Xenogears - To The City!

Video: Elly's Flashback

Last time, Fei destroyed his idyllic border village himself, and was thus shunned out of it forever.

Citan vaguely suggested perusing the Avehian cities, and we do see a city sitting enticingly in the distance. But there's a vast tract of forest between it and him.

The forest is not very welcoming. It's a dense, dimly lit thicket, with tall trees constantly dominating the view, and tall cliffs hemming in the path. As you might expect, this forest is filled with enemies, and is the second dungeon of this game.

Most of the encounters are against the same wolves and hobgoblins we encountered on Citan's mountain path, but there are a few new enemies. Also, enemies that are on a different cliff can't hurt our character without jumping over, but the same is true for him. Thankfully, jumping over doesn't consume an extra turn. It's an interesting bit of environmental interaction that seems to only show up here and in the previous dungeon.

The dungeon also introduces the concept of fixed encounters that can be manually encountered at the player's choice. This hobgoblin is boldly holding up this boulder, but unfortunately for it, Fei needs to get past it to continue progressing, so he fights it. Some hero he is, lol.

The dungeon technically also introduces environmental hazards, the rock deals damage to Fei while rolling into him in the world. Thankfully, it's not a whole lot, and as far as I know, environmental damage can't actually kill our characters, but it's a nice bit of additional flavor and detail.

A fair ways in, Fei is suddenly accosted by this strange woman in a space suit (or perhaps a pilot suit?)  threatening him with a gun! She shouts out some gibberish before telling him to drop his weapon. Mayhap she doesn't know that he's unarmed and only ever fights with his fists. And his Gear that one time, but hssh, he doesn't like talking about that!

Once she draws closer, though, it becomes clear that she herself is quite nervous. It seems like she's trying to avoid some enemy soldiers herself! When Fei turns to her, she also reveals that she's not from the surface, and that her kind call the surface dwellers "Lambs". Ah, so it's some kind of slur then. Glad to have that cleared up, lol.

Ultimately, she just threatened Fei to look for directions out of the forest. Too bad Fei is no more knowledgeable than her, having spent most of his remembered life only in his village. Welp!

Understandably, Fei isn't in the best mental state right now, and he dares her to shoot him and end his life, because he thinks he's a worthless person with nothing to live for. She's quite shocked to hear him boldly ask for his death, instead of being intimidated by her gun.

She tries backing away from the crazy man, but is herself ambushed by strange purple men, who quickly knock her out! Fei, alarmed, quickly rushes to her aid, leading to another battle!

The men are apparently forest elves, and they're a slight bit above the other creatures of this forest, being capable of hitting for more than 1 damage per hit, and possessing martial arts themselves! They're still not very tough though, and Fei deals with them without breaking a sweat.

A while later, the woman wakes up, and Fei holds a very awkward conversation with her, where he once again asks her to kill him, but with some choice taunts, lol. She remains silent until Fei very pointedly tells her that he attended to her wounds, and she should at least be grateful for that.

This makes her open up, and she reveals that she's nervous because he's a very suspicious Lamb. To which he points out that she's far more suspicious than him, being a spacesuited soldier randomly holding people at gunpoint just to get directions. Ha! Good one.

She's still very distrusting of him, understandably, but he eventually convinces her to at least help him as long as they're in the forest, so that they can protect each other better and hopefully figure out a way out faster. She reluctantly agrees, and gives her name - Elhaym, or Elly in short.

Fei reveals that he psychically already knew her name. Probably. Or maybe he's just lying to impress her, I guess. Lol. Not that I think he's romantically interested in her, mind.

That night, Fei experiences a very odd dream. He sees himself as a lonely boy stranded in a desert, crying relentlessly.

Just then, a bunch of shadowy people march right past him, without so much as taking a glance towards him.

He tries chasing behind them, but to no avail. Dejected, he drops down and starts sobbing again.

However, a mysterious kind lady, wearing a cross and looking a little like Elly, shows up and consoles him.

And then Elly woke him up. Well. That was quite the odd dream indeed. Who knows what it means? Does it pertain to anything? We'll just have to wait and watch.

Welp, there's our first party member, Elly. I'll discuss more about her once we get into combat. For now, the two head ahead, and discover a sign leading them onto the right path! Phew, looks like they got that problem sorted out quick, at least.

Elly is essentially the dedicated wizard of this game. Her physical attacks are somewhat lacking, but she starts with spells of four elements, and unlike Fei's Chi attacks, these actually do pretty solid damage, enough to be worth their mana (or, as this game puts it, ether) expenditure.



Armor grubs are a weak enemy with high defense, but low magic defense. Essentially just a reminder that tools besides your attacks exist, and you should use them. Lol. They're even nice to drop Ether Point restores after the fact!

The forest also houses some rather hawkish birds, literally called Dive Bombers. They start out battles comfortably perched out of reach, only to swoop in once other enemies are defeated. They don't deal a whole lot of damage, but are rather dodgy, often requiring chaining weak hits, or casting spells.

After a short trip, involving some very minor platforming, Elly decides to ask Fei about his weird suicidal tendencies yesterday.

This makes Fei ask her about her circumstances in turn. She's very reluctant to answer, but then Fei begins ruminating about the recent tragedy of his former village, making her recollect her own recent events.

It turns out she was the one piloting the black Gear. A group of Kislev soldiers had caught wind of her platoon however, and attacked them, destroying one of their Gears and damaging her Gear's thrusters. This forced them to make a landing at and around Fei's village, which in turn led to the tragedy of that night. Welp. Awkward.

Elly, perhaps feeling a pang of guilt, decides to shift the blame onto Fei, which comes off as more than a little harsh, considering how low he's feeling and how he was being suicidal not too long ago.

Naturally, this works out rather poorly, and Fei sinks even deeper into depression and despair.

Elly, now feeling guiltier than ever, slowly walks away from a depressed, brooding Fei crouching in the corner.

It turns out, she too had some unpleasant memories of her past, having massacred some of her fellow soldiers before! Her admonishment of Fei begins to haunt her, as it reminds herself of her own excuses she made during the event.

But before she can brood any more, this random dinosaur shows up, eager to devour her! Lol.

Fei, hearing her screams, rushes to her rescue! He successfully diverts the dinosaur's attention towards himself before it can devour her, but as you'd expect, his regular strikes are a wee bit ineffective against a beast of such might!

Fortunately, our good buddy Citan shows up with the black Gear in his crab bot! Err, sure. Let's just roll with this. Nothing like a good ol' deus ex machina to further the plot!

Fei, of course, has reservations about fighting with the Gear again, but with Elly's life in danger, he quickly overcomes them! Once in the Gear, the dinosaur proves to be a laughable opponent against him, doing very little damage and taking overwhelming damage in turn. And so, the day is saved!

Citan tries to flatter Fei by claiming that no ordinary Gear could beat that dinosaur, but he doesn't fall for it. Instead, he brings up a very pertinent point: why bring the Gear here? The doctor gives the Gear a name, Weltall, and also spouts some psuedo philosophical nonsense about how Fei needs strength to defend himself, and how gaining power can be a good thing. Suuure. Not sure how that justifies bringing a freaking Gear to the forest, but you do you. Lol.

Once Elly comes to her senses, Citan informs her that Fei rescued her and that they're straight up going to jack her Gear for themselves. Lol. Alright. Citan then suggests camping for the day, and the scene ends!

Well, looks like we're slowly gathering our RPG party here. So, what will come next? Will Fei finally reach the city in the distance? Will Elly stick around? Is Citan up to any other business? And, perhaps most importantly, will there be any shenanigans with the Gear Weltall? Find out all this and more next time!