Still awesome a decade later.
User Rating: 9 | Xenogears: Elyhaym Van Houten Edition (Square Millennium Collection) PS
I've recently dusted off this classic and decided to give the old revisit. This game stands the test of time. 10 Years after the fact I still enjoy this game. The story remains as deep and convoluted as ever. Battles are more in dept than half of the modern RPGs on the market right now. The scope and vision of the game are still enticing as ever. Really there are only two elements that haven't faired too well. The random battles feel like your biggest obstacle. When attempting to maneuver through the ho-hum platforming elements of the game, the random battles can cause you to make a mistake and miss that all important jump you were attempting. This is due both to the fact that the jump ability is stopped just before a battle, and that a random battle in the middle of a platforming section is very disorienting to begin with. This sort of artificially ramps up the difficulty in a cheap and frustrating way at times. Still this is a minor gripe and never fully ruins the overall experience. The battles themselves are unbelievably fun and deep. Switching between regular battles (which use cool attack combos to help unleash powerful attacks while placing magic in more of a support role) and Gear battles (which use an interesting fuel mechanic to help your giant robot smash your enemies) the battles never get old. Grafically the game definitely shows it's age. While environments are decent and show a lot of creativity, character models and poor textures kind of muddy up the look of the game (even for 1998 standards). Still all gripes aside this is an amazing game that still pleases 10 years down the road. I recommend this game to any RPG fan looking for a great story with lots of dept to gameplay. 
