hey I looked at screens of XZR II and I do think it came out for Sega CD or something (I like how everything for the Sega CD was supposed to be so modern and it was all remakes of PC games from 1988 or used b-movie clips from 1988), I remember the main characters vaguely. I might've seen the sequel though because it was sidescrolling from what I remember?
also the XZR name made no fucking sense to me at first but then I figured it out, it's like an abbreviation turning the katakana into roman letters, like eX-Zai-Ru, same idea as PKMN I guess. So it's actually the thing that makes no sense the least
This post is really long but I promise it is seriously worth reading!!!!!!!!!![/u]
Actually, it came out for the Genesis and Turbo-Duo. I just finished the Turbo-Duo version yesterday (PS - I had no idea the Turbo-Duo existed before I played this game) and it was definitely one of the most bizarre games I've ever played. It was not a "good" game mechanically. The platforming gameplay was pretty atrocious and the RPG gameplay was pretty much non-existent, so I'll focus more on the platforming. The screen was incredibly small and your sprite was pretty large, making it really difficult to avoid enemies and projectiles. Everything was really haphazardly designed; there are unnecessary platforms everywhere and doors that lead nowhere and passages that take you backwards. Enemies spawn constantly depending on where you are in a room, and since the screen is so small, enemies spawn pretty much right next to you. The entire game is designed to be as confusing as possible and I don't know whether this was on purpose to prolong the game (it's pretty short) or because they literally had no idea what they were doing, but judging from the game's story I'd say it's probably closer to the latter. Actually, while I was playing I sort of liked to imagine that they somehow managed to teach a dog a little about history and a little about games and then that dog made a game about history.
The plot, or I guess story, because the game has no plot, is fantastic though. Everything that's bad about the platforming is immediately redeemed by the story. Like the gameplay, it's not "good", but it is so crazy, so unpredictable, even non sequitur, and so wildly different from literally everything else that exists that it's not difficult to appreciate. Unfortunately the game's translation was butchered by Working Designs in order to get it to pass whatever censorship organizations were around at the time, but it's not difficult to piece things together. Some of the censored names are pretty hilarious, like Christians becoming "Klispins", but for the most part they're pretty bewildering, like Jews becoming "Katari" and hashish becoming "heart poisons". I'll try to give the details of the game to the best of my understanding, but I'm sure I'll get some of it wrong. I still have no idea what Shimbatha is supposed to represent.
So you play the game as Saddler, an Islamic assassin during the Crusades. The fact that you're an Islamic assassin is established in the first XZR game and isn't really brought up in Exile. I don't know if it's that it couldn't get through the censorship or it just wasn't in the game and it was assumed you already knew this. Anyway, you begin in the town of Assassi, which is probably supposed to be any number of the Syrian assassin strongholds from that era, and are told that a strange man has been seen out in the desert. You decide to find this strange man and gather together a party consisting of characters from the previous XZR game: Rumi, your love interest (also Rumi is the name of one of Afghanistan's most famous poets), Fakhyle, a wizard of some sort, and Kindhy, a man who only seems to be capable of saying the word "uuuuuuuu". Together you go into the desert to find this strange man and get sucked into a secret antlion lair, beginning the game's first platforming segment. At the end of the level, you find the man dead with a letter in his hand that's addressed to... you!!!
The letter tells you to go to the Temple of Solomon, where you meet
Hugues de Payens, the leader of the crusaders, who tells you that he no longer agrees with the motives of the Christians, who want to destroy the holy land or something. He then says that the Christians are oppressing the Jews in Britain and that you need to stop them in the interest of peace. He also mentions something about the "Holimax", or Ark of the Covenant, which plays a more important role (sort of?) later in the game. Anyway, you head to Britain with Hugues but before you can reach the Jews who are being persecuted, Rumi gets kidnapped by a group of druids. You go to Stonehenge to rescue her, but interestingly enough, the druids are inside a cathedral. When you reach the top of the cathedral, you encounter the leader of the druids, who tells you that he's your brother and that he's waited 500 years for this confrontation. There is no context; he tells you that he's your brother and that's it. Saddler doesn't respond to this and it's never brought up again. You rescue Rumi and then head to the Jewish village. This part is fucking wild. There are Jews there being crucified and burned on the cross. You find a group of Jews in the basement of a burning house that in order to gain the knowledge of the Ark of the Covenant,
you must resurrect Moses, and that a group of Jewish scouts went to Sri Lanka searching for more information about him.
Before I continue, I want to mention that the game calls Moses "Mani", who was actually a real prophet and had his own religion. I think this was a censorship mistake though, and that it's really Moses for a couple of reasons. First is that they say he's the founder of the Jewish religion. That's pretty obviously Moses. They say he created the Holimax (I've seen a lot of sites saying the Holimax is the holy grail, but it's obviously the Ark of the Covenant because Moses created the Ark of the Covenant and Mani can't be anyone other than Moses), which points to Moses, and they say he was from Egypt. For some reason, a lot of sites seem to claim that he's Noah, too. I personally think it would be cooler to resurrect Noah, but I'm pretty positive it's Moses. What I don't understand is why his bones are in India and why he's represented by a statue of a blue, six-armed god.
So anyway, you go to India and after a brief adventure where you rescue Hugues' sister and
Jaufre Rudel, you are finally able to perform the ritual to resurrect Moses. You assemble his bones in front of a statue and recite the incantation. However, something goes wrong and Moses doesn't come back to life. Jaufre tells you that there's a page missing from his book (a book about how to bring Moses back to life) and that the only place that has another copy is Angkor Wat in Cambodia. You travel to Angkor Wat and get the book, but there's a cave-in and Rumi, Hugues, Fakhyle, and Kindhy are left behind, where they ostensibly die. You return to Moses' grave and read the missing page. Apparently Moses' body was reversed: everything that should have been on one side was on the other. You reverse Moses' body parts and are finally able to resurrect him. Moses ghost (who looks a lot like the Moses from South Park) tells you that in order to activate the power of the Ark of the Covenant, you must first have the two sacred mandalas, which are held by
Nichiren, the leader of a Buddhist sex cult in Japan.
You travel to Japan and free Nichiren from prison. After that, you go to his Buddhist sex compound on the top of a mountain and take the mandalas from the temples. You then return to the Temple of Solomon and are surprised when you see Hugues de Payen, who was supposed to have died in Angkor Wat. He tells you that he survived, but everyone else died. He then shows you a mysterious door next to his throne that you both go through. This door teleports you back in time to ancient Greece, to the middle of a festival of Bacchus. Somebody tells you that a girl is about to be sacrificed to Bacchus in the temple, so you rush in to save her. Inside the temple, you meet
Pythagoras, who seems to be bumbling around and has nothing interesting to say. You rescue the girl and speak to Pythagoras again outside, who says that Hugues looks a lot like
Hiram Abiff, an important Masonic figure and the head engineer of Solomon's Temple. This prompts you to go to Solomon's Temple, where you learn that Hiram's been murdered, which, for some reason prompts you to go to Sicily, where you again encounter Pythagoras. Pythagoras tells you that you must avenge Hiram and that his three murderers are hiding somewhere in the town you're currently in. You find the murderer and kill him. Fortunately, the murderer has the Ark of the Covenant on him and now all you have to do is activate its power.
You return to Pythagoras, who tells you that he can unlock the Ark of the Covenant's true power using the mandalas, which will bring eternal peace to the world. You follow him into the bed of a lake shaped like an equilateral triangle where he performs some sort of ritual. However, instead of obtaining peace from the Ark, a demon comes out and possesses Hugues. The demon, whose name is Shimbatha, tells you that this was a trick and that he had been planning this the whole time. Using Hugues' body, he would take over the world. You are somehow teleported back to the modern day Temple of Solomon (modern being the era you started the game in) and enter its dungeon, where you kill Shimbatha and end the game. At the very end, Saddler walks off into the desert and says that world peace is an unattainable goal and that he doubts the Ark of the Covenant even existed in the first place.
Except that's not the real end of the game. Apparently in the MSX version of the game, Saddler is teleported into 20th century Manhattan where he battles punks on skateboards and zombies in a subway system. I want to say that I don't see how this fits into the game, but considering that in XZR I, Saddler murders the presidents of Russia and the US, it's pretty much par for the course.
I exaggerated nothing. Everything that I just typed happens in the game, and in fact I left a lot out. You actually see burning, crucified Jews. One of them has a portrait (which has animated flames in the background). Pythagoras actually unlocks the Ark of the Covenant in ancient Sicily. You actually resurrect Moses after rearranging his bones backwards. Everything happens. I don't know if I liked this game or not. The gameplay was extremely bad and its shortcomings made an otherwise easy game extremely difficult. It was not "fun", but it was enjoyable. If you play this game, you won't have fun, but you will probably like it. I've been sort of debating whether it's one of my favorite games or not, but I'm leaning towards yes. I don't even know if I'm recommending it. You probably shouldn't play it, it's tedious and poorly designed and not fun at all, but at the same time it's excellent.
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