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From Xenogears to Xenoblade: The history of Monolith Soft

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  1. Akir
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    Given Xenoblade Chronicles X, I think it's safe to say they still aren't too worried about finishing their games. :P I don't think it's really fair to call their games unpolished, though; their...

    It’s an old joke at this point, but for years that was Monolith Soft’s reputation: a studio that put out bold, but often unpolished and incomplete games.

    Given Xenoblade Chronicles X, I think it's safe to say they still aren't too worried about finishing their games. :P

    I don't think it's really fair to call their games unpolished, though; their PS2 games were visually impressive for the time, and I don't think anyone else at the time had cutscenes nearly as memorable and well-executed.

    Xenogears remains one of my favorite games to this day; it's got such an incredibly intricate and involved world, and the world you see in the game is just a small part of a much-larger cannon. It would have been interesting if it got the full cross-media campaign that they envisioned. Xenosaga actually did manage to make it, but it felt so watered down and slow compared to all the rich detail of Gears.

    That slowness seems to have really followed Monolith to this day; there's a kind of meandering feeling to their Xenoblade series - like you're just wandering everywhere and things just kind of happen to you. And that's perhaps why I'm so uninterested in their newer works.

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