doesnt require a turn to cast or bart in your party
wonderful and only accelerated my desire to replay the game
iirc, the "FF8 taking away some of its budget" is an old rumor/misconception.
3:05 Myyah wasn't her name in the Japanese version either. Her name is Mian. 三アン. Myyah is from Perfect Works which was released several months after the game released in Japan and a few months before the game released in North America. So Miang is a good transliteration of 三アン.
13:21 One thing I think a lot of people misunderstand is this line that can be seen in both the english/japanese script and a few pages of Perfect Works, the "desire to return to his mother", but one page of Perfect Works, 170, actually further describes this "desire" as- his inner desire to return to the inside of (his) mother's womb. So Sándor Ferenczi, Sigmund Freud.
Just gonna preface this with- I'm still learning Japanese, myself.
The quote I'm talking about, translated ofc (not taken from any previous translations and kind of paraphrasing):
"The reason why the Antitype always existed as the Contact's lover is because the emotional connection between the Antitype (born to be a mother to Abel) & the Contact (who inherited Abel's desire to return to the womb, which was fixed at the time of contact) took the form of mutual desire/affection, or love, between the 2 reincarnated people with no age difference"
Inner desire, wish, in other words- phenomenon phase shift; fixed at the point of contact.
So Abel's "desire to return to the womb" was what actually formed Elehayym and not any "desire to see/find his mother/return to his mother's side" as many translations give the impression of.
Even the official english translation is one of those "your desire to return to your mother" translations that has no context to what this "desire" actually is, but that quote from the Wave Existence in the Japanese version I think is more like Perfect Works' description on pg170 because its "I am defined by the desire *within* you to return to your mother." as its 君の中の.
(you [the young you, the contact, abel of course; just cut that part out of the focus here])
Its never "return to *your mother's womb* " in the game itself, only in PW, but I'm also getting that impression from the Japanese script as well from specifically the "desire *within* you" and "return to" part.
It also isn't even that Elly is somehow modeled after Abel's actual mother either, that's just a theory I've seen one person mention (who thought it was fact).
Like Fei said, "Elly's disposition was influenced by me?"; she was "given a mother's will".
That's about the extent of Abel's influence: disposition, demeanor; hence the Antitype's tendency to feel the need to sacrifice herself to protect him as a mother would protect her child.
16:04 What does schizophrenia have to do with Fei? The English script literally rewrote Citan's line to incorrectly say "It is rare to be able to talk a real schizophrenic" whereas the Japanese line there just says "-someone with multiple personalities".
For whatever reason people think DID and schizophrenia are one and the same when by definition they're completely different. Even though schizophrenia is widely understood as "hearing voices that aren't there" while DID is widely understood as "multiple personalities within the same mind that walled off from one another at a point of extreme trauma" somehow people equate the two.
viejo que buen video, me duele que no tenga más vistas :(
the enemies taking a single damage just have higher defense, get your attack up and youll still be able to deal large amounts of damage, but they all also have very low ether def so any spell will one shot them.
the 0 ether damage horseshit you are talking about is a glitch where the game forgets everything you have equipped on your gear when you tune up your gear, for a single fight. can also fix it by going into the menu like you show. but its not just ether damage, its all gear equipment is essentially ignored for a single fight after tuning up
This is one of the best videos I've seen about this game. As a suggestion it would help if you could talk a bit slower for part 2. Amazing work :)
I’ve heard that squares focus on getting into film with spirits within also played a hand in the issues with Xenogears and ff8. I don’t have a source for this currently however.
taking elly to the hammer fight means you lose all of her equipped items permanently. 0/10 would not recommend aerods on him. he is also one of the highest ether defense characters in the game at 500 ether defense, so physical tends to be a much easier route for most players. you can stack enough ether to overcome his ether defense, and he is 60% weak to wind elemental magic so emeralda can hit him pretty hard with ether, but youll be stacking 3 power magics and losing a ton of agility to do so. easiest way is just store up to attack level 3 and keep using a level 1 deathblow followed the next turn with a normal attack until he is low hp, then split whatever attack levels you have when he starts flashing between your 2 turns you have to finish the fight.
You say that I should be cautious of spoilers but I'm pretty much at the end and I have no idea what's going on
Guess you had to be there
Kim didnt die in the lab, he died later in an unknown location.
To add more context to this, it doesn't say he died in an "unknown location" specifically, just that he sealed himself inside the room and "was never seen again", basically.
So he *could've* very well died in that lab (especially as immediately afterward Myyah directly influenced the nuclear war and everything outside suffered from nuclear fallout) but nothing is actually said about it. Just like every other Contact's death.
Glad I stuck around.
Fei is called a fake personality because he was artificially created by his father, he is not a split personality like the Coward and Id
God bless you
no enemies are healed by Ether, they are healed by Elemental damage. this is another reason maria is quite OP, her controls are non-elemental so they work on everything in the game.
16:10 what track is that playing in the background? It sounds familiar.
Holy crap. I've played this game a ton but have always been confused about the story.
Ughhhh. I want to ingest your new content into all of my orifices, but I've always wanted to finish this game and have constantly failed to restart as I've forgotten too much.
Keep at it. Start over from the beginning if you have to. It's worth it.
You say Bart is ends up with Margie
But I'm gonna believe the Bart x Sigurd doujins done by Soraya Saga instead...
you talk faster than the events your are explaining on video, dunno if its your editing or your style but had to pause your video multiple times and repeat your statements.
Yeah that's been a long standing issue of mine, also recording while my sinuses have been giving me hell has been a problem in its own right.
guess I'll come back when I eventually play this :(
pls make something i can watch in the future ty ty ty
After I finish Xenogears I'm thinking either Legend of Dragoon or Omega Boost.
@@PerilsofPokey 5 month late but holy shit omega boost. Do it please because no one else did.
@@Fatbutnotflat Already got LoD recorded and I've been slowly chipping away away at ideas for its script, but Omega Boost will def be after it since it will give me a reason to briefly touch upon Shoji Kawamori.
ohoho what is this I see here
Hey, nice five min video.
What do you mean 20 mins?
Dude you speak fast as fuuuuuuuck. I dont speak english natively so it's been pretty hard to understand with all the names of stuff you also throw around. If it's not too much hassle, would you mind adding CC? Good video anyway. I really liked this game as a kid but I had no idea it was so deep.
Finished typing in subs for Part 1. Part 2 is giving me trouble in that it just stops updating my script into the closed captions after a certain point.
Thank you very much mate. I'll give it a rewatch!
@@MrPsymind Not a problem!
yay!
I bet you thought I wouldn't recognize that VOTOMS clip.
I did.
Was counting on it! Will be bringing up VOTOMS briefly during Part 2.
Even with stat drives, chuchu is weaker in big form than about anyone else with far less investment in them. On foot she is weaker than a properly buffed doc even with fei and bart at low hp.
why do you say the fei and bart jr dolls are emeralda exclusive? none of the dolls are emeralda exclusive. those 2 are chu-chu exclusive since she is the only one who can crit so only she benefits from them, but anyone can equip them. the OP dolls are billy and emeralda dolls.
Regarding Chuchu combat capability, I think the need to actively enjoy Xenogears' combat and be willing to experiment with it is already a tall order for most people, since the gameplay in Xenogears is not exactly good.
For you that is.
What the fuck.
This game was good as well as a missed opportunity. Imagine if they didn't run out of time for that second disc and were able to finish the game properly. Xenogears was unfinished, Xenosaga was VERY unfinished(and terrible). Xenoblade was the most complete game they've made in that series and it shows.
I'd like to cover the entirety of Xenosaga in the future and reassess how I feel about it with a refreshed look, especially knowing more about its production now.
Xenogears is this irritating mess for me. It has brilliant concepts, no doubt, I love a lot of the ideas and designs (even when the inspiration is very obvious/ desert area & some enemies are star wars inspired,) but I see it on top 10RPG lists and I just, don't agree....
There's so much potential for it as I said but the game, isn't, done. They should have wrapped it up in a way that could have been decently satisfying but possibly continued. Final Fantasy Tactics I believe wasn't finished in some ways, but they managed to tie up the narrative brilliantly & it felt complete. Yes that's probably a lot to ask considering the depth of stuff that this video laid out & heck I didn't even gather a chunk of it from way back when.
But goodness, Xenogears...that second disc is just a mess and even before all that, you can tell something was slipping- budget or time.
It could have been great, there's so much absurd detail and the events that played out are so, freaking epic. There's a lot to love about it. But it's just, not, done. And when it stopped being a game, it stopped being fun. Like...I get it, some people can play an RPG with busted/bad gameplay and enjoy it because the story is good...I can't. It's a game so it at least has to be serviceable and xenogears just becomes a book with some pretend gameplay.
I love character development & story but I am also there for a game and when that stops happening it just isn't, fun, to play. I was really frustrated when Rico both stopped being good as a fighter & story just kinda stopped existing with relevance in the story. Same with Esmerelda and so on. EGH.
Thank you for this vid, it really cleared up the story for me since it's been a while and that second disc really took the wind out of my sails. Kudos to those who can look past that, I wish I could