Some enemies are canids. A large portion of the world is destroyed, which presumably kills some of the dog npcs that were around in the game prior to that point. That is offscreen however.
A relationship (which is romantic as they are shown to have been sleeping together) between two antagonists is later revealed to include a large amount of emotional abuse, other abuse implied.
Ignore the other commenter. Everything else is standard anime slapstick and standard enemy-to-lovers drama.
Heavily pixxelated due to the sprite art style of the game, but present sporadically. The final FMV has characters standing and moving while naked, albeit censored via objects or rays of light.
You can have male characters wear a wedding dress but there are no jokes about it, because it's just an equippable item. It also doesn't even show visually, none of the equipment does.
Only if you make the (pointless, and only necessary for 100 percent completion) choice to have your party kill the dragons on Duneman Isle. Or to engage on-foot dragon mobs in Zeboim rather than run away.
Technically the aforementioned Rankar fights in Weltall but those are dinosaurs, not dragons...
Many characters in this game are mentally ill, both protagonists and antagonists. All of which are in a war and do violence as a part of it. But in particular the protagonist canonically has DID and one of his alters is omnicidal and prone to extreme force at the slightest provocation, and one (tragic sympathetic, later partially redeemed) villain has 'unstable moods' and was likely meant to portray BPD or bipolar.
All over the place, your party has a majority of characters who were abandoned by one or both their parents as children due to different circumstances.
Of the "government forces its soldiers to be drugged on the battlefield" variety. As a plot point however it is dropped rather quickly and the drugs in question show up near the end of the game as stat boosters sold in a shop.
Most of the game is not voiced so there aren't really any opportunities to have mouth noises. I can't remember if the enemies make any or not though, I'll have to check on it next time.
Some protagonists fall into a cavern under the desert and survive. Later a ship is sunk into the sand and for a portion of the game there is doubt anyone on board survived (including some main characters). There is also a city that was buried alive in the past that you visit.
This is difficult to describe with a yes/no answer. I went with no because there are no direct antisemitic references/slurs BUT the next to final boss is the Abrahamic God AND there's a stereotypical desert setting and lots of cultural appropriation from Judaism, Islam, and Christianity if necessary to an extent to describe a universe 10,000 years from now where all of that has been passed down via a game of "telephone." It depends on your take, too, as the game is heavily favorable toward Kabbalist and Gnostic mystical interpretations.
Fei in quite a few places (exertion from intense battle scenes for the most part expressed in the dialogue). The Ethos priest as he dies when you arrive at the massacre scene.
If Alice at the beginning of the game was indeed a shotgun wedding yes.
There were probably pregnant women in all of the game's many apocalypses, so offscreen, lots probably...
Several characters, both NPCs and party characters express discomfort or disconnect with their bodies, some of which do so because they were physically altered by medical experiments, and the main character does so because of dissociation.
Someone in the nurse's room at the Yggdrasil has a sling on his arm, but he is faking his injury to avoid battle.
Lots of people probably do, but most of this is offscreen or shielded by the graphics of the era - although it's pretty obvious from the dialogue and the wounds taken in certain scenes that they include broken bones (Fei and Elly after being shot down by Ramsus at the beginning of Disc 2, Elly after the fight you cannot control her in as the player with Mugwort and Rattan where it's mentioned almost gleefully by one of them in their dialogue...)
There are enemies with bones in their styling and attacks that refer to breaking bones.
There are many electrical/electrical themed attacks due to the nature of battle in mecha, and sparking things and the like. Unfortunately, it's not therapeutic for anyone.
Characters are frequently in cramped situations, and there is a part of the game where you can get a 'game over'(you are returned to before the incident with no true penalty) if you get trapped in the timed sequence where the ship you are on is sinking into the sand.
I don't think anyone has cancer. Rico's mother, possibly, but I don't remember seeing cancer mentioned directly.
That said "genetic damage" with people of lifespans of 30 in Zeboim was mentioned plus there's lots of radioactivity in the planet so...?
Myyah/Miang's final form, the Urobolos, is a snake woman machine thing. Her Gear, Opiomorph, is also snake-themed.
Some of the names of Bart's whips reference snakes or snakebites. A large portion of the early game also takes place in a desert, and a snakeworm like creature is one of the enemies.
I think there was at least one scene where someone spat on someone else, but I wasn't looking for farting or spitting as triggers. I will next time?
There's also a joke about laxatives/weight loss when you arrive in Nisan (the Special Herb Tea that makes your party reduce weight), and there's the part when Bart is talking to the Captain of the Thames that's either about his missiles, a sex joke, or a poop joke.
You also can examine toilets/bathrooms for some... interesting reactions and someone hands you a book they used as toilet paper.
A space vessel, two entire floating cities.
Ramsus is implied to but somehow survives it. Fei and Elly almost do after being shot down (although the injuries are from the fight as well as the impact).
The protagonist is stalked throughout the game. In addition, there are governmental figures who are conducting surveillance on the party throughout the game.
The protagonist Fei was abused as a child (experimentation, possibly rape) while his father ignored his pleas for help, and that is why he developed his (stereotypically and badly written) dissociative identity disorder. His alter was used as a teenage assassin as well. This is an important part of the plot, and while the graphics limited and offscreened his flashbacks to a degree, it's a horrific story.
Bart's actual father was killed, and he was locked in a dungeon and whipped as a child, although this is implied in dialogue and not shown.
Elly as a teenager was forced into a Drive experiment that led to her losing control of herself and killing others.
Sigurd was kidnapped from his family at nine and used in drug and other experiments until his early teens, when he was selected for an elite military unit.
Billy was likely sexually abused by Bishop Stone, and there's references to the priesthood of the Ethos recruiting young priest candidates for the exact reason of abusing them.
Primera was traumatized into PTSD and mutism.
Rico was shunned by other children for his demihuman appearance.
Quite a few characters are recruited into being child/teen soldiers or otherwise fighting war or being caught up in war.
Multiple times a fantasy drug that enhances what passes for magic and alters behavior heavily is used. Its fairly important to the plot. There are instances where the drug is forced upon someone, both in flashbacks and spoken of. It is essentially fantasy meth.
Alcohol and tobacco use is also casually shown.
Several characters are outright stated to be addicted to alcohol or drugs or use them so often it is implicit that they are. A few of these are important characters.
One was forcibly made to be dependent on a drug and is recovering now.
Almost every town includes a bar with drunk people in it. Alcohol use and abuse is often used as a joke by npcs. Some important characters are extremely heavy drinkers.
Mostly offscreen, but see above - in a story where cities being annihilated and the end of the world (repeatedly) are major plots, if you think about it, this has been bound to have happened.
...I think this and Sigurd living are possibly the only good purity points this game has? I do love it for the plot and story, but going through this list makes me feel rather guilty that I do.
There are two spiders which can be found during the game and both are optional if you arent going for 100%.
One spider will drop on the main character's head when you examine where it is. Another is found in a tree.
Some of the monsters you fight are bugs or buglike. You can find a spider in the tree on the path early in the game (and feed it to Chu-Chu later) One of Fei's opponents in the tournament at Aveh will throw bees at him as an attack. One item you get early in game and need to use to fish for one of the best items in Shevat (the rock puzzle) is a Spider Web.
Offscreen, it is HEAVILY implied that Fei was raped as a child, and you learn this late in the game on disc 2. This is actually treated with gravity and respect, and not shown in animation or anything easily visible, even if the take on his DID from it is stereotypical and awfully written etcetera.
It is also implied (again offscreen, dialogue only) that Billy has considered prostituting himself and was abused by Bishop Stone. (Another character does step in to make sure he doesn't go through with the prostitution.)
Onscreen, there's no actual sexual assault, but there's some battle scenes that seem uncomfortably close: Fei holding Elly down to talk to her about leaving Solaris after the battle in the Kislev Mountains, while she withdraws from the Drive. Both are in their Gears and were just fighting, but a man holding down a woman is symbolic of that to some/could trigger some.
There's the Elly in Vierge versus Mugwort and Rattan battle, where you as the player have no control and she gets beaten very badly in the fight, with both of them gleefully commenting on her injuries. Again, it's a battle scene, but has a very uncomfortable fetishy subtext with a woman losing to men objectifying the violence.
There is an instance of a character cutting themselves for the purposes of using their blood for something in disc 2, but not for the purposes of self-harming.
THE ENTIRE VILLAGE OF LAHAN.
Quite a few others too, anyone who gets in the way of either Grahf or Id has this as one of many options for their imminent death.
Most people in this game die. Several whole towns die, including the children. In addition some enemies attack children during an early part that you dont see later in the game, which implies they killed them.
Several on-screen parental deaths. One of which is fully animated instead of pixels and thus graphic. This animated parent death is the main character accidentally killing their mother. Most of the main cast has dead parents, many of which died in violent ways. One parent has to be mercy killed by their child.
Many more offscreen parental deaths- both implied and explicit feature in this game.
Two characters shower (though not at the same time) towards the end of disk one. It is censored so nothing is really shown. There is some non-shower nudity in a few other parts of the game (very beginning and end, in fully animated cutscenes)
The main villain possesses others as a means of immortality and this is a central plot point.
Several characters, including a main character, are possessed by her.
Needles are implied with the drug use and such, as well as in the main character's backstory with the medical abuse, but there is no graphic images of injection shown.
The main character winds up in infirmaries/hospitals/medical bays multiple times, and has an extended stay in one in a coma-like state about midway through disk 1.
Much of the final dungeon of disk one is a lab with a large amount of medical equipment.
A number of characters including main characters engage in 'soft' self harm of abusing drugs/alcohol as well as neglecting ones bodily needs. A character cuts themselves in a fully animated cutscene, but this is less for the purpose of self harm and more to offer blood to an entity that drinks it.
For the fact that its from 1998 Japan, its surprisingly accurate and sympathetic and still has merit - though this does not mean its remotely accurate to today's understanding and it does contain harmful stereotypes. These include but are not limited to: unrealistically fast and heavily pushed integration, evil superpowered alter, inexplicable alter shapeshifting, suppressing alters being treated as good, and bad science WRT psych drugs.
There are several characters who do a self-sacrifice gambit to secure victory. A few antagonists are omnicidal and also wants to die themselves. One of the major villains chooses to effectively die to follow 'god' into their home dimension.
In some of the FMV/CG and anime cutscenes yes. There's also interface screws of various sorts, glitching depending on whether you're emulating or not, and sometimes when you enter and exit a room your compass position will change (and there's some dungeons the compass will not revolve fully in)
LOTS of strobe effects. Citan's and Billy's heal ethers on foot are notorious for this, and there's lots of other really flashy attacks, both on foot and in Gears, for EVERYONE in your party. It's a mecha JRPG with a magic system so, unfortunately, there's going to be a lot of flashing and strobing in your average battles alone. You can't do a no-flash run of this game unless you turn off graphical effects in an emulator, and look away during certain FMVs.
While it is not certain if she actually miscarries, Elly of Zeboim era is infertile. The creation of Emeralda was done as a way around that, to give her her own child.
Not in any traditional sense, although there are things like Emeralda's test tube creation and Xenogears itself being born from a giant placenta that surrounded Weltall-Id.
The antagonist group is protrayed as deeply bigoted in many ways, which was intentional, as they are meant to be space nazis. There is a large amount, however, of Extremely Dated protrayals of mental illness, specifically dissociative identity disorder. While in 1998 it would have been passable, nowadays it is wildly inaccurate and plays into incredibly unfortunate tropes like the 'evil alter' at best and the main character's alters are referred to in less-than stellar ways (as 'personalities' and such) by the standards of now. A character exactly one referrs to the main character as a 'schizophrenic' instead of 'person with DID' which is era-typical for the media, but inaccurate. There is a lot of causal use of words like 'stupid' by many characters.
You can make your character gain weight (a value that has no use because they coded it improperly) to large degrees but it does not show on their sprite and no one makes jokes about it in-game.
Thankfully not, Sigurd and Big Joe live to the end. Even if neither are "traditionally" Black, they are probably the characters most "coded" as such visually and textually.
Multiple npcs 'ship' a party character and a central character who are first cousins and in an arranged marriage(as is historically unremarkable for royalty). These characters dont read as 'in love' at all in the game text, though many characters and a few plot elements gently push it. They have a standard anime 'tsundere' style bickering 'sibling-esque' relationship.
In the Perfect Works series bible they were supposed to have gone through with the arranged marriage. This does not happen in the game.
There are several off-screen sex scenes(with tasteful fade to black and/or a 'morning after' scene) and some censored nudity. One between the main couple, one between the previous incarnations of the main couple, and one between the two of the villains. There is a only one bed scene you COULD read as implying something but nothing actually happens. Some outfits are a bit 'fanservicey'.
The ending is more of a neutral bizzaro ending you can take however you like than a sad ending or a happy ending. The majority of the population died, many cities were destroyed, and technically the person responsible got exactly what he wanted. However the party turns out alright and there is hope of rebuilding and the thousands of years old evil is defeated.
LOTS of crashes in this game. Maybe not a specific *car* crash, but it begins with a spaceship crash into the planet (which is actually important), and you have everything from plane crashes to Gear crashes to entire city crashes. If it CAN crash or blow up, the rule here is that it likely will at some point.
There's a nonfatal plane crash when Bart decides to shoot down the Goliath.
The Yggdrasil crashes at least twice (once before it becomes a plane, once after) in one of the game's more famous scenes.
There's a decidedly more fatal plane crash at the very beginning of the game - or to be more accurate, a spaceship crash that started life on the planet.
Fei nearly drowns after Weltall's cockpit is breached underwater. He survives, although is badly hurt from bodily exhaustion from drawing on his powers to survive.
Anyone who survived Etrenank's exploding probably drowned once it hit the sea.
Multiple fully animated cutscenes contain blood and gore. Some pixel battle animations and certain pixel overworld locations contain blood and gore as well. One late disc 1 location contains a large amount of detailed pixel blood, gore, and body horror.
The antagonists attempt to cause one by blowing up a reactor. There is also later a series of 'reactive explosions' with a mushroom cloud.
There was also a nuclear war waged in the past if you explore the game to find flavor text.
Guns are used in combat and in cutscenes in a variety of situations. Main characters use guns at various points of time and have them used against them. One particular guy who is considered on the side of the heroes spouts 'NRA'-esque language (though this was made in 1998 before Sandy Hook so this is more of a 'aged like milk' situation than anything). You also arrive in the aftermath of a church massacre at one point of the game. A important character is also shot to death, and the main character is shot and nearly dies because if it later in the game.
2 comments | Add comment
Become a Supporter!
Filter triggers to only show "Yes" or "No" answers.
DoesTheDogDie, LLC. gives a portion to charity: raised so far!
Support as many triggers as you like simply by pinning them. More paid supporters means the trigger will get answered faster.
Only Supporters get to vote on new trigger ideas.
Help us pay our moderators.
Help this trigger get rated faster. Become a supporter!
Support as many triggers as you like simply by pinning them. Your triggers will be given priority for answering.