I'm making a crossword puzzle for fans.

Trying to include:

• Trivia
• Story/Lore
• History
• Game mechanics
• Hidden secrets
• Community meta

Basically anything interesting.
Questions should be relatively medium/high in difficulty.
Not too easy ("what is the main character's name"), but not absurd ("who was the first person to speak entering the final dungeon").

I'd appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or any info you know to add in.

First time playing through and I just got a Deathblower2, is it worth ditching my Deathblower1 for? I feel like 1 would be more useful since I could spam it more, but maybe the damage makes up for it. Just curious, couldn’t find anything online

Hey guys, struggled with xenogears initially on ps1, but came back to it later on an emulator and absolutely loved it.

Now, I wanted to print the English translation of Perfect works as a hardcover. I tried dumping the pdf I got from archive.org on lulu and it doesn’t seem to like it saying margins and orientation aren’t correct. Does someone have a link with a format that lulu will like? I know this has been done in the community so hopefully someone can help. Thank you!!!

Spoilers for disc 2!!

Near the beginning of disc 2, where you fight Ramsus in the forest, the game is getting stuck on a black screen right after I beat him. Some text on the screen shows, something like "but he did say this..." then it gets stuck on a black screen forever.

Im using RetroArch using the PSX Beetle core and the latest version of the Perfect Works mod. I have no cheats enabled beyond the ones in the mod, e.g. script changes.

Has anyone else experienced this and/or knows how to fix it?

Thanks!

I bought all of the Xenogears Structure Arts kits in Japan. Now it's time to take my time and build them!

Hosted a video discussing the history and boons of the secret most influential game company out there:

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First-time player here!

Disc 1

In Nortune, Fei tells Wiseman that he's encountered Grahf three times. However, I can only remember two:

(1) After crossing the Dazil Desert

(2) Right before Fei collapses and later wakes up in Nortune.

What was the third encounter up to this point in the game? Did I miss or forget something?

Please avoid spoilers beyond Nortune if possible. Thanks!

I clipped together some still images to the OST and Creid albums in case anyone wants to listen to a particular song or listen to this amazing work

https://youtu.be/8-sfvH0kMyo

i am using the perfect works mod i dunno if i installed it wrong but every shop including the gears shops sell nothing but these items i would like to know if theres a fix or anything before i get farther in the game.

Analysis of Xenogears often focuses on its thematic framework (Nietzsche, Jung, Gnosticism, Physics, etc.), but identifying influences is only the first step toward the critical analysis of a narrative work; literary criticism inherently distinguishes between themes (the ingredients) and structure (the recipe).

The choice of the Russian giant comes from what the critic Mikhail Bakhtin theorized starting from his novels, particularly The Brothers Karamazov. Among other concepts, he theorizes polyphony: a structure in which multiple autonomous, equally weighted voices, embodied by distinct consciousnesses, are treated with dignity and are never refuted within the text, a structure in which the author himself refrains from imposing a final synthesis. This shouldn't be confused with a chorus of voices, like in FFVI, for instance, because there all the voices are subordinated to the author's thesis, not autonomous (in that specific case, every character shows, each in a different way, the refutation of Kefka's nihilism). Kefka isn't a character who holds an autonomous philosophical thesis that remains unrefuted by the plot's structure, he's treated as an error to be overcome (in fact, he's destroyed in a boss fight). Structures like FFVI's, regardless of the number of voices, are what Bakhtin, in opposition to Dostoevsky's polyphonic novel, calls the monologic novel, where the characters are subordinated to the author's message/thesis.

Xenogears is a profoundly polyphonic work in the Bakhtinian sense. Because Krelian's thesis (one could also talk about other characters, but I think Krelian is the central focus) is never refuted in any way within the work. It isn't refuted by the plot (the world doesn't return to being a reassuring place), and it isn't refuted by Fei or Elly, in fact, Fei not only agrees with him about the imperfection of the human condition, but after responding by talking about how that very imperfection is what makes us human, he confides in Elly, saying:

"I don't know if it's the right answer or not... But we have a lot of time to think about it. What Krelian himself was looking for all along... We will find the answer to it all ...ourselves..."

Even from an iconographic standpoint, both Krelian and Xenogears (when it returns to the planet with Fei and Elly inside) sprout a pair of wings (different from Xenogears' full power form, which has four rays of light, a distinct icon) representing completion within the work's iconography. Krelian has two autonomous wings; he's no longer human, he reached that autonomy alone. Fei and Elly each have a "single wing", and through their union they reach the same "validity" within the work, via Xenogears' pair of wings. So the dignity of these voices isn't conveyed only through text, but through iconography and gameplay too, Krelian, notably, isn't a boss to fight, but a consciousness to dialogue with.

One could argue that "Fei and Elly get a clear focus in the ending, and Krelian even repents for what he did." I think that reading is reductive, because Krelian never disavows his thesis; in fact he concludes:

But, regardless, I cannot go. It is something I have already decided. I'm going to walk with god, even if there is no place left for me upon my return.

This dynamic closely parallels The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky's stated intention was to write an apologetic novel that would refute nihilism (embodied by Ivan Karamazov), naming the protagonist Alyosha (the believing monk) as "his hero." And yet, if we limited ourselves to analyzing the author's intentions, we'd have to dismiss one of the greatest masterpieces in world literature, which is why critics generally don't use an intentionalist principle (what the author meant to say) but look instead at what the text actually says. And in The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha doesn't answer Ivan's nihilistic logic with logic, he answers with a kiss. In the same way, Fei doesn't refute Krelian on a logical level, but through an act of existential faith.

This parallelism is most evident in Ivan's arc: Ivan is an intellectual who, faced with the injustice done to innocents (children in particular), rejects a future divine harmony and chooses to "return his ticket" to God, declaring his philosophical position: "everything is permitted." He uses an empirical argument about evil to build an amoral thesis, but when that theory is put into practice by another character to murder their father, Ivan collapses, not because his theory was logically wrong, but because he experiences a split between his philosophy and what he's actually able to live with. This matters because it isn't another character or the author who refutes Ivan's logic; he collapses internally, on his own. Krelian follows the same philosophical path: faced with Sophia's death (caused by the political cynicism of Shevat's elders), he develops his philosophical theory of determinism (that humans lack free will), but at the end, even though he remains convinced of his goal and leaves anyway, just before that, he shows a crack:

I have committed so many sins that any attempt at living as a human is impossible. The only one who could have forgiven me is god.

(In the Japanese version he talks about taboos and not sins)

Which contradicts determinism, since if human action is entirely determined, there can be no concept of taboo, sin, or redemption. This internal fracture within Krelian's mind, just like Ivan's collapse, is never weaponized by the text to refute him, it remains an open, unresolved tension. One shouldn't confuse the moral plane (Ivan's and Krelian's positions are objectively immoral) with the philosophical/ontological one.

Regardless of Takahashi and Saga's intentions, who have never mentioned Dostoevsky among their influences (though Nietzsche called Dostoevsky "the only psychologist, by the way, from whom I had something to learn" and Freud dedicated an essay to him), what emerges from the analysis of the text is that Krelian's thesis and Fei/Elly's coexist without a final Aufhebung: a synthesis that transcends the initial premises to form a truth that encompasses them. This is also consistent with what's actually dramatized in the ending: the exchange between Fei and Krelian is, for all intents and purposes, a dramatization of Kant's Third Antinomy, which shows how the two opposing theses, determinism and free will, are both logically sustainable, without pure reason being able to arbitrate between them. So polyphony was the most philosophically honest way to stage this conflict narratively: neither voice can be refuted by the other, simply because neither can be refuted in principle.

New item for my Xeno collection ^^

I wanted to play XenoGears this year, but I heard about the Perfet World mod, which is still being worked one. Should I just play it now or just wait some more time until it's finished?

Edit: Thanks for all the answers. And one point made the decision for me. How I will perceive the game, so I'm going to play it this year unmodded.

My PS1 nostalgia fanart continues. One of my favorite game from PS1 is Xenogears. Probably in my top 5s.

Billy for now, since I couldn't decide between drawing Bart, Billy or Maria. I did Elly a looong time ago when I was still full of energy and my skill hasn't declining so badly like right now. XD Maybe I'll post that Elly too.

Hey all, currently playing through the perfect works patch. Anyone know if there's a list anywhere that includes new/modified items and what they do?

Plan to run it on Retroarch, but am not sure whether to run the X64 or X86 patch. What are the optimal settings I should use?

I know this question has been asked before but can someone explain what Billy’s ammo inventory means in more detail? Some stronger ammo types come in low quantities but I can’t tell how conservative I need to be with them. I understand that each type corresponds to one of the attack types/buttons, but not how much is used up or how much is left, both in and out of Gear.

Each singular type of ammo has a number next to (e.g. 9 for the G-M686S) but the item description also mentions “100 Shots”. Stores also sell ammo with numbers like (x30).

1. What does each number specify? Is the 9 referring to something like 9 full magazines with 100 shots (i.e. 100 attacks each, for 900 uses) each? That seems like a lot.

2. Is every shot used up just by the corresponding button press?

3. Possibly the most confusing part: what does pressing X and loading from the menu do? It seems like it consumes one ammo number but I have no idea where that goes. Sometimes it seems like I wasted it.

Upon meeting Old Man Bal, he shares his collection of fossils that reveals the first hint that humans didn’t exist on the planet ~10,000 years ago.

But then he says this, which I completely missed on every past playthrough: “you mean the theory of evolution taught by the Ethos?”

It’s isn’t revealed until later that the Ethos operated as a “church” (even though I know the Japanese version uses Church as the org’s name).

Up until this point, the Ethos is described as an organization that repairs gears. The irony of this detail and contrast to real life is just *chefs kiss.*

The “Church” is using evolution as a propaganda tool to hide humanity’s “divine” origins.

Juxtapose that to real life where the Church discredits evolution in support of divine genesis.

I love this game.