Xenogears is a 1998 JRPG for the PlayStation, and first in the “Xeno” franchise, where the protagonist, Fei Fong Wong, and his party journey across a world filled with warring nations and giant humanoid mechas called “Gears”.
Some notes on schedule: Xenogears only allows saving on the world map or at specific save points. As their placement is not always even relative to playtime, I have elected for very long chapters to extend the playtime to two weeks rather than trying to find a specific save point in the middle to split it up.
The schedule above is purely notional and may change depending on club feedback.
Where to Purchase?
Physical: Used item retailers (Mandarake, Surugaya, Amazon, Ebay, etc)
Digital: Unknown (technically may still be on PS3 digital store?)
Vobabulary
Script: ゼノギアス台詞集
Decks: jpdb | Renshuu list (search “Xenogears” in community lists)
Please take a look at the notional schedule and let me know if you have feedback. In particular:
Should we split the first week to ease into it (most of the dialog is optional NPCs, but they give good background on Fei and the world setting)
Do we want to feed in breaks? e.g. Christmas, Spring break, etc? I personally have more time during holidays, but if we want to decide adding any I can do so
Also I will link to a good English guide, but does anyone know of any JP guides that are relatively non-spoilery?
When you say “NPCs”, you mean optional dialogue in towns etc.? (EDIT: oh you answered that already, sorry).
I did the “two weeks to ease in” for the FF1 club but in hindsight I wonder if there’s a point. People are motivated and excited to start, so if anything they’re likely to have higher tolerance for more text at this point. In may not be true for complete beginners who may be a bit fearful to dive into what may be their first long term Japanese project, but at 5-15k 字/week average we are not going to get many beginners.
As for breaks we can always discuss this while the club is going, if we reach the end of a big story arc and some people want a break, we can schedule it then IMO
Why did you break those in two weeks when there aren’t that many chars? Long gameplay sequences?
Thanks again for this! Really excited to see it again, see how it fits into my vague childhood memories of how far I got at that time.
What you have in theory makes sense for me – I don’t anticipate needing breaks and I’m always the person just telling the clubs I’m ready to go as fast as they can tolerate so just treat that as my default answer and I’ll defer to what everyone else wants for the most part.
Here I am, unable to stay still from my excitement.
Yeah. I averaged the playtime of three non-blind playthroughs, and Chapter 50 averaged 150 minutes followed by Chapter 51 at 92 minutes. For comparison, most of the others land between 45-70 minutes.
I split into two weeks whenever both the playtime exceeded 60 minutes and characters exceeded 10k.
For NPCs, I went based on the scripts, but TBH for areas where we’d stay in the same place for a couple chapters, it’s unclear how much that NPC dialog could be spread across chapters.
Honestly that sounds perfectly reasonable for me, we can always do a few weeks like this and then reassess the pace if needed. That worked well for the Trails club IMO, and I intend to eventually do that for the Final Fantasy clubs (although not for FF1 since I’m going as slow as reasonably possible).
While I’m a little curious about the Xeno series, it’s very long and my 日本語 is not up to par imo. I will be squidward looking through the window at you. Good luck though, a year long club should be fun to do.
Very excited to dive into this, let’s see if I will actually be able to keep up looking at the weekly character estimate lol
Does the schedule estimate also take into account stuff like side quests?
It should yeah. The playthroughs I used were not blind and they did the side quests. I believe the JP script also included that dialog so word count should more or less reflect it.
Since the endgame side quests are rather lengthy, and can’t be done before then anyway, I gave them their own week. That should also serve as an opportunity to get affairs in order for equipment prep as well before the last week kicks off.
Thanks for the heads up, and yes looking forward to this club
I’ve played Xenogears in English previously so not a blind playthrough for me but will be happy to experience it again while being able to focus on the Japanese
Also as a sidenote I’ve not played the Xenosaga games yet but those are on my list
I’m hoping we can maybe move to those in the future if there’s interest, and the idea was kinda floated alongside making this Gears club in the first place, but one thing at a time for now. Years back I started the first Xenosaga but didn’t get too far at the time.
At least the Opening FMV is included in the script linked,so I can doublecheck but I’d assume the rest are as well. I could give warnings in weeks that have FMVs, and maybe even pull in that part of the script under a spoiler tag for ease of reference.
But yeah, if we go on to Xenosaga (which I am up for ), most of the non NPC dialog is in FMVs. I also only have the script for a episode 1 (does not include NPC IIRC), so if anyone has links for 2 or 3 send them my way so I can scrape them now. Saga is also interesting in that the NPC dialog changes depending on the character on the screen.
), most of the non NPC dialog is in FMVs. I also only have the script for a episode 1 (does not include NPC IIRC), so if anyone has links for 2 or 3 send them my way so I can scrape them now. Saga is also interesting in that the NPC dialog changes depending on the character on the screen.