Characters of Xenogears - Reception

Reception

The characters of Xenogears have been well received, the lead protagonist Fei in particular, who has been called videogames' "most complicated Freudian hero." The staff of Edge felt that Fei's deep backstory and character in general was "a far cry from the simplistic two-dimensional leads of Square’s Super Nintendo RPGs of just a few years earlier." Edge also pointed out the NPCs present during the beginning scenes and how they bring depth to the scenario. "As a player, you feel awkward and ashamed in the presence of these NPCs, a guilty confusion and helplessness which perfectly mirrors that felt by your character and justifies his immediate exile", the staff wrote. IGN praised both the characters themselves and their designs. In a review for the game at Pulpfilm.com, attention is paid to the secondary characters, who, as the reviewer explains, have "profoundly interesting backstories", but are never adequately resolved by the end of the game, which other reviews also note. An article from Electronic Gaming Monthly titled WTFiction!? listed Xenogears as one of the "wackiest game plotlines ever." Jeremey Parish went on to write that many characters in the game only made the plot more confusing, including Chu-Chu and Grahf.

The in-game character sprites have met less praise. A Gamespot reviewer stated that the "game's character sprites are poorly animated and suffer from terrible pixelation, no doubt due to the PlayStation's limited RAM." Other critics disagree, arguing that the characters are more realistic than the characters from Final Fantasy VII. In a preview of the game, IGN compared the character sprites to those of Parasite Eve, saying that "the game's designers have opted for a more traditional, anime-style look. But this doesn't mean the pint-size characters or low-detail environments of RPGs gone by."