Just started Xenogears - helpful tips wanted

[Armagon]

Right, so i just started Xenogears (surprised as to how smooth a ePSXe runs on my PC but it's not like Xenogears is that technically demanding) and....how do i play? Other than the fact that it's turn-based, i don't really understand this battle system.

Any tips are helpful.

[LucarioGamer812]

I found this on Gamefags so hope it helps and good luck.

-Always make sure your characters and gears have the latest equipment. Gears are mostly independent of character stats or equipment. Search out people who might upgrade you, especially early on, or else you can get your party stuck in a calamitous situation *hint-hint*. For gears, your engine is responsible for attack power-make sure you get this. On the same note, however, don't try to upgrade every single gear you have, or you'll go broke. Generally, you'll know who will be in your party and can upgrade accordingly.

-levels are not important, aside from being the requirement for deathblows and new ethers, which are generally quite low. Stat gains don't contribute much, and are somewhat randomized on top of it. As such, running away from the game's sometimes numerous random encounters carriers with it little penalty, nor does grinding contribute much other than money (which is not an issue if you budget wisely).

-For characters, deathblows are crucial to combat. Avoid making the mistake of always using deathblows to kill regular enemies, or you'll end up facing bosses with weak deathblows. You learn deathblow by performing normal attack a certain number of times-each successive character you add to your party needs less attacks to learn new deathblows, so you don't have to worry that they'll take too long to learn new deathblows with. There are 4 different triangle attack animations and 2 square attack animations, and these each count differently, so make sure to mix things up accordingly. If a deathblow is stuck at 100, it means you are either not at the proper level or have not met certain plot conditions yet.

-In gears, response is a very useful stat, though it goes unexplained. Response is responsible for both evasion and accuracy, so response boosting items when stacked together will produce significantly better results than other accessories.

-Don't neglect ethers, especially in gears. The game doesn't explain this in detail enough, and many first time players ignore ethers (myself included) because a default ether attack is rather weak. Ether borrows from the character's ether stat, and it actually benefits from equipment that affects the character. In the special attack menu for gears, you'll find fuel consuming attacks that are governed by the ether stat. Ether amp is another stat that isn't explained enough-it's how much the standard ether attack is magnified by. I'll leave it to you to discover ways in which you may or may not want to use ethers. Just consider it and be on the lookout for things that may help you.

-Keep a backup save. Update it before going to a new dungeon.

[Armagon]

9 minutes ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

Search out people who might upgrade you, especially early on, or else you can get your party stuck in a calamitous situation *hint-hint*.

9 minutes ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

-Keep a backup save. Update it before going to a new dungeon.

What i'm gathering from this is that it's possible to end up stuck in an unwinnable situation. Is that right?

13 minutes ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

For characters, deathblows are crucial to combat. Avoid making the mistake of always using deathblows to kill regular enemies, or you'll end up facing bosses with weak deathblows. You learn deathblow by performing normal attack a certain number of times-each successive character you add to your party needs less attacks to learn new deathblows, so you don't have to worry that they'll take too long to learn new deathblows with. There are 4 different triangle attack animations and 2 square attack animations, and these each count differently, so make sure to mix things up accordingly. If a deathblow is stuck at 100, it means you are either not at the proper level or have not met certain plot conditions yet.

Alright, let me post a visual so i can understand this better

(Ignore the fact that Fei is about to die because i got lost and exited the village into the overworld)

So what is that Ap meter, as well as the one on the right? Do those have to do with deatblows?

Also, when using a regular attack, three options come up and they have "points". Some of those attacks let me strike multiple times. Do the points determine the number of attacks?

35 minutes ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

Don't neglect ethers, especially in gears.

Are these the "Chi" attacks or is it something else?

[Interdimensional Observer]

Xenogears isn't that hard a game, the focus was placed on trying to tell an elaborate sci-fi story with multiple layers. Still Lucario offers some good advice on the gameplay front. I'll provide some more and some other advice too.

 

That Combo option is generally useless outside of like one early boss battle. Don't bother building up AP,  just use Deathblows immediately, the Combo option doesn't make them stronger or anything, it serves no real purpose.  

The Booster command of Gears shortens the time between turns for that Gear, but causes them to consume extra fuel. You only need to Booster once in a given battle and it will stay on until you use the command again. It is good for boss battles.

On the topic of ether, there are accessories called Ether Doublers- they're broken, particularly since while they are ground gear, their effect carries over into Gears. Anyone with an ether attack can deal pretty good or crazy damage. A place called Nisan sells them for a pricey price, but only for a limited time- but you have a long while before the shop changes, so you'll have time to accumulate the funds for one or two (and you can get one for free in the lategame). Whether you choose to use them or not is up to you, just making you aware of them. 

Whenever you need to make a jump, if failing to make the jump results in a trek back to where you were, consider waiting until you trigger a random encounter before jumping. Why? When the game decides you're getting one, there is a delay between the battle starting and you being allowed to move, and during this time, jumping is disabled. 

There is a rock-paper-scissors minigame in Lahan, you must complete this ASAP if you want a little reward later after completing a couple other minigames. The ultimate reward is just a low level of Charger if I remember right, which increases the fuel replenished when using the Charge command in a Gear, it isn't worth much at all. Only care about this if you're a total completionist.

There isn't too much optional content, besides a few minor minigames and a little extra at the very end, Xenogears is pretty linear. There are two lategame boss battles, one of which you can very easily lose but the game will still progress, and the other where the boss suicides after a period of time. Losing/letting the boss suicide results in missing out on their drops. The suicide boss comes first, and offers the better reward.

 

When it comes to the plot, don't expect to understand everything immediately, or even everything perfectly after a single playthrough. It is much thicker than any of the -blade games, which toned down the plot ambitions to bolster the gameplay and world and make a game with more popular appeal. The translation is also rather bad being from the PS1 era, which is made worse given a lot of special terms being tossed around.

There is a wiki that can make things more comprehensible (but don't look at it until you're done with the game), of course all wikis carry a bias in how they write and interpret things. It does have its uses though in getting down the basics of everything that happened. I too can offer what I understand of it, which is admittedly a bit blurry having cleared the game years ago.

 

12 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Are these the "Chi" attacks or is it something else?

Yeah. Everyone's EP using option is generally named differently, but the offensive skills they cover always use the Ether stat. Citan, the next playable character, uses the "Arcane" command.

 

Hope you enjoy Tetsuya Takahashi's first masterpiece and the origin of all Xeno!

[Armagon]

25 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

That Combo option is generally useless outside of like one early boss battle. Don't bother building up AP, 

Alright, so AP is connected to the Combos but they are useless outside of one boss battle. Got it. What about the other, bigger meter on the left side of the screen?

I do seem to understand everything else though, apart from how deathblows work but it looks like i don't have access to them yet.

28 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Hope you enjoy Tetsuya Takahashi's first masterpiece and the origin of all Xeno!

Yeah, i'm really looking forward to what Xenogears has to offer! And once i finish with Xenogears, i'll hopefully begin Xenosaga (assuming my PC can run it) and then Xenoblade X will be end up as the only Xeno game i haven't played.

[Slumber]

You choose inputs in combat. I believe triangle is the light attack, square is the medium, and X is the heavy. Eventually you start unlocking combo attacks called Deathblows, and that's when the combat starts picking up a bit more. As easy as it is to fall into only using Deathblows, the way the combat works makes it so you unlock more Deathblows if you vary up your inputs a bit more, so sometimes you might want to refrain from using Deathblows. Especially with easier encounters. You can end up at the end of the game with like, 30% of your Deathblows still locked.

Hope you enjoy it. Even with the divisive second disc, Xenogears is still the only Xeno game I enjoyed all the way through.

Edited January 12, 2018 by Slumber

[LucarioGamer812]

3 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Alright, so AP is connected to the Combos but they are useless outside of one boss battle. Got it. What about the other, bigger meter on the left side of the screen?

I do seem to understand everything else though, apart from how deathblows work but it looks like i don't have access to them yet.

Yeah, i'm really looking forward to what Xenogears has to offer! And once i finish with Xenogears, i'll hopefully begin Xenosaga (assuming my PC can run it) and then Xenoblade X will be end up as the only Xeno game i haven't played.

Sorry I honestly have no idea what this game is like in specific but I was trying to be helpful.

Just asking how exactly are you playing these on pc? Are they on steam? (Xenosaga in question cause if so I'm stopping my search for physical copies)

[Interdimensional Observer]

31 minutes ago, Armagon said:

What about the other, bigger meter on the left side of the screen?

 

I'm not sure I ever actually paid attention to that before now that I think about it. But given the red and yellow color matches what a full turn gauge looks like, it might be that it shows how much of a delay until your next turn? Quickly refreshing my mind with a few gameplay videos on YouTube, I noticed it depletes more the more AP you use in a single attack, and since you can cancel an attack partway through, that might be it.

 

On Deathblows, when you learn a ground one (except for the last 3-6 of them which don't unlock until much later in the game for those who have Deathblows), you unlock a Deathblow for a character's Gear. There are also Deathblower 1, 2, and 3 accessories that unlock the last of the Gear Deathblows, but they don't come until later in the game.

 

Fei according to the latest and therefore most reliable GFAQs guide can't learn his first Deathblow until level 5. Said guide doesn't list the necessary levels for other characters, but they should be the same or about it. His last doesn't come until level 80! Don't worry that is the extreme exception, that Fei's second to last Deathblow; the rest are available by level 50, and after a little plot event.

 

25 minutes ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

Just asking how exactly are you playing these on pc? Are they on steam? (Xenosaga in question cause if so I'm stopping my search for physical copies)

He said ePSXe in the opening. So emulator.

Edited January 12, 2018 by Interdimensional Observer

[Armagon]

8 hours ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

Sorry I honestly have no idea what this game is like in specific but I was trying to be helpful.

It's cool. The advice you posted was helpful.

8 hours ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

Just asking how exactly are you playing these on pc? Are they on steam? (Xenosaga in question cause if so I'm stopping my search for physical copies)

I said this in the OP but i'm using ePSXe. Specifically, i'm using it on my PC. Xenogears may be on Steam but i'm not sure. You might want to check. Emulating it/buying it on Steam (if it's there) is likely your best bet though. Because from my understanding, every Xeno game that isn't Xenoblade is pretty hard to find physically.

8 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

On Deathblows, when you learn a ground one (except for the last 3-6 of them which don't unlock until much later in the game for those who have Deathblows), you unlock a Deathblow for a character's Gear. There are also Deathblower 1, 2, and 3 accessories that unlock the last of the Gear Deathblows, but they don't come until later in the game.

 

Fei according to the latest and therefore most reliable GFAQs guide can't learn his first Deathblow until level 5.

Good to know. I figured i didn't have access to Deathblows yet but i wasn't sure before. 

Thank you both for the advice.

[blueasian]

18 hours ago, Armagon said:

What about the other, bigger meter on the left side of the screen?

It's just another way of looking at your AP in that turn when you attack. Goes down when you use one of the attack buttons.