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If for some reason you never got a chance to play Squaresoft’s epic RPG Xenogears – you can download it later this week from the PlayStation Store!
For those of you not familiar with the original Xenogears the game should hold up incredibly well due to its use of beautiful 16 bit character sprites composited in stellar harmony with “cell shady” three dimensional backgrounds.
The narrative of the game starts out just how you would assume, a young lad with amnesia is ousted from his village to start a grand adventure, but don’t let that old cliche get you down.
Xenogears offers one of the more complex and philosophical stories I have ever experienced in a video game. (Specifically, the game delves into ideas and concepts discussed by Lacan, Nietzsche, Jung, and Freud.)
Exploration and combat is similar to traditional Final Fantasy games but Xenogears adds a turn based battle mechanic that is really satisfying. After selecting “Attack” you then have to punch in a combo for the specific attack you want to execute.
As the game progresses the combo mechanic becomes more impressive as combos get longer and become more visually stunning. Each character gets their own set of combos so expanding your party and changing things up is always exciting.
I should also mention that eventually you start battling in giant robots called "Gears." Each charcter gets there own "Gear" and you can switch out and upgrade parts to make the robots stronger or more fuel efficent.
The menu interface for Xenogears is well composed and makes it fun to keep track of gear for your characters as well as their gundam style robots.
If you like RPGs, philosophy, big robots, or 2D sprites then Xenogears is definitely worth checking out.
You can find the Xenogears later this week when you log into the PlayStation Store. Select “Games” and then choose “PS one Classics for PS3/PSP.”
(Learn more on playstation.blog)
