Make sure you talk to アルル first, then leave the village to the mountain path NOT the world map and save at the save point. Take your time exploring the village first, learn some backstory, maybe play some minigames.
Before talking to アルル, you can exit the village and fight monsters for items/money without progressing the story. You will be solo so be careful!
Remember you can rotate the camera using the L1/R1 buttons!
You can run and jump
Interactable items (e.g. the spider web in the side room of the house you start in, or the healing items in the barrels in the same room) are NOT indicated by sparkles or such, so explore!
You can only save at the gold floating save points or at the world map.
After saving, you can view your save data to see the chapter title
Important Missables
人魚の涙/Mermaids Tear. Tell the guy at the bar the third choice, “Drinking won’t help matters.”/”酒に逃げるのは、よくない”
幻のジャンケン勇者バッジ/RPS Badge. Talk to the guy in the southeast house and beat him 5 times in a row. I suggest you save before attempting. Good luck!
"FMVs”
Opening movie (see script for “Opening”)
Walkthrough English Guide Ctrl+F WK01 to go directly to relevant part of guide. Nice ASCII maps, minimal spoilers. Boss names not hidden. Japanese Guide Multiple chapters on the same page, so beware of reading ahead. Good maps, minimal spoilers. Boss names not hidden.
Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. This includes other games in the Xeno franchise. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler.
Avoid posting any information from later in the game than the current week’s reading. If it is necessary to doing so, it needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1”]).
Participation
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Maybe I should call them unique missables? My policy is common goods that are missable (e.g. cheap healing items) I won’t spike out. Those two in particular can be traded for unique items later in the game, but now is the only time we can grab them.
Excited to get started, except for the difficulty level, especially in the prologue. On the other hand I had no idea wtf the plot for ff7 was when I first played it in English, so maybe I shouldn’t worry too much about it
I feel that, as with most story-heavy games, the very start is going to be a bit rough with all the lore dumps and exposition but it should get easier once the action gets going.
So I have to say I really didn’t get much, if any, of the FMV at the start. A lot of scifi technobabble. The prologue was then a hurdle to overcome at the start - plenty of lookups were needed, but I was fine with the grammar etc
I love the little interactions they added while you’re in the village, like getting shouted at for stepping on the guy’s mat etc. I did savescum for the rock paper scissors - no point in dragging that out longer than it needed to go really. Not much else to say for this week, mostly talking to NPCs and not much in the way of actual gameplay yet
If you’re feeling like the intro is a lot, some additional resources:
Opening FMV is probably easier to watch with the script open, with some pauses and possibly rewinding in places: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1-pmQsRDHw. This is the kind of opening that is not meant to be understood until the game is much further in, so don’t sweat about it too much.
Text intro is easier to read from a script than from the screen, but it’s good practise to read pixelated kanji.
My attempt at roughly translating the lore dump at the start, for my sake as much as other’s:
The continent Ignis is on the northern hemisphere. It’s the largest continent on the planet and in it two countries have been warring for centuries. The northern parts are controlled by Kisreb, the southern desert lands by Ave (Avé?). The original casus belli has been forgotten by everyone and all that’s left is just a neverending litany of tragedies.
Eventually this chronic, inertial warring reached a massive change. From the ruins of an ancient civilization new tools were unearthed, weapons that were restored by the Church, in charge of the preservation of this world’s culture. Both nations unearthed these relics, and the Church would repair them to increase their military force.
I’m not sure how to parse この世界の文化の保存を司る『教会』によって改修されたからであった。 Is この世界の文化 referring to the current world or the lost civilization? I can’t tell if この is used contrastively or if it just refers to what was discussed in the previous sentence fragment. My intuition is that it would be その世界 if we were talking about a distant civilization however.
As the number of weapons unearthed from the ruins grew, the methods of war changed massively. The outcome of the conflict was no longer decided by soldier-to-soldier combat, but rather by skirmishes between so-called Gear Arsa (?) relics, human shaped mechanical weapons [mechas, I presume].
Eventually Kisreb gained the advantage in the conflict. Their main advantage was the difference in the number of relics they found buried in the ground. But suddenly a mysterious military organization appeared in Ignis. This organization was called Gebra. Gebra made contact with Avé.
With the assistance of Gebra, Avé recovered an equal position in the conflict. Avé managed to steal back the regions controlled by Kisreb one after another, without showing sign of losing momentum.
Looking more into it, apparently the katakana words I’m struggling with are mostly Hebrew-inspired. Also in the long tradition of censoring explicit religious references in the west (I presume), 教会 was translated as “Ethos”.
ギア・アーサー (Gia-āsā). “asá” is a Hebrew word (עָשָׂה) meaning “to make”, specifically used as “to create/manufacture something out of existing materials”.
I don’t think this is a dichotomy that needs drawing here. They are charged with preserving the world’s culture - thus this extends to the tools/weapons used by the ancient civilisation (which is why they are the ones entrusted to do the repairing - they have the knowledge, presumably, and are charged with preservation in any case). 世界 here is referring to the world as a whole, rather than existing as a contrast to the 太鼓文明
Ok I haven’t checked the script just yet but at least through my TV speakers, that FMV was some “audio mixing is my passion” shit. I didn’t catch one word because the music was absolutely overwhelming whatever they were whispering about.
I’m happy to say the PS1 font is pretty nicely clear; I’ve been dealing with worse elsewhere. The opening lore dump was a fun read. With all the games I’ve been playing it’s pretty firmly in my wheelhouse type stuff now. Being recently tormented by The Silver Case’s long emails on plants that eat insects with 30 new botany terms each, tonight was restful in a way I probably needed.
I won that rock paper scissors! Admittedly I looked into if there was any pattern since I can’t save state it like you all, and it worked out perfectly. I won round 1 randomly, and from there played as if he’d never repeat the one he just lost with, so I picked the one that would force a win or tie under that condition (and always won).
These buildings have little diorama vibes to me in this game; I love them dearly. Talked to nearly everyone today, though I didn’t have the patience for every tutorial explanation. I do like how one tutorial guy gave me money for listening to him, then I walked across the room into the scam save tutorial where they took some money. That’s a… memory cube, huh? Doesn’t look all that… cubic.
Anyway the women in the village are entirely right that the guy you go to if you’re sick or injured probably shouldn’t live up a dangerous mountain path with a sign saying you need, IIRC, 勇気 and 信念 to get there. That conversation with the bride is also really not a good sign for someone to be saying right before getting married
Well despite having played through most of this game almost 20 years ago, I remember absolutely nothing.
W1 impressions
That intro is at the same time the most basic JRPG stuff ever (warring
countries, weapons from an ancient civilisation, amnesiac protagonist…) but it’s also so confusing: that FMV seems completely unrelated to what follows, then we get the mecha combat scene, then we rewind to some time earlier in the village, then we have a flashback to 3 years earlier with the masked guy… Honestly it’s not great, once again especially if I contrast with the extremely effective intro of FFVII. They overstuffed it.
Fortunately I find my footing quickly with the chitchat of the villagers. It
refocuses the plot to something easier to follow and care for. Surely that
wedding is going to go well.
I really like the spritework, it’s very cartoony instead of the usual pixelated fare. The animations appear to have more frames than most 2D JRPGs too.
There appear to be no options menu? I was hoping that I could default to running, but I guess it’s one of those games where I’ll have to hold X for 50 hours.
No Dual Shock support either.
The music is pretty good but I can’t help to compare and contrast with FFVII, and so far it’s not that good. It reminds me of the Chrono Trigger OST with a lot of “acoustic” instruments.
Exploring the village with the jumping mechanics is quite fun. It does make good use of the 3D element.
No minimap though
I’m not sure I fully understand the innuendo with the woman “Helen” at the bar. Is she proposing what I think she’s proposing?
Many NPCs hyping the cities in Avé, I can’t wait to see what they look like!
Artificially increasing the CD speed to 4x in the emulator appears to reduce the loading times without bad side-effects so far.
I am now engaged to the girl form the item shop.
I did not accept to follow the kid’s plan because… it seemed dumb? Maybe I missed an amusing interaction though.
What a silly minigame. There’s a similar one if FFVII, but the AI “cheats” so it’s almost impossible to beat without abusing savestates. And if you do… the game crashes and you have to reset it.
I love the world map and the theme is good too. Not sure what to make of the combat system yet, it reminds me of Legend of Legaia to some extent.
Ooh, I wondered if there was a pattern but couldn’t figure it out. Smart.
I managed to miss that house entirely, I just went back for it. Also not a very good way to do a tutorial… I much prefer the Chrono Cross style where you just get a scripted encounter.
I also couldn’t figure out this 必殺技 thing through the explanations alone (in my defense I misremembered the button layout during the fights, but that’s why it’s better to demonstrate in practice!), but I found this thread saying that… they’re kind of useless anyway?
So I have to acknowledge that the beginning of the game is the part I have much clearer memories of and I think it’s impossible to not somewhat see it through some influence of how I did as a kid, when everything was good and if nothing else I just needed to figure out what I was missing about it. But that said, I kind of like what a confusing whirlwind the intro is, like my interest is particularly piqued by seemingly unrelated sci fi space disasters being put next to a mech fight that’s at this stage ambiguously a dream, or memory, or vision? Then idyllic village life follows. I’d at least agree the flashback to Fei being brought in the village is pretty superfluous; the scene was so quick it didn’t feel like it added anything onto the way everyone already talks about how he was brought here.
Part of it is that like the primary feeling I associate with my memories of Xenogears is many elements feeling like this big shrouded surreal mystery, so that’s kind of the vibe I was expecting or looking for. I’m curious to see how much of that remains and how much is that I was playing as a child and couldn’t follow it (and never finished it anyway).
You and I made the same choices, turned down the kid’s plan and found my own future bride elsewhere.
I didn’t go get in any fights yet but I’m already bewildered looking at that link about the 必殺技 stuff. Pretty sure I just pressed buttons in the past. Absolutely agree they should be teaching it better and Chrono Cross is a good example.
For science, I set up a new savestate and went to try accepting his plan. It just gives you a cute interaction where he’s like “yeah you’re my bro” and then realises that they can’t actually do that. So nothing much, really, but still a fun little thing.
For all the worrying about him people are doing, he actually seems quite mature. Yeah he has some issues with the big family shakeup but even when you flatly reject it he just goes “Alright if you say so Fei, I trust you, I know we can’t really.” Maybe they’re just worried about his hairline.
I’m ignoring the ボインボイン bit; we’re in anime territory.
My policy is common goods that are missable (e.g. cheap healing items) I won’t spike out. Those two in particular can be traded for unique items later in the game, but now is the only time we can grab them.
