The planning stages for these titles had to have been characterized by bright-eyed optimism for what the team could do to bring this vision to life, painstakingly-assembled mecha models atop programmer’s desks gazing proudly upon overworked hands as they began to lay the groundwork for this ambitious vision. This is a man who spent nearly 20 years of his life making bizarre maximalist Role Playing Games in which players are navigating dungeons and fighting enemies both on-foot and in-cockpit, weighed down by the nightmarish mapping scenarios, scale issues and mechanical concerns that follow. Think back to Xenosaga, Monolith’s first major project. Of all the personal motivations one can have within their own career, this guy’s muse is human/robot cohabitation? But think back to Xenogears, Takahashi’s pre-Monolith breakout. Additionally, for every gripe and issue I’m about to raise about some of the game’s more bizarre design decisions, bear in mind that I still spent an absurd amount of time (like, over 150 hours) with this game, and enjoyed an overwhelming majority of it, simply out of respect for the game’s commitment to being exactly the game it wants to be-player expectations be damned.Īs development of the game wound down, Takahashi took to twitter to express the following: “15 years have passed since Monolith was founded, and I believe that with this game I have finally met the challenge I had within me, of creating an RPG in which humans and robots can co-exist.” Without context, this quote maybe seems a little bit ridiculous. If you take anything away from my thoughts on this title, let it be this: Xenoblade Chronicles X is, for better and for worse, a true original, and the sort of experience you really won’t find anywhere else. What Xenoblade Chronicles X has in common with its PS1 forebear, however, is that I’m not sure anybody’s ever made a game quite like this one, either. People still do not make games like Xenogears, and I’m not sure they ever did, or ever will again. I’m not sure that they ever did to begin with.” Takahashi’s latest game, Xenoblade Chronicles X, is certainly not very much like Xenogears, at least in the sense I was describing in that piece. When I wrote my piece on Tetsuya Takahashi’s beautiful 1998 disasterpiece, Xenogears, I wrote one of my most enduring thoughts about that game: “People just don’t make games like this anymore. I sincerely doubt I can finish what I’ve started without succumbing to madness. It is, literally, an ongoing battle against time. Active Time Battle is a chronicle of one man’s spirit journey to play damn near every Japanese Role Playing Game ever made.
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