GIA,

Um, hi. This is the first time I've ever written to your letters section.With that said, I just want to say that 2D sprites rule and RPGs with 3Dgraphics and polygon stuff suck prunes. "Oh! 3D graphics are great! I love3D graphics! 3D graphics are the coolest! 3D graphics have moved RPGs to thenext level! Where can I find more 3D graphics?!" No one can feel my painˇyou've never seen the third dimension through this eyeˇ the turning, therotating, the headaches! I'm going to start a polygon revolution and put anend to your precious, fully interactive, with rotating cameras, role-playingworld! Who's with me?!!!

Missing Eye Man

It shouldn't be 'Dragoon', either. I believe that in the Japanese versionsof the various FFs, 'dragoon' was 'ryukishi'(which I probably spelledwrong). That is, 'dragon knight'. I don't know if this applies to FFT, buthey...

And how do you -know- that dogs don't get off by licking themselves? Minecertainly seemed to...

Anyways, byebye.

In 1932 in a survey of 10,000 people, 80% of the people believed thatwe would find a cure for cancer by the end of the century. Only 6%believed that we would land on the moon. Weird how things turn outhuh? Kinda like how a couple of years ago no one suspected RPGs wouldturn into this hugely popular video game genre while fighting gamesslowly decline in popularity?

Dear Omnipotent D.A.,

I saw the update today about the FF Collection Omake, and was wondering...was Square really cool enough to make that Squall in FF3 style char, or is it a farce? I am suspecting the latter...And thanks for the movies!!

-???

Why doesn't toothpaste have nutritional information on the back?

Hey Allan,

I'm going to embarass myself, most likely, by asking this question, since I have the feeling that I should know the answer already. Most likely 99% of the gaming population does, but as usual, I seem to be left in the dark. As for my question, just who is Senator Lieberman?

I've seen his name mentioned several times in various circles, but just why he was being insulted by the gaming masses never seemed to make its way into those circles. I suppose everyone was so familiar with whatever he did/is doing/will try to do that things didn't need elaboration. But myself, I wouldn't mind a little bit of elaboration.

By the way, nice editorial column in the Firing Range (that WAS you who wrote it, right?). My feelings exactly. Well, not exactly, but close enough. Anyhow, thanks for your elaborating on the person of Senator Lieberman (assuming, of course, that you DO elaborate).

-Matt Blackie

I just finished Xenogears a week ago. I thought I'd better throw my worthless opinions in people's faces, because I haven't really heard what I think about the game yet. If nothing else, this might start some debate.

First off, I'll start by saying that Xenogears is a highly flawed game. The first and foremost flaw is gameplay. RPGs usually have two major gameplay aspects: exploration/puzzles and battles. The exploration in Xenogears is extremely limited - there's very few places where you can break from the trail and look for things, and at the end of the game, there's only a few small side quests. Most of the dungeons are bland - the exceptions being the second Anima relic cave and the final dungeon, which were reasonably interesting.

But the battles are far worse. The random encounter system is the worst I've ever seen. The PSX makes telltale noises before each battle, which is mildly annoying. It seems as though the random encounter program decides that a battle will occur, but it then takes a few seconds to start the battle. In this time, while the PSX makes its noises, you can open a chest, start a conversation or hop on a save spot, only to be immediately thrown into a battle, and it's not until after the battle that you can see what was in the chest or what someone has to say. The encounter rate is also way too high.

The non-gear battle engine is nothing more than using your strongest attack over and over, while occasionally throwing in a new combination to learn something. Even when you don't use deathblows constantly, the battles are easy. Also, the magic system was almost completely forgotten about. Most of the spells are almost completely useless; the offensive spells, so much a part of most battle engines, are almost always a waste of time. The inclusion of extremely cheap Omegasols made dungeon crawling a joke.

The gear battle engine is among the worst battle engines ever created. The biggest flaw is the ridiculously high cost of healing gears. This cost allows for just one or two heals per battle. Fuel charging isn't an option because it takes so damn long, and in the time that you charge, you get beaten on (unless you have a Z-Charger, which isn't available until the end of the game). Additionally, you can't revive 'dead' gears. All these limitations on healing means that the bosses can't deal out any savage attacks, and the battles can't be that long. The consequence of this is abandonment strategy. You really only have one option - attacking. As with the non-gear engine, the magic is basically useless; also, the special options given to some gears are very expensive and usually inferior to regular attacks. The battles almost entirely consist of the same combinations of normal attacks. Finally, levelling up doesn't help gears. The only way to boost gear performance is to buy or find the appropriate items, which makes random encounters in gears nearly pointless.

The story is the other main problem. I have heard generally sparkling reviews about the story. Certainly it is epic, intelligent and complex; the plot is easily the most complex I've ever seen. The plot does have some very interesting parts as well. But there are two major faults with it. Firstly, it isn't consistently interesting; it took way too long to get started. It wasn't until about thirty hours into the game that I got really interested. The first half of the game was okay, but nothing great. Secondly, the complexity, I found is what killed it. It just seemed to be an endless ladder of increasingly powerful figures. This was good to a point, but near the end of the game, the scope was way to big, the focus was gone, and it was too complicated for its own good. I also felt that some of the more interesting things, such as Drive, nanotechnology and Sigurd's ties to Solaris and Citan, were just glossed over, and nothing really came of them. Lastly, the story overshadowed the game. Most of the NPCs rambled on for pages, and story scenes were often unnecessarily lengthy. Square got lazy on the second disk and didn't even try to integrate the gameplay with the story, they just gave us a big ass lump of story, with some gameplay on the side.

The main characters were fairly well done, but the others, Rico, Billy, Maria, Chu-chu and Emeralda, had tiny roles, and often were randomly assigned lines. Also, there's a major problem with the villians of the game. Grahf is set up as the big villian, but isn't. Krelian seems like the big villian after Grahf if gone, but you never even fight him. Cain and the Gazel Ministry remain unmet. And the final boss is just another Zeromus - a big evil power that shows up at the end of the game.

The anime and FMV scenes are inconsistently distributed. There's a big clump of anime at the beginning, and there's another big clump at the end, with just a few short scenes in the middle. I can't even comprehend the reasons behind the positioning of the FMV. There's a grand total of five FMV scenes in the game; the Weltall transformation/Solaris destruction and the attack on Deus's flying fort were the only two that served any purpose - the other three were a complete waste of time. However, there were times when FMV would have greatly added to the game.

It's not to say that Xenogears was entirely bad. The backgrounds were mostly well done, and the world map was an improvement on that of FF7 - land came into view much more gradually. The music was mostly great, although there could have been some more themes. FF7 had twice as many themes and was a considerably shorter game. Although it isn't the funnest game around, it still is 60-70 hours of at least moderate entertainment value.

It seems to me that Xenogears was really rushed, and could have greatly benefitted from another few months in development. With Square's decision to take more time on each game, it is unlikely that we will see as flawed a game as Xenogears for a while.

-CS-