If you need money, you can trade even more drops from the sewers at the info center
There is a minigame in Sigmund’s room if you inspect the metronome if you want. You only get money
After talking to Hammer, you can jump down a chimney in the civilian area (that looks kind of like a barrel) into a house with a save point. Talk to the person in the house to unlock it going forward. It’s also pretty funny.
Frame HP30 in the area with the Master Key—when equipped this allows your gears to heal at the cost of fuel
Unique Missables
When you meet Rico in Sigmund’s room, there’s an item on the dresser you can take that only Rico can equip (形見のペンダント)
You can talk to Big Joe in the civilian district and give him 5000G. If you do, later on you can get an item to fix Wildcat’s broken jukebox
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. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
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Discussion
Thoughts on Rico?
What even was the point of that “minigame”?
Participation
Will you be playing with is this week?
I am playing along.
I’m still playing but I haven’t reached this part yet.
I am no longer playing.
I’m just here for the discussion
0voters
Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!
Haha the jumping down the hole to get into the locked building was great. (I did it before talking to Hammer)
Loved jumping on a moving train too, never thought I’d get to do that!
Otherwise not too much to say. Fun to see how Fei is now eager to fight. And was nice that Eri and him didn’t fight. She even ended up helping them. Then got saved by Batman, and not joined the party again, nice!
By the way, aren’t there 2 CDs to this game? Are we going to be able to go from CD 1 to 2 with the emulator and continue with the same data?
Isn’t FF to blame? Must be a lot of work to lead the book club and prepare the next one. But yeah just quit your job already, job < JP (should add a Donate button on KanKan, would cover the moneys issue!)
Super weird “dream-like” plot development and scene sequencing, as usualy.
Amazing visuals, as usual.
Terrible sound mixing, as usual.
Bad combat, as usual.
Why is the combat so bad? Like seriously, did they not even try to make it interesting? How can there be a gauntlet of fights where I keep spamming the same attack over and over again until it’s over?
It’s amazing how amazingly good and amazingly bad this game manages to be at the same time. Some of the stuff here is incredible by PSX standards, but then other stuff feels like pre-alpha placeholder content.
It took me a few tries, hardest jump in the game so far. It’s pretty unclear; there’s a door you have to go into with a lady standing near it that looks like you’re just walking indoors but it spits you out on the roof.
Sorry for non-French speaking, but about sound mixing, just watched this video the other day. Probably you already most of the facts already but I didn’t know all those things about sound mixing! (also I strongly disagree with some of his early statements “nobody cares about music in a game” “music of video games is not noble music” but the rest was OK)
I never not save before jumping…
Nice . Actually just saw today the “Disk Options” in the menu next to “Save State Options”; hadn’t noticed it before.
I had a game over this week, since I forgot to buy new stuff at the gear store before the boss rush and got dogwalked by the whip boss. After buying the best stuff for my gear the tables turned. The dinosaur did 0 damage, and the increased armour made it way more doable. The big boss fight against ドミニア wasn’t hard either - dealt with the big cannon the first time, but the second time I just focused on rushing her down and it worked
The dungeon before that was a little annoying because it had a lot of branching paths and I wanted to check them all. It was smaller than it appeared at first though
Nothing too bad language-wise this week
Although I’ll admit I was a little confused at exactly how to gramatically break down:
無理して居場所、作らなくったっていいじゃないか
Re discussion: I have to say I’m fairly ambivalent on Rico overall, I feel like he’s a fairly generic character and there’s not really that much to him. Though there are worse things a character could be than a little dull
無理して居場所を作る - overdo it (or however you wanna translate that) and create a place for oneself
Turned into “even if you don’t” with なくったって which is the negative form with the たって (even if). It’s more standard to see it as なくたって but this extra っ is presumably additional emphasis.
いいじゃないか - it’s ok, right?
I’m working without remembering exact context but it’s basically something like “You don’t have to force it and try to make a place for yourself, you know?” which you’d definitely want to reword a lot in context to sound more like something a human would say in English, but yeah, haha.
Ohoho, playing the final boss fight for this week does make me remember just how bad the combat can be sometimes! Bosses really shouldn’t have so much HP when the combat loop is this simple. That’s ok Xenogears, I will always love you for the vibes <3 simias described this week’s section as “dream-like, as usual” and I couldn’t agree more <3
I hope nobody minds me adding on to Daisoujou’s answer because I just finished this scene and this was a line I had to puzzle out for a minute myself. Not really the grammar, but the meaning, so this is for any future japanese-learning xenogears players like me: Fei sees that Elly is “無理して” by sacrificing who she is in order to “居場所(を)作る,” make a place for herself within the hardass, anti-surface-dweller military culture of ゲブラー. I think my own ‘natural sounding’ english interpretation would be something like “It’s ok not to force yourself to belong, isn’t it?” Oof trying to mix Japanese and English when it’s more than just nouns feels so awkward!
Can’t help but agree here, but for me the amazingly good just overwrites the bad parts so hard. I thought I’d hate the random encounters so much, but to my surprise it’s not nearly as bad as I remembered. I hope that’s because I’ve gained points in patience as I’ve grown older.
Amazing screenshots, as usual. This game just keeps delivering on the visual front.
Speaking of the bad parts, this crane minigame was fucking horrible. I had to check if I have input lag on my setup because those windows were tiny. I would not have finished this without save states, and even with them it took me a good five minutes – bumping the crane into those soldiers felt so bad. Get the fuck out of the way…
The familiar smell, the DNA-coded door just opening… Hope folks didn’t miss connecting the dots here. I think ジークムント himself might be in the dark at this point. I think 教会 lied to him about his wife and son.
The steam town in general was nice, again a hell of a lot of work from the team. There’s a decent amount of background lore when talking around. Someone is missing their father who went on a mission to ラハン… sorry buddy…
. Actually just saw today the “Disk Options” in the menu next to “Save State Options”; hadn’t noticed it before.
