Golden Time

Let's have a history lesson.

Shown out-of-order, every other week

When I was in high-school I would go to the local "youth center" after class to wait for my Mom to get off work and drive me home. They had a PS2 there and the game Xenogears was one of the 4 or 5 available to play. I have no idea why it was there. Probably not appropriate for 75% of the kids who went to the youth center. I know this because there is a naked lady in the intro movie. I watched that intro movie quite a few times. It made the game very intriguing, and the anime robot stuff was some of the little anime robot stuff I had access to that wasn't either A: in german or B: DragonballZ or Pokemon. I knew there was a whole community of video-game nerds out there but living in a foreign land around an Army base very much limited my access to it. It's still hard to believe that I know other people who have played XG and love it as much as I do.

DARN YOU TEXT WALLLS!!!!

So, I would play Xenogears, hoping for more naked ladies, while waiting for my ride. The thing is, this "youth center" did not have the memory cards required to save your game on ANY of the systems available (GameCube, PS2, etc.). Therefore, I could only play about four hours into the game before I would have to leave and it would reset back to the beginning. Let me tell you, I got really good at burning through the first part of this game. I formed some major nostalgia-inducing memories there. But while Lahan and the forest are nice, these were the parts I played to death. I could get just about this far, maybe a little further if conditions were good. I learned everything I could. I got bored.

Now imagine the glorious, radiant day when I'd had enough. NO MORE, I said to myself. I went to the "Power Zone" (the Army's answer to electronics shopping) and I bought a PS2 memory card of my very own. I marched right up to that "youth center" and BLAZED through Lahan and Blackmoon Forest and finally, Finally! saw the land beyond the desert. And it was good.

This is Golden Time.

We come into Dazil and it is kind of barren. There isn't the wealth of secrets and activities that Lahan had, and it isn't explorable like the forest. It's a tiny base of operations for the Real Work which needs doing just outside of town. Leveling Up!

Soon you'll all be MINE! BWA HA HA!

You've now got Fei and Citan together. This is your dream team for right now. Citan is fast, he's a tank with 2x Fei's HP, and he is just as strong at 3/4 of Fei's level. Not that Fei is doing too shabby either. At this point you ought to have learned at least one Deathblow. I confess to be patient zero of the Deathblow Fever. A big part of successful speed runs in XG is learning these ASAP, so I developed a Pavlovian response to gaining deathblows and unleashing them upon every enemy who held me back from playing further.

I have no clue (and I don't want to know) how the algorithm for learning them works. It's based on the number and order of basic "normal" attacks you do and that's all I understand. I often get into a random battle, mash buttons, then quickly check Fei's status after to see if what I did got him any closer to the next DB. It's a nasty habit. I can stop whenever I want.

So, you do stuff in the desert and you meet this guy Grahf, who is totally mysterious, and get captured by the Aveh Army, and then some pirates attack and you fall down a hole with BART. Ugh, Bart.

I can't decide about Bart. He is an essential part of my Golden Time but after that he just kinda becomes... extraneous. A lot of characters in this game become extraneous. Just like in Final Fantasy 9, characters are introduced, they have their individual part and then they just kinda get lumped into "the team". The SAVING THE WORLD team.  Freya was my most favorite in FF9, but after you leave Cleyra... *bloop*. Nobody cares. That's all the story you get. Thing is, these characters are actually well defined and have clear desires, personalities and quirks, but they have to be available to be used interchangeably story-wise, based on the which ones the Player wants in the active party. As a result, their actions are meaningless and their dialog becomes oatmeal. Spiced with their own flair, sure. But in content, just flavorless mush.

It is particularly bad in Bart's case because he stands out so well right now. I am overjoyed to have a new guy to play as. He uses whips instead of fists, he has new deathblows to learn, he has fancy red styles, and drives a sand-marine. He's even got a stronger ATK stat than Fei right now. But unfortunately it doesn't last. Everybody else continues to advance and make huge jumps in fighting power but Bart stays kinda the same. Even his mega-ultra-super-robot power up from Disc 2 is only used in one fight and isn't all that impressive damage-wise compared to everybody else at the time. I never use Bart in my late-game party unless I have to. Which is sad. It's sad for Bart who gets left behind.

 Right now though, it is Golden Time. We have to help Bart infiltrate the capital and rescue his cousin (who is also his fiancee!)