Xenogears - Back from vacation, so back to playing this. Picking it up having just reached the Thames.
Hour 20: The Thames is pretty big, with a bunch of stuff to do. Not much plot and no battles at all, this hour. Instead there is exploring and doing some puzzles for treasure chests, and lots of children's card games.
The only real plot that does happen here is meeting the captain, who has more of that silly Xenogears style ("I am! A man! Of the sea!" with him turning to face a rapidly shifting camera at each step) Actually my favourite part isn't even him, it's a child who tries to imitate him, but faces the wrong way for the camera change at the final line and then complains about screwing up. Anyway the captain offers this line as the sole explanation for why he went to the trouble of rescuing Fei and Elly, and repairing their gears. He also talks about doing a lot of salvaging work for the Ethos church, who are about to become more important.
The card games are hard, man. My reflexes aren't what they used to be and I spend the better part of the hour on them, finally netting the rather badass Deathblower1 for my troubles.
Hour 21: Meanwhile, the villains have noticed us. Dominia leads an attack againsdt the Yggdrasil, and the battle is such that it can be seen even from the Thames, leading Fei and Elly to rush to the Yggdrasil's defence. A boss fight ensues in which Dominia recognises Elly and is enraged. She spouts off all sorts of self-righteous racist bullshit which Elly cuts through. The boss fight ends rather abruptly as Dominia decides that abducting Elly is worth abandoning her mission for.
On the Gebler battleship, Dominia prepares to take out her anger on her rival, but is interrupted by Miang. Oh yay, I'm saved by Miang! Miang puts Dominia in her place, pointing out that Dominia attacked Elly and therefore there is no proof Elly is a traitor. Dominia is furious at this but there's not much she can do. Miang, meanwhile, says some cryptic comments about Elly (I forget how much Elly is part of her plans at this point; I have to presume she is because otherwise why save her?), then brainwashes Elly and gives her an opportunity to escape. She returns to Ramsus and observes that while Dominia looks up to her, it is Miang's "job to be hated". This line has always amused me for its double meaning.
Meanwhile, Bart meets the Captain and decides he has a new role model in life. I guess it's an improvement? Margie shows up and tells Bart not to leave her behind. Bart tells her to be a woman and get back in the kitchen ship, so Margie responds by letting Fei know just who is responsible for getting his plane destroyed. I like this girl. Fei, meanwhile, is "so disgusted, he doesn't have anything to say...". Fair enough, Fei, fair enough.
Elly returns! Bart initially thinks they can't trust her (and does cite a good point, that Elly may be manipulated by Gebler because of her family back home even if she is a nice person at heart) but then decides he is a perfect judge of character at age 18 and says he can trust her thanks to looking in her eyes. ... well I guess that is pretty 18 of him. Elly, of course, promptly goes and tries to blow up the Yggdrasil. Bart is all "but but but her eyes!" while Citan reveals she was hypnotised. He also already suspected this because Citan knows everything, but didn't want to interfere since interfering with someone during hypnosis can apparently destroy their mind, and didn't want to let Bart in on the game because... well, would you?
In the meantime, Gebler uses this opportunity to attack. The fight with Dominia is pretty easy, but the one after it against Ramsus and Miang is easily the best boss fight in a long time, possibly thus far. It's still not that hard if you know the system of course. As with the earlier underwater Dominia fight, the battle ends with the boss indiscriminately attacking one of the PCs, as Ramsus unleashes all his rage on Fei (who still has no idea what Ramsus is talking about), damaging Weltall and flooding the cockpit, incapacitating Fei before he can even turn into Id. The only reason Fei doesn't die is because Elly learns her shiny new Aerods skill and barrages Ramsus with it, forcing him to retreat. I guess that's the end of any last hope she won't be seen as a traitor.
Hours 22-23: Fei's out of the team now. Far from the first RPG to do this, but Xenogears does it for longer than most games I can recall. Two dungeons and plenty of plot. I approve in principle of getting some of the other characters to interact without Fei around, but I'm not sure how much the game really takes advantage of this? The first focus is on introducing Billy.
Actually we meet Jessie and Primera first, so a few words on them. Jessie... there's a lot wrong with him, I feel. What we learn of him from this opening set of scenes is that he's a drunkard who basically left his children to all but starve, almost driving Billy to prositution. Now he shows up and chastises Billy about his choices in life. Yet the game seems to exhonerate him on the fact that he's a "good man" whatever the hell that means, and of course he ends up being right about Ethos. It definitely rubs me the wrong way.
I don't have much to say about Prim except that did we really need two different silent girl characters? Granted it's for very different reasons but still! Also her design is weird.
Anyway Jessie's first scene involves him putting a gun to Elly's head because he misreads a scene so bad that he thought the woman who just chased off a couple thugs and said "there there you're okay" to his daughter was a kidnapper. Oh man, that's a start.
Enough about him, we get to meet Billy! Billy's a pretty fun character. Admirably nice, and incredibly chartiable even to those of "rival" religions, and he does a good job of explaining what he does, and how he came to do it: because he had needed help himself so badly as a child that he wanted to make sure nobody ended up like he and his sister. He has an understandably very strained relationship with his father, and though he tries, can't keep the jealousy from his voice when he talks about how his sister seems more attached to her dad than to him.
Also somewhere in this he arranges to get Fei treated at Ethos. The visit to the Ethos highlights a lot of what they do: salvaging lost technology but also a lot of protecting people with their "Etone" templars. The initial view of them seems pretty darned positive! How novel for an RPG. Guess we knew that was too good to be true.
We also meet Bishop Stone, who is Billy's mentor and the man who saved his life. Xenogears rarely does complete swerves with perceived character morality; he's about the only one? (Hammer I guess, but that feels very different.)
Anyway, after all that introduction, as well as a visit to Billy's orphanage, we get thrown into a dungeon (a transport ship infested by monsters which stone sends Billy to investigate, with the party tagging along to help repay him for saving Fei), the first since... gosh, the Kislev base about five hours ago. Not much to say here, Citan feels ever more overpowered gameplaywise as he pads his lead in deathblows and speed. The ship itself is our introduction to reapers, once-human monsters who are reponsible for the death of Billy's mother. They're reminiscent of Redrum (who I suppose was one himself, actually?), kinda zombie-like but without the part of actually being dead so less completely illogical. Not much to say about them past that. We fight a couple of them as bosses, and Billy gets to show off his gear which is launched in that over-the-top ridiculous way that only Xenogears among super-serious games could get away with, as the children use SEESAW POWER to unearth it from beneath Billy's orphanage. Sure whatever!
Next time: oh shit the church is evil after all
