Gearing Up For Action

While Xenogears won't be hitting Japanese shelves until next spring, gamers are able to get an early glimpse of the game via a playable demo on Volume One of SCEI's two holiday demo discs. The disc, released on November 13, has the demo, but unfortunately it is without animated cutscenes and CG battle modes (but those will be in the final game).

As for how Xenogears looks, well, to be honest, the graphics take some getting used to. While zoomed in, the characters looked pretty pixelated. Not that that's bad, it actually looks at lot like Final Fantasy Tactics or Vandal Hearts in that there are sprite-based characters on a 3D landscape.

You can control the viewpoint with the L and R buttons, with a full 360 degrees of movement. When going up stairs or through doors, the current floor or scene zooms in and fades while the other one comes into view.

The most impressive thing about the Xenogears demo is checking out how the battle system works. It's all done in real time, and if you remember in FF3 doing Street Fighter motions on the control pad, this is going to be familiar. While attacking, you can customize which attack you use by pressing attack buttons. The square and triangle buttons attack, and the circle button activates special (more devastating) moves.

Some of the game's elements will remind you more of an action RPG. In the demo, at one point you have to jump across a chasm to the other side to progress. The control is easy enough to learn, and it's nice to have a jump button in an RPG; instead of going around chairs or beds you can just jump over them.

Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will bring Xenogears to the US. It looks promising at this point in its development, and once Square adds the finishing touches, it should be even better.

Check out these screenshots and we'll keep you updated as the title gets closer to release.