Xenogears/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Anticlimax Boss: The sequentially final boss, Miang, or what's left of her, is pathetically easy.
  • Better Than Canon: Due to a translation error, the game implies that Yui defeated Citan in a sword duel, and they fell in love when he was recovering from the fight. This isn't true, according to Perfect Works, but a lot of fans want it to be true.
  • Canon Sue: Citan. Fortunately, this doesn't damage the game much.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Miang is literally part of Deus, thereby making her an extension of it, and she has full knowledge of what she was doing. With that said...
    • She destroyed a civilian ship and any who tried to escape in an attempt to reach Earth, then created the Gazel Ministry and manipulated all of them to commit atrocities in order to rebuild Deus, after which they were killed by Krelian (who was also under more or less under her control).
    • Miang intentionally caused the near extinction of the entire humanoid race of Xenogears MULTIPLE times, without even a single shred of pity or remorse.
    • She was either a direct cause (in the case of Kim/Elly and Fei/Elly) or a willing indirect cause (in the case of Abel/Elly, Lacan/Sophia) of practically everything bad that has happened to Fei, Elly, and their previous incarnations.
    • In regards to inflicting misery on Fei, she was an ESPECIALLY prominent cause: Miang possessed his own mother and performed experiments on Fei that were apparently gruesome enough for him to beg to his father to stop Karen from doing them. On top of that, she directed Grahf to his home, who then attempted assimilate Fei, but failed that and assimilated Kahn instead (and it's possible she even ordered Grahf to do the former, but in any case she sat completely impassively as they fought and Fei was traumatized by it enough for his powers to emerge).
      • Just HOW bad was all this for Fei? Apart from being the direct cause of Id's creation (which led to even more suffering), when Fei showed him the truth of his mother regaining control from Miang and sacrificing herself, Id couldn't even believe that it was Karen who saved him (at first).
    • Miang had all of Elly's previous incarnations killed off, and personally killed the present Elly's father as the Executioner. But nope, that wasn't enough! Elly just so happened to have the Urobolus Ring in her, which was one of Miang's necessary components to bring back Deus. So she possesses Elly (It is debatable whether this was by chance, because Elly happened to be the closest female to the site of her death, or whether Miang actually selected Elly because Krelian may have told her about his findings) and what's the first thing she does? After Fei releases Elly from her bonds (still under the impression that it's Elly), Miang picks that very moment to pull out Billy's gun out of his holder and shoot Fei in the stomach with it. Then for good measure, she tells off Ramsus, crushing his psyche completely. As if this wasn't bad enough, she then enters Deus and forces Fei to consider the possibility of losing Elly forever.
    • These are just a few examples of people who were quite negatively affected by her, on purpose, with full knowledge. All Miang cares about is bringing Deus back; the rest of the world could burn for all she cares as long as her goal is accomplished.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: It has its own page.
  • Disappointing Last Level: The legendary/infamous second disc.
  • Ear Worm: It's probably a good thing that the Yggdrasil theme is so catchy because boy are you going to be hearing it a lot over the course of the game.
  • Ending Fatigue: After the player loses control during the second half of the game.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Miang is it ever.
  • Fanon: The strategy guide gives Esmeralda's the surname "Kasim" after her "father", Kim Kasim. Official materials don't usually follow suit. Fan materials, however, frequently do. Probably because the other official materials aren't available outside of Japan.
  • Fan Yay: Rico, probably more than any other Xenogears character. The muscles, big bare chest and masculine nipples didn't hurt
  • Faux Symbolism:
    • In a game that arguably handles many of its symbolical and mythological themes quite well at times, a lot of the towns are named after months in the Jewish calendar for no adequately explained reason.
    • Most jarringly, if ironically easy to miss, the Ethos is structured like and has symbols similar to those of Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, with confessionals, cross-like shapes, and bishops. In its theology, however, it is completely lacking a historical Messiah figure and due to that has more in common with Judaism or Islam, doctrinally speaking, than with Christianity, meaning all those crosses, habit-wearing nuns, cassock-wearing priests, and hierarchical/practical similarities to the world's largest Christian church are misplaced, sometimes severely. The most blatant of these loosely-Christian references is a scene with three crosses on a hill with a name very similar to "Golgotha", the Hebrew name for the hill where Jesus was crucified; but even the most Messiah-like figure in the game (from a Gnostic-type religion, not from Ethos) didn't die by Crucifixion or anything remotely like it.
    • Also, the scene where a giant, fluffy, pink mouse is crucified. No, seriously.
  • Fetish Retardant:
    • All of the pixellated nudity—even if the character designs make you think you'd want to see it, it's really not exciting. At all.
    • The implied Chu-Chu orgy in Shevat qualifies too, though that one takes Fan Disservice to horrifying levels.
  • Game Breaker: For much of the first disc, Vierge + Ether Doubler + Power Magic = one shotting bosses with Aerods. Ether Doubler does exactly what it sounds like: doubles the power of any Ether attack, at the expense of also doubling the EP cost. What makes this combo truly broken is that Aerods don't have an EP cost; they're powered by Fuel. Thus, they get massively buffed by Ether Doubler for free. A bit later, you get the Power Crisis which causes the user to deal more damage at lower HP - except it's a bit too effective, losing even a few HP makes the user the most powerful attacker in the game and at low HP you can kill a gear sized enemy on foot.
    • The Holy Pendant doubles the duration of in-battle effects on the equipped character. Possibly due to a programming oversight, this bonus also extends to Gear combat, which means that the equipped character can spend up to six turns in Hyper Mode. Miss your chance to buy one? Never fear! You get one for free when Billy joins you.
    • More generally: Citan is obscenely powerful, due to his high HP and the highest Agility stat in the game. The Power Crisis accessory is obscenely powerful, due to increasing the equipped character's attack power by huge margins as their HP gets lower. Equip Citan with Power Crisis, let him get hurt, and you have an unstoppable death machine on your hands.
  • Ho Yay: Bart has a couple of scenes with Billy that come off as this.
  • Iron Woobie: You'd never know how much childhood trauma Bart went through if Margie didn't tell you.
  • Les Yay:
    • The Elements. In particular, Tolone and Seraphita are never seen outside each other's company.
    • Miang admiring Elly's beautiful eyes before hypnotizing her has been noticed by the fandom.
  • Mary Sue: The amount of intricate planning that seems nigh-impossible to fully flesh out, plus the fact that he never loses and in fact gets exactly what he wants in the end, despite every horrible thing he took place in AND just gets forgiven by Fei and Elly in the end, Krelian can honestly come off as very much like a Mary Sue.
  • Magnificent Bastard:
  • Memetic Badass: Grahf, who could solo the Xeno multiverse. On foot armed only with a sash.
  • Memetic Molester: While Miang's experiments as Karen are stated in the story to be for the purpose of finding the Contact, one can't help but wonder whether some of the probing she did to Fei as a child was really necessary...
    • And on top of that, she comments on how "handsome" Fei is when he participates in the martial arts tournament, knowing that he's that same child who grew up.
    • Let's not forget Elly! Miang saves her from Dominia's wrath, only to get alone in a room with the Gebler-officer-turned-traitor and... admire Elly's eyes before hypnotizing her. We know about Miang's "arrangement's" to sabotage the Yggdrasil's engines using Elly, but were those the only ones?
  • Memetic Mutation: "Chu-Chu dies for your sins!"
    • "Master, Sir, did you just see my MAD SKILLZ?!"
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The input of commands in battle.
    • The sound of EXP being added up at the end of battle.
    • Half of the game's in battle sound effects.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Most of the protagonist's Gears attack by punching and kicking their enemies. In Real Life (besides the impracticality of Humongous Mecha in the first place), imagine a semi truck slamming into you. Now imagine that truck as a thin iron bar coming after you and going to IMPALE you. Compare that to a Gear's fist and big toe, respectively.
  • Nausea Fuel: The entire food processing plant.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Several, but the most notable comes in Shevat. Maria learns that her father is all but dead and is confronting the fact that she will have to fight his last creation, which speaks with his voice, when who shows up? Yep, Chu-Chu, the Hello Kitty reject, to inflate to gear size and engage a scripted battle that is impossible to lose, managing to provide neither challenging gameplay nor story development. Basically, Ewoks built a battleship out of twigs and fought the death star for five minutes, almost winning then inevitably failing, just for lulz.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Dan.
    • Chu-Chu.
    • Hammer is a more controversial case. Is he endearing or annoying? Are his MAD SKILLZ Narm or Narm Charm? Is he a Byronic Hero or a Complete Monster? Is he a cold-blooded murderer or was he not responsible for his actions? Hammer is intentionally written as sympathetic character who is loved and morally exonerated in the eyes of Elly and Rico. Audience reaction to Hammer, however, varies wildly; the audience may love him throughout, or start hating him after his betrayal (and then, may or may not forgive him after his demise), or they may have hated him from the get go.
    • Krelian himself has to be the most hotly debated character even to this day. The man was personally responsible for countless numbers of people suffering and dying and was directly responsible to most, if not all the events of the game. Many people will often call BS on how Fei and Elly so easily forgive him in the end.
  • Stoic Woobie: Rico, though he became more of a conventional Woobie when losing Hammer undid his stoic façade. Rico was still tough, but never quite as stoic after that.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: "Omen" is one of these to "Lower Brinstar" from Super Metroid.
  • Tear Jerker: Many scenes qualify.
    • There's the one where Fei flashes back to all the times Elly sacrificed herself for him in their previous lives.
    • Another moment is when Fei and Elly crash in the woods and Fei does not think Elly will survive her injuries.
  • Technical Pacifist: Citan refuses to use his sword... until he takes it up again.
    • More a Reluctant Warrior, really. He points out to Fei that he swore never to use his sword but that times have grown so desperate that having the moral high ground doesn't mean much anymore.
  • That One Boss: Redrum! Instant kills (that heal him!), area wide damage (that also heals him!), a ton of negative status ailments, and the highest HP of any boss fought up to this point by far.
    • Miang and Opiomorph if you don't know what you're doing.
    • Id in Zeboim certainly qualifies. He attacks multiple times in one turn and is so strong he can kill most party members in one or two attacks. He also likes to dodge your Deathblows.
  • That One Level: The Tower of Babel—this one takes some explanation.. are you sitting comfortably? Good, let's begin:
    • The Tower of Babel is entirely made up of long jumping puzzle segments, and is entirely vertical: if you fall, you end up falling all the way to the bottom. The platforming controls, on a good day, are abysmal and unresponsive. Strike one.
    • When a random battle is triggered in Xenogears, things happen in sort of a strange order: instead of going to a loading screen, or hiding loading using the battle transition, the game begins loading (you can hear the Playstation spinning up) but it's a few seconds before the battle actually starts. During this time you can move around as normal on the world screen. During this "loading time", although you can move around, you can't jump, so you end up walking off the ends of platforms. The Tower of Babel has a pretty high monster encounter rate and lots of ends of platforms. Strike two.
    • The camera only has a few angles you can look at it from. Not every platform in the Tower of Babil is aligned with these camera angles, making it extremely difficult to line up the jumps you can make. Strike three, and you're Scrappy.
    • As a final insult, you spend the entire level in your Gears, which have the ability to fly. After finishing the jumping portion of the dungeon, you see a short cutscene which is introduced by the Gears flying a few hundred feet to get to the final area of the tower.
      • The Rope of Robots thumbnail theatre is really not exaggerating the reactions people have to this damn level.Some of these quotes (scroll down, you'll know it when you see it) were uttered by this troper and their friends over the course of the hideously long climb. It's really that bad. (ASS ASS ASS AAAAAAAAAASS)
    • The Tower of Babel doesn't even approach the Absurdly Spacious Sewer beneath Kislev, though. The hunt for Redrum is one of the longest, most annoying parts of the game. And he's That One Boss.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Krelian was clearly supposed to be seen in a sympathetic light at the end, and both Fei and Elly are shown to forgive him for his sins, going so far as to beseech him to return so he can atone. However, the fact that he had turned traitor to join Solaris, ruled the world from the shadows for 500 years, conducted all manner of gruesome experiments on people during that time, was willing to commit genocide on the entire human race, wiped out 90% of the population, and frequently mocked those he wronged, all because he lost the woman he loved, does not afford him much love from many fans.
  • The Untwist: Elly's a reincarnation of Sophia. Totally didn't see that one coming. Why she's a reincarnation of Sophia can throw people for a loop though.
  • Wangst: More than you can imagine.
  • The Woobie: Billy, Maria, Hammer.
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