ゼノギアス // Week 5 // Chapter 11

[Voi]

ゼノギアス // Week 5 // Chapter 11

Week 5	2025 November 29
Last Week	Week 4
Next Week	Week 6&7
Home Thread	ゼノギアス

Ending Point
Due to the lack of a save point at the end of the chapter (that doesn’t require backtracking part of the dungeon), this week technically ends a bit into the next one—

After fighting the boss and exiting the cave, once you are at a ship’s hanger. Take the NE door out of the area, go down the hall straight into the door and save in the room with the spiral staircase. Avoid talking to Sigurd on the bridge. You can wander around, rest, buy equipment, etc. Technically this area and it’s many, many NPCs are next week, but feel free to get a head start.

Screenshot

Gameplay

Gameplay notes

This section is done almost entirely in Gears. I’ve pulled some of our discussion from last week here on it:

• Gear Deathblows are learned by learning Deathblows on foot first. This means higher level Gear DBs are limited by character level as well as if you’ve met the button repetition requirement.
• At this point we are limited to ATK level 1 Gear DBs (starts with a 10 fuel attack)
• Attack Level can be seen in the lower left corner, and is built by doing turns using only basic attacks with your Gear. Ether attacks won’t build attack level.
• You can access additional battle commands by pressing the right and up buttons to scroll over

Unique Missables

None! That said, you can get some Gear gear (heh) and an item that sells for a lot, if you’re hurting for money.

"FMVs”

None!

Walkthrough
English Guide Ctrl+F WK10 (the guide chaptering is off by one from now on)
Japanese Guide

Vocab

	Script	JPDB	Renshuu
CH11	Here	Here	Here
NPC*	Here	Here	Here

*grouped with some other small sections of dialog, so beware spoilers. Thankfully the relevent section starts right at the top of the Script.
**NPC scripts available here for the next chapter stuff here. I suggest you click after you’ve reached this area to avoid spoilers.

Discussion Guidelines

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.

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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”]).

Discussion

• Now that we’ve had a whole area of it, what are your thoughts on Gear battling?

Participation

Will you be playing with us 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

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!

[Akashelia]

@Voi

Gameplay notes

Thanks for those! Running in Gear mode is so satisfying. Gonna use up all my fuel and do it forever!

[Akashelia]

Combat question

Can you heal your Gear? The HP is only going down with each combat and healing items or spells seem to only work on the characters and not on the gear. Kinda makes sense, a Gear needs repair and not healing, but thought I’d better check if there’s a way, if there isn’t maybe it’s not such a good idea to be grinding…
Edit: never mind, I found someone (in game) who could help me

[simias]

I had to check with a Youtube video if my emulator wasn’t having a bug because it felt so strange for those huge mechas to make zero noise when they walk around…

[simias]

Mmmh…

[Akashelia]

Not sure what you’re trying to show us here!

[simias]

I just said that it was strange that the gears made no noise while walking, and this NPC mentions ギヤの足音. Plot hole, unplayable, asking for a refund etc…

[Akashelia]

Haha, I had already forgotten the first message, by bad. I have a very short term memory apparently.

[Akashelia]

Week 5

It was nice to use the gear a bit more. Got to use it all up, both HP and fuel. Tried having it on and off, equipping different stuff etc. Also took a beating by a Gear with a giant shrimp on its head because why not.

Thankfully I met the guy living in the cave right after, it was nice to repair the gear a bit.
Nice little chapter, not too much lore dump this time, it was relaxing!
Fun use of kanji though. 只(ただ), 判(わか)らない.

[Voi]

@Akashelia

Gear with a giant shrimp

haha it does look like a shrimp! メイフライ gave me such a hard time, I ran into three or four of them before finding Balthazar and was nearly wiped out…

@Akashelia

not too much lore dump

I dunno, I’ve just reached 爺さん and I already have a whole page of notes to post once I finish! I want to pick this old mans brain so bad.

[Akashelia]

I wonder if it’s called “My fry” as in a fried shrimp? maybe I should check out the English name for fun

[Voi]

I think it may be Mayfly?

[Akashelia]

Seems to be right!

It is more a fly than a shrimp, I can see that on a better res picture
May Fly - Xeno Series Wiki

[simias]

And suddenly, all was light. Yoral felt oddly at peace, bathed in the nuclear glow of the machine’s weaponized turbine exhaust. A moment ago it finally dawned on her that attacking a gigantic mechanized weapon of mass destruction with her primitive rifle was probably not a good plan. As entropy irrevocably dismantled her being into a shapeless atomic cloud, the imminent plasma of her consciousness reckoned with the futility of existence.

[Voi]

I use the human enemies as an opportunity to charge and restore fuel. Tho I should probably put Bart on foot and get him started an a second DB at some point

[simias]

I especially appreciate Balto’s piledriver attack animation on the foot soldiers. The visual of a gigantic humanoid machine just going full ham on a squishy human the relative size of a small poodle is extremely funny to me.

[Voi]

Week 5

Gameplay explanations in MY Xenogears?

Bart: “You should have just surrendered!” You sunk the ship! Why would anyone trust you wouldn’t just kill them? And no one died when they shot down the sand ship? Bull! I died! Twice! Drowning in sand!! Apologize properly damnit!!!

Anyway, thank you Sigurd for disciplining him properly.

Thankfully Fei had the good sense to disengage and focus on what matters. I’d’ve thrown hands, so at least someone here has maturity.

Now, that 爺さん lore? Delicious. ~10,000 years ago are the first human fossils, and I’m guessing that lines up with the intro movie. Some escape ships must have landed on this planet I guess? I find it hilarious here the church is promoting “that evolution thing” and 爺さん is having none of it.

It’s SO interesting how facts change over the millennia:

「かつて人は神と共に天空にあり、 常春の楽園で 暮らしていたという」常春の楽園 = climate controlled spaceship? 天空 = outer space? Getting FF1 vibes

「人は神の禁断の果実を口にした」that mechanical worm thing from the intro? I haven’t forgotten the “ye shall be as gods” on the screens…

「巨人を創り神に戦いを挑んだ」They made gears (presumably…unless this is just talking about that warships defense system?) to FIGHT GOD?? lmao guess Grahf had the right idea.

Okay so. This god is asleep. Same or different deity as 天帝’s that they want to awaken to reach paradise? I’m guessing the same. How does this 母なる神 play in?

「神はその残された力で、心義しき人達をこの地上に住まわされた。」the ship crashing into the planet, maybe?? Did the entire intro sequence get super distorted over the last 10k years or is there something else going on? (don’t tell me)

Well that’s ominous! I’ve played enough 90s era jrpgs. バル爺 says it’s fake but …

Fei gets me.

And Bart says it can’t be so, because the excavated Gears are only from a few hundred years ago, and were were likely buried after a war. But he also says there are no old records…so… Who’s to say it hasn’t been dug up and buried over again? And the only records are held by the church who also has primary role in the excavated gears. Surely they also have an opinion about one of these 神 we keep hearing about.

「こいつは…… 神を滅ぼす者の憑代……」I’M SORRY バル爺? I know you just introduced the concept but like…that seems something not to brush off??

Despite that, 爺さん officially gets “most helpful NPC” award between the gear battling explanation + that lore dump + gear upgrades + tuneup.

[Akashelia]

Week 5

@simias

I especially appreciate Balto’s piledriver attack animation on the foot soldiers. The visual of a gigantic humanoid machine just going full ham on a squishy human the relative size of a small poodle is extremely funny to me.

It’s even more funny when it misses

@Voi

Despite that, 爺さん officially gets “most helpful NPC” award between the gear battling explanation + that lore dump + gear upgrades + tuneup.

You’re right, there was a lot of info there after all! Totally agree with you!
I also liked when they asked “why would he be living there in this cave alone?”, the true answer being obviously, the devs needed to help us not to die so soon somehow.

[Daisoujou]

Finally back home with time to do this week --

Spelunking time. Overall I like the cave. Feels a little meatier than the forest and desert before, enough that it’s the first area that felt properly like it simulated the environment it’s going for and didn’t give me quick cliff notes feelings. I’m a fan of the textures; the walls keep this place interesting visually despite it just being a cave. That and the cool circles around the guy’s shelter. I think the second long hallway is a little bit of an odd choice – it actually made me think that path was circling back to earlier in the dungeon and I worried I had gone the wrong way. That’s my only complaint, though. And I love those long hallways like in the photo partly because they do that PS1 wobbling thing we talked about. It happens in the whole hall as you walk and it’s like all the walls around you are shimmering.

Big fan of the zoom to make us little ants around the gondola area; they play with perspective and scale nicely here. That excavation area felt like they were showing off. So did these lovely colors

I might be slow cause I wasn’t connecting anything about the old man’s mythology lesson to the opening cutscene, was just thinking more about the relation to the real biblical 楽園 and 果実 it’s referencing. Interesting stuff but I think it was covered so well by @Voi already, beyond the various questions already brought up I’m mostly nodding along.

As for Gear combat… it’s happening! The presentation is cool but it’s kind of just the normal combat but more simple I suppose. Fuel is a nice concept yet a little odd to me in execution. Because gears can’t be healed normally, between repair people or whatever, gear health is basically a constantly depleting resource of your total amount of battling you can do. Fuel can be recharged (at seemingly low enough amounts so far that it’s tedious to do it too much, heh) but since every action uses it it kind of feels to me like it overlaps a bit much. You get incentivized to not overkill where avoidable but largely the feeling I get in mech combat is of having two different timers simultaneously ticking down to my “death” when either reaches its end. Something about that makes me feel constantly a little pressured to save time even though it’s arguably just a more simplified version of what you’re doing in any game with resource management. The way existing and doing ANY action is draining your resources is, well, draining heh. Which I don’t hate across the board as a feeling to evoke, but I think constant worrying about fuel efficiency like Fei is either environmentally-minded or worried about gas prices might clash with the feelings of power these mechs are meant to evoke.

Anyway Jeff Gearblum’s The Fly was a fun encounter; I only saw one of them right near the end so it felt particularly special. I dunno why a big fly merged with a gear but it’s one of those weird enemy ideas that I love in these RPGs.

[VikingSchism]

Week 5 Play Report

The sand caves are a cool little dungeon, not too much to it but the little exploration to find the two sensors was nice. It does look very pretty, and I find it cool how you see the bridge you’ll be walking over later (and then when you’re walking over it you can fall back down to the previous area).

The lore dump from Balthazar was interesting but a little hard to follow with all the fancy words and kanji. At least I’m very much going to remember 爺さん after this game.

I also have to wonder how everyone was reading the words like 防沙壁, 降沙センサー, and 潜沙艦? For me “ぼうしゃかべ”, “こうしゃせんさー”, and “せんしゃかん” respectively. As far as I can tell these words don’t exist and didn’t seem to have a given reading.

The Gear combat is definitely mixed for me. I don’t really mind it too much, but I just find that there’s usually not too many interesting choices to make moment to moment in the fights. Trying to economise on fuel is kind of fun though.