My very own Zelda game

[A Black Falcon]

There isn't a single videogame out there with a storyline to match Xenogears. There are several books, sure. But that's apples to oranges.

As for the rest?

You must not have ever played Grim Fandango or a hundred other graphic adventure games if you think Xenogears has an unparalleled story.

Story depth... yeah, adventure games probably have the most. Them and some RPGs for sure. But as I've said many times before, the game I've played with the most wstory is easily Planescape: Torment, the 1999 PC RPG from Black Isle. Brilliant, brilliant game with a huge amount of story and conversation... phenominal game. I don't usually finish games like that, long RPGs... I didn't finish Baldur's Gate for instance... but that one I beat in about two months. I've heard it compared, in story volume, to Xenogears...

As for things like Grim Fandango, and many other adventures, they certainly have a lot of story, but not having played most of Xenogears I don't know how it compares... but comparing it to a Torment it seems like they have less. But still a huge amount. Xenogears may have more story than usual but it's not unparallelled.

Anyway, I'll say something right now just for future knowledge. I don't read many story based books. Most of the books I read are fact filled books like on the human body or physics. Those are the kinds that interest me most generally.

Too bad... I love sci-fi and fantasy... :) I read some nonfiction (not physics though... :) ) too, but I really like sci-fi and fantasy.

Well yes, there's a difference between an homage and a rip-off. An homage usually takes clichés and standards from the original material that inspired it while still keeping the story fresh and interesting, while a rip off just takes a bunch of ideas and slaps them together. Xenogears isn't really that bad, and the story is interesting for a video game, but I've seen most of it before. Another example of something that's borderline homage and rip-off is Kill Bill, which while being an entertaining movie which tributes a bunch of asian movies that Tarantino is fond of, it largely just takes a bunch of plot points and clichés and slaps them together. I've heard the second volume is better though...

Vrtually all stories are ripoffs of SOMETHING so that's not a big problem, you know...

The problem withXenogears isn't the story, I bet, but the fact that the random, tedious, extremely frequent combat makes GETTING to much of that story a major chore.


Eternal Darkness. I loved it. It's my favorite NGC game. However, it didn't really scare me. It was really cool, and a huge amount of fun, and had great worlds... but scary? Not really. The insanity effects were mostly cool, not scary... and too easy to get rid of for most of the game... but no it didn't really scare me. But I didn't take that as a major problem, because it was so much fun and the world was so great... it had adventure game aspects, with the inventory puzzles, looking at objects, etc, that I loved, for instance. I really, really like being able to look at things and get descriptions... :) And it obviously paid a LOT of attention to historical accuracy. Far more than most games. That was quite impressive and great to see... they just did an amazing job.