Xenogears

Philosophical, psychological, and religious themes pervade 1998's Xenogears, enough so that a decade later the intricacies and overall meaning of the game are still hotly debated. On the surface it's a confusing mesh of destruction, hatred, and giant robots. Underneath that is a confusing mesh of love, death, betrayal, psychosis, self-determination, and 10,000 years of machinations and plotting. The game mechanics are subject to debate, as the innovative mix of semi-turn-based battle and combination attacks are juxtaposed against the unlikely addition of platforming elements, leading to some extremely unusual jumping puzzles prone to interruption in mid-leap by random battle. Equally subject to debate are the long cutscenes, some lasting upwards of twenty minutes at a time. While the story unfolds and the characters are explored, it can be quite frustrating to play for five minutes, watch ten minutes, play ten seconds, watch fifteen minutes, play thirty minutes, watch twenty minutes, etc. Also of concern to some is the disparity of graphics, with less than stellar in-game animation occasionally being supplanted by hand-drawn anime sequences. Regardless of how they may fall on these minor issues, fans of the game universally applaud the twisted depths of the story, with references ranging from Gnosticism to Soylent Green and the vagaries of Dissociative Identity Disorder and Freudian psychology.

The nations of Aveh and Kislev have been at war for time beyond memory. Kislev had developed an edge until the appearance of a new fighting force, Gebler, put Aveh back on top. The war literally drops into the middle of a quiet border town and the resulting destruction forces Fei—a young man with no memories prior to three years previous when he was taken into the village with severe injuries—to depart for the world at large on the advice of his friend and town doctor, Citan. Fei meets Elly, a Gebler soldier, for the first time in a series of life-changing meetings before falling in with Bart, the deposed heir of Aveh. Reluctantly joining Bart's insurrection, Fei is gradually exposed to the contrived forces behind the war, the feuding religious sects of the Ethos and Nisan, thousands of years of history that had been deliberately buried, and a handful of strange people who alternately want to make him stronger, empower his enemies, or just kill him for existing. The matter of warring nations falls by the wayside as it becomes apparent that the issue at hand is the survival of the human race.

Images:

Your first glimpse of Fei
The improbably-haired Fei against the backdrop of his burning town
Meeting Elly
A recurring image
Bartholomew Fatima (Bart)
Left to right: Bart, Citan, Fei, and Billy—an Ethos warrior priest
The Nisan cathedral
Grahf, who has a habit of empowering Fei's enemies
Id, who has a habit of killing entire cities for amusement
The seemingly irrelevant opening sequence
In-game graphics demo: Citan, Billy, and Elly fight Id