Xenogears

The brains behind the Mechwarrior franchise officially did the "Giant Lumbering Robot" genre to death. The Heavy Gear people, not waiting for the corpse to cool, jumped onto the bandwagon with considerable alacrity, and in a flurry of mixed metaphors proceeded to pound the dead horse further into the ground than I had previously imagined possible. Thus you can imagine how I cringed when I saw that SquareSoft's next title seemed to revolve around massive Voltron clones. Luckily, Xenogears is not one of those games.

"...virtually everything about Xenogears is done well... graphics, however, are a mixed bag... The combat system is an unusual and cool take on the standard RPG... constant random battling that Xenogears throws at you gets tiring after a while..."

"...summed up in one word - slow... a fresh mix of 2D and 3D worlds... Fantastic cutscenes... music definitely a plus... a novel and fun combat system... The game’s translation is pretty good..."

"...almost exhausting length... frequent interludes of conversation and plot development... combat engine more than makes up for the game’s sedate pace... Frequent CD-ROM accessing and delays..."

"...a lot like a mystery for the player to follow and solve... combo system is, by far, one of the most innovative features... a beautiful mix of 16- and 32-bit worlds... rotating camera that sometimes makes viewing an area limited and slightly clumsy in tight spaces..."