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I can only get one: Xenogears v FFVIII v Chrono Chross

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Parrots_United

Lieutenant Junior Grade
Red Shirt
Hey all, the past year I have discovered the beautiful world of the retro JRPG. Now, My friend is lending me his PS1, and having already played FFVII for the first time this year, I only have time for one more game before I have to give it back to him.

TL;DR, I'm having trouble deciding between Xenogears, FVIII, and Chrono Chross.

In JRPGs, I look primarily for (In no particular order of priority) the game's combat system, plot, music, map creativity , and (this sort of goes along with maps and music) ambiance.

As for Xenogears, I hear that this game has excellent plot, game play, and outstanding music. I know that these games are unrelated, but I absolutely LOVED xenoblade chronicles.

For Chrono Chross, I have already played and adored Chrono Trigger, and the thought of playing a sequel excites me. I've heard some of it's gorgeous music, and I know this game gets high praise.

For Final Fantasy VIII, I know a lot of people don't like this game, for it's sappy and corny plot, but I've sort of accepted that these qualities are inherent to practically all JRPGs, and hey, those types of plots can in some cases be my guilty pleasure (FFVII for example). I've also heard some of it OST, and like all Nobuo Uematsu composed games, I was appalled by its awesomeness.


So with this in mind, which do you guys think I should choose?
 
All three suck.

Xenogears start off great and for the first dozen hours or so you're convinced this is one of the best JRPGs ever. Unfortunately, everything falls apart in the second half. I'm not sure of the details, but the development team ran out of money and was forced to complete the game in a rush. It's a real shame.

Chrono Cross is just weird and is nothing like Chrono Trigger. The plot is convoluted nonsense and has nothing to do with the original game. Technically, it is a direct sequel, but it's really not. The game also has 100+ characters, but that just means none of them get any development. Awesome battle system though.

Final Fantasy VIII is more of a bad chick flick than a JRPG. The battle system tries something new, but mostly fails. The story is lackluster and, unless you can tolerate the cheesy romance, is a complete mess.

Although, despite what I just posted, I really liked all three games. I just wanted to tell you about the negatives rather than the positives to help you decide. Go with whatever you think would bother you least.
 
My vote? Ditch the PS1, pick up a PS2 and play Persona 4 instead :p

If it MUST be one of those three though, I would go with FFVIII. Chrono Cross was great, but you can't really get attached to the characters. Xenogears sort of becomes a mess towards the end.

If you ever get the chance to do so and you want to try out some more JRPGs, I would suggest giving FFIX a go on the PS1 as well as FFX, Persona 3 FES, Persona 4, and if you have the stomach for LONG cut scenes, Xenosaga I through III.
 
Xenogears is literally my favorite game of all time, so... that.

It's... really freakin' deep. It starts out slowly, but it's got nearly as epic a sprawl and payoff (albeit limited by budgetary concerns) as sci-fi epics like B5. I mean it.
 
As for the common "everything falls apart" message regarding Xenogears, I can only say without spoiling its excellent plot that I disagree.

And yeah, it was budget-related. They were pulling people off of the team to work on... FFVIII, in fact. The creator's vision was too grand for gaming. That's not hyperbole; at least, I try to avoid it sounding that way. It's criticism plain and true, but it's also the great compliment it may sound like. It was simply too big.

But it gets its ending, and seriously, it isn't bad.

Oh, and another counter-stance: I absolutely would not recommend going near Xenosaga over Xenogears. It has its moments, but on the whole, it takes so much of what was much better -executed in Xenogears and bumbles it with a more convoluted and cliched alternate retelling. Most importantly of all, its cast is nowhere near as good. And if you're going to get into a game as long as Xenogears or the combined Xenosaga trilogy, that's important.
 
cross takes a few playthroughs to really get, but go through all the options and it comes together
 
It does, but I don't really enjoy the massive cast causing little in the way of major character development for almost anyone. I can't emphasize enough, I've always described it as an absolutely beautiful, breathtaking mess of a game. But I just feel like it could have really benefited from shrinking the cast considerably -- but then, much of the "point" behind its gameplay style may well have been lost. Kind of a lost cause for me, and yet one I replay every several years nevertheless.
 
FF8. Xenogears is pretentious, overrated garbage. I can't really comment on Chrono Cross. YMMV as with all games, but I couldn't stand it. There is NOTHING about it I would call engaging or likable. I see it as a horrendous waste of hours of my life that I will never get back. Literally the ONLY decent thing about Xenogears is that the infinitely better Xenosaga games came out of it. I know that's probably blasphemous or something as an RPG fan, but whatever. I was actually able to be invested in Xenosaga, and seeing as how I liked any characters whatsoever, that already makes its cast immeasurably better than Xenogears'.

FF8 is good, but has a few pants-on-head plot twists that make me want to smack my head against a wall. Barring those, though, I think it's a fun experience, even if magic is limited in its usefulness.
 
Out of the three, I enjoyed Chrono Cross the most, but it doesn't really connect the dots for you. The plot presented to you in-game is pretty simple, but the background of it is absurdly complicated, and it's revealed in bits and pieces rather than all at once.

CC is very divisive game, though, so your mileage may certainly vary.
 
Man, engaging in Xenosaga and finding Xenogears to be pretentious garbage... it's the gaming equivalent of someone telling me they can't get enough Days of Our Lives so they stopped watching DS9.

OK, OK. Not that bad. But yeah, huge Xenogears fan here.

But yeah, RyuRoots, to each their own and all. There are Xenosaga fans out there, of course. You're in good company with them! And there are fans of both Xenogears and Xenosaga. Kinda hard to come by even on GameFAQs in my experience, but they're out there. IDIC and all that!
 
Alright, awesome. Thanks for the feed back.

With all this being said, I'm probably going to chose Xenogears (I know some of you didn't like it, but I REALLY love Monolith Studio and Square).

I was wondering, I know from prior knowledge that Xenosaga is called a sequel to Xenogears, but by sequel, does it mean a continuation of the prequel's plot, or does it mean it takes place in the same universe, possibly at a different time?

This thread has also reinforced my knowledge that

SQUARESOFT WAS GOD...
'nuff said.
 
It's an alternate retelling of events which took place in Xenogears' distant past. I know that sounds absurd, but it's the simplest way I can state it. Xenogears has an absolutely massive universe, and its events, longwinded though they are, only take place in a relatively small time frame as opposed to the huge window of the setting itself. There's a book, Perfect Works, which I helped translate a little. It details -- in hundreds of pages -- the scope of the universe, but I don't recommend checking it out until after you complete Xenogears, as much of those events are revealed in-game.

Anyway, the creator's original idea with Xenosaga was to start from the beginning of that timeline, following a different but still somewhat similar path, and go forward for six smaller-scaled PS2/potentially PS3 episodes. The first two games didn't sell as Namco had hoped, so they pulled the plug on the original grand plan with the third.

When choosing Xenogears, be prepared for some less-than-stellar gameplay. Some of the dungeons are poorly designed; there's no getting around that. Creator Tetsuya Takahashi, whose game design experience prior to taking on Xenogears was restricted to light programming work for titles such as Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy V, is a legend when it comes to worldbuilding but especially in those days, he wasn't nearly so great at constructing flowing and engaging dungeons. He learned a lot in the years since 1998 and when he returned to the scene for what we in the West know as Xenoblade, he really applied those lessons.

That and he had a bang-up gameplay staff for Xenoblade.
 
Jeff O'Connor said:
Man, engaging in Xenosaga and finding Xenogears to be pretentious garbage... it's the gaming equivalent of someone telling me they can't get enough DS9 so they stopped watching Days of Our Lives.
Click to expand...

Fixed that for you. I have no problem with you personally or you liking it, but the constant gushing from apparently everyone tends to set me off at this point, I guess. No hard feelings or anything, though.

And I hope you enjoy it in any event, Parrots_United. While I feel how I feel, it is what it is, and if you're going to play it, better that you get something positive out of it.
 
Parrots_United said:
Alright, awesome. Thanks for the feed back.

With all this being said, I'm probably going to chose Xenogears (I know some of you didn't like it, but I REALLY love Monolith Studio and Square).

I was wondering, I know from prior knowledge that Xenosaga is called a sequel to Xenogears, but by sequel, does it mean a continuation of the prequel's plot, or does it mean it takes place in the same universe, possibly at a different time?

This thread has also reinforced my knowledge that

SQUARESOFT WAS GOD...
'nuff said.
Click to expand...

It's labeled as a "retelling" of the story, but that's really just there for the lawyers' sake.

And it's more accurate to say that Saga is a retelling of Perfect Works which was the prequel story art-book that was released sometime after Xenogears.

In reality though, any 2nd grader with a pen could write a simple two paragraph fan-fic that connect the dots from the end of Xenosaga to the beginning of Xenogears.

That being said. Ryu is 100% correct. Gears is just a bloated mess. It just piles on layers and layers of gobbledygook and nonsensical thematic overtones to try to make the game seem more profound than it really is.

Several conversations go on and on and on and on forcing you to read through epic walls of text that would make even the most nefarious of trolls proud. But in the end, the characters don't actually say anything. It's all complete fluff.

They could of easily truncated the script by at least a third and not lost anything ... at all.

Saga is why more direct, focused, and polished. This probably is because, since it was being voiced, stuff had to be kept short. So Takahashi was forced into not writing a manifesto.

If you really want to play a JRPG will a solid focus on story, buy Suiko II.

It'll probably cost you more than all three of those combined, but do it anyway. You'll thank me later.
 
Well, it looks like the OP has made their decision already, but I figured I'd weigh in anyway. I'll say this: Xenogears succeeds or fails almost entirely on the shoulders of its story, because it doesn't really have anything else going on, and this is why I didn't finish it. The gameplay is really pretty sub-par, which Jeff alluded to with the weird dungeon designs. You also have the awful awful jumping mechanic. It's not so bad on its own, but if you are jumping while a random encounter is loading, your jump is cancelled, and you run instead. This is kind of bad (and by "kind of bad", I mean "disastrous") since the game has at least one major area that requires you to jump from platform to platform to get through. Additionally, the combat system is pretty mediocre, as it's basically just a very simplistic turn-based "attack 'n heal" rondo with pointless "combos" painted on top. That was probably what did it for me, honestly: the story just... wasn't working for me. Not trying to be harsh, but I agree with Ryu and Clegg. It just felt bloated and pretentious, and took ten minutes to say every little tiny thing. And if a game has a story that is dragging, I can still slog through if the gameplay hooks me, but Xenogears' battles are just so dull.

At the opposite end of the spectrum combat-wise is Chrono Cross. I will admit that I never finished that either, and what I've heard about it since has made me ambivalent about going back; even people that love it seem to agree that the story is sort of a hot mess, and that the huge cast just makes things even more confusing (and demands multiple playthroughs to see in entirety). But when I initially put it down, it was more by "accident"; without really meaning to, I just got distracted by other games after getting about a third of the way in, and stayed away for too long to resume from where I was (as opposed to with Xenogears, where I got distracted with other games because I was just bored with it). And it has a VERY engaging, well-thought out battle system from what I played. You can't just mash away, you have to consider your options, and the "field effect" added a lot of strategy and tension to boss fights.

FFVIII is a mixed bag. The world is interesting, and the story is really interesting in parts, but completely facepalm-worthy in others. While I didn't like how magic was completely useless outside of junctioning, the battle system was actually a fairly interesting twist on the usual FF fare, and offered some cool customization. The biggest problem, though, is that in a way, none of it matters, because the game is super easy. This is my biggest problem with FFVII as well: because the vast majority of required/plotline bosses and most random encounters are complete pushovers, you can get through the main game without breaking a sweat whether you pay any attention to the admittedly interesting system mechanics and customization options or not.

The OP also mentioned music: I cannot give an edge in any direction between these three games. All have excellent soundtracks. Graphics-wise, they will all look dated of course, being PS1 games, but Cross and FFVIII looked great for their time and will hold up decently well, while Xenogears was and is pretty ugly.

Oh, and I never got into any of the Saga games, so that's not entering into my assessment either positively or negatively, just for the record.
 
Saito S said:
Well, it looks like the OP has made their decision already, but I figured I'd weigh in anyway. I'll say this: Xenogears succeeds or fails almost entirely on the shoulders of its story, because it doesn't really have anything else going on, and this is why I didn't finish it. The gameplay is really pretty sub-par, which Jeff alluded to with the weird dungeon designs. You also have the awful awful jumping mechanic. It's not so bad on its own, but if you are jumping while a random encounter is loading, your jump is cancelled, and you run instead. This is kind of bad (and by "kind of bad", I mean "disastrous") since the game has at least one major area that requires you to jump from platform to platform to get through. Additionally, the combat system is pretty mediocre, as it's basically just a very simplistic turn-based "attack 'n heal" rondo with pointless "combos" painted on top. That was probably what did it for me, honestly: the story just... wasn't working for me. Not trying to be harsh, but I agree with Ryu and Clegg. It just felt bloated and pretentious, and took ten minutes to say every little tiny thing. And if a game has a story that is dragging, I can still slog through if the gameplay hooks me, but Xenogears' battles are just so dull.
Click to expand...

Whoohoo! Ryu and I aren't the only crazies!

At the opposite end of the spectrum combat-wise is Chrono Cross. I will admit that I never finished that either, and what I've heard about it since has made me ambivalent about going back; even people that love it seem to agree that the story is sort of a hot mess, and that the huge cast just makes things even more confusing (and demands multiple playthroughs to see in entirety). But when I initially put it down, it was more by "accident"; without really meaning to, I just got distracted by other games after getting about a third of the way in, and stayed away for too long to resume from where I was (as opposed to with Xenogears, where I got distracted with other games because I was just bored with it). And it has a VERY engaging, well-thought out battle system from what I played. You can't just mash away, you have to consider your options, and the "field effect" added a lot of strategy and tension to boss fights.
Click to expand...
Yup. As far as turn-based JRPGs go, CC is still my all-time favorite in terms of combat. It is just so much fun.

But the story is problematic. Like others have said, if you really invest the time into it, it pays-off in the long run. Like about half-way through your third or fourth run all the pieces fall into place and it's MIND = BLOWN. But multiple plays shouldn't be a requisite for a game.

FFVIII is a mixed bag. The world is interesting, and the story is really interesting in parts, but completely facepalm-worthy in others. While I didn't like how magic was completely useless outside of junctioning, the battle system was actually a fairly interesting twist on the usual FF fare, and offered some cool customization. The biggest problem, though, is that in a way, none of it matters, because the game is super easy. This is my biggest problem with FFVII as well: because the vast majority of required/plotline bosses and most random encounters are complete pushovers, you can get through the main game without breaking a sweat whether you pay any attention to the admittedly interesting system mechanics and customization options or not.
Click to expand...
Sadly though, I still think FFVIII is the best of the three PSX FinFans.

Really the only game of the era that's worthy of the praise people tend to attribute to the franchise is FFT and that's really an Atlus game.

I mean, the successfully pigeonholed an Elizabethan tragedy into a video game with a fantasy setting. Who does that? :wtf:

Unfortunately, if Shakespeare isn't your bag and you don't like overly-involved turn based tactics games, it's not going to do much for you.


The OP also mentioned music: I cannot give an edge in any direction between these three games. All have excellent soundtracks. Graphics-wise, they will all look dated of course, being PS1 games, but Cross and FFVIII looked great for their time and will hold up decently well, while Xenogears was and is pretty ugly.
Click to expand...
I don't know, I'd put XG and CCs soundtracks head and shoulders about FFVIII.

And, yes, on a console XG is really ugly. Though, actually, if you play it on an emulator with all the proper fixes, it's actually quite nice looking.
 
FFT is an odd game in that I find it every bit as infuriating as I do satisfying and fascinating. I think the words "Dorter Trade City" will always make me froth a little, for example. I love it, and I push it upon anyone who'll listen, and it has one of the best narratives in any RPG I've played, and the combat is varied and highly customizable. I thoroughly hate chocobos after playing it, however.
 
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