Reviews from

in the past


YOU SHALL BE AS GODS!!!

I don't think after these many years of discussion i can add something there was already been said about this game.

Xenogears is not a perfect game, yet it is a masterpiece. Considering the low budget and the ambitious task, Takahashi and his team made the best they could.

Now i will watch videos about the lore because i love how rich and deep it is.

This game is functionally held together by duct tape, but past that is a story that has resonated with me like no other. I need there to be an official remaster even on the caliber of Chrono Cross (post-patches). Absolutely special RPG, a must-play.

best xeno story honestly its soooooo good and unique


A fantastic story even with the later half changing the pace a bit. I loved my time with this game, everything about it was just so different than the other jrpgs at the time. The gear fights to the heavy religious themes it was unique. This game treats your companions with respect and gives them the spotlight here and there in ways you can better understand them and what they stand for, another thing you sometimes don't see in the genre.

I love the look of sprites in a 3D world a lot and is the reason why I love this gen's jrpgs so much. The music is great and I really liked the battle system a lot. It's a shame this isn't easily available to the masses as I think it's a story many should experience.

If masterpiece had a definition, it's Xenogears. If Squarenix and Monolith are okay to put their feud aside to create the franchise it should have been at the time, i will cry cause i am a believer.

ok it's really really hard to rate this game in a fair way. how can i say this? xenogears has some of the best moments in jrpg history. this might be one of the best written games i played, well, at least sometimes...
the pacing of the story feels a bit all over the place, the beggining of disc one feels really slow, it picks up around 20 or 30 hours in. and by the start of disc 2, it's TOO fast, i found myself getting a bit overwhelmed with all the text and expo dump. a lot of the stuff set up in disc 1 was unresolved or straight out forgotten by the end.
some game mechanics felt kinda underutilized by the end. for example, i loved getting the deathblows and learning how they worked, but by the end it didnt really feel needed. there is no ng+ or optional dungeons that offer much of a challenge really.
the OST is also pretty repetitive for such a long game. don't get me wrong, it's an amazing sound track, but i'd liked to have a few more battle themes to listen to lol.
that all said though, i absolutely loved this game. it's absolutely a must play for the PS1, few games are as ambitious as this one. and, while the story does get a bit cheesy sometimes, it has a lot of cool ideas, interesting characters, a mysterious and engaging plot, it's different... the world is amazing as well.

Camera controls can feel its age sometimes, but the game is very promising. Will keep at it for sure!

A game flooded and rupturing with so much ambition, so many ideas (even with so many barely explored), and such a fascinating, evasive legacy that its incompleteness only creates infinite depth. Xenogears is the oddly-shaped kernel of a still-expanding universe, a beating, bleeding heart of a story that wears its many influences plainly and proudly while still feeling unsettlingly different from any of its peers. There’s so much more that could be here, that is here, that is instead in Perfect Works and Xenosaga and Xenoblade and in everything that’s taken inspiration from it since. I’m obsessed with Xenogears. I think I will be for a long time.

I hated my time with this game for like 35 hours
It's filled with so many bad game design decisions, extremely bad pacing at the start after the intro segment and the game absolutely never tells you where to go throught all of it, gears combat is a fucking unfun mess, like half the cast only has 1 moment to shine and never again, disc 2 completely changes the entire gameplay structure to the point it's a visual novel without even the visual part it's just scrolling text, there aren't that many music tracks so you're stuck hearing the same tracks over and over again that have some annoying segments in them.

And even then.
After all of this.
It is still.
The Perfect Work.

an incrediblly ambitious project of a video game in terms of the storytelling. i enjoyed every minute of it despite some of the frustrating dungeons. it really intrigued me instantly at the first hour of the game. some of the lines that were carried by the characters really captured my heart and somewhat felt relatable to me, personally. it's very unfortunate that they weren't able to finish up the 2nd disc the way they wanted to, but the story was still peak. reading "perfect works" after beating this game makes so much sense that they weren't able to fit the whole arc into one game.

Peak. In every sense of the word, one of my favorite stories ever told

Crazy how Disc 2 has this reputation of being a massive fumble and it’s the best part of the game.

10/10

Xenogears has one of the best stories in a game I've played, even if it's puzzling at times and surely not helped by a haphazard translation that misrepresents certain plot elements and character motivations. The music is as great as any other Square game, while the gameplay isn't really fleshed out all that well, such as elements on moves and combos being worthless. It's serviceable but it feels like something the developers came up with in a few months because this intricately told gnostic alien story needed something to do inbetween the beats. I can't praise how good the story of Xenogears is enough. I actually can't, because it's like a complex work of art that I'm still in the process of digesting and learning more about as the months pass since my initial playthrough. Such an interesting and unforgettable experience.

I really can't believe I took as long as I did to play through this masterpiece. This game has left a huge impact on me and one of my standout experiences in 2023. One of the most unique stories in any of my JRPG experiences, a great and memorable cast, different, but fun combat system, and amazing OST ("Shevat -The Wind Calls-" always has me ascending, LOVE that track). The vocal theme puts me to tears, too, just like FFVIII's "Eyes On Me." Wasn't a fan of the platforming sections and obviously the localization is not the best by any means, but given the situation and time period, it does not take away from this amazing and one of a kind journey that we don't get anymore.

😈😈😈The perfect video game for a maniacal psychology major such as myself 😈😈😈. Sigmund freud's theory of personality and carl jung archetypes in MY turnbased video game 😈😈😈a truly spectacular sight to behold..........................😈

I think it's time for me to give up on this one. I've tried it numerous times through the years and even got decently far into it once... but it's just not super compelling to me. For being a 3D game with 2D sprites it just doesn't look that great and all around it feels very... almost but not quite. Besides the OST, which may be my most listened to OST after Chrono Cross. It's like this inbetween of CT and CC (probably because it literally was made between them).

I've heard this was originally a FFVII pitch, and then a possible Chrono Trigger 2 at some point as well, and it does have a lot in common with CT, not just the the soundtrack composer.

Anyway, I think I'm going to abandon this as a game and watch a playthrough instead. Considering how inspired by Gnosticism I am in my own projects it seems like a necessity to at least know the whole plot.

Edit: Just collecting my thoughts here while I watch a play-through, but this very much feels like a game completely led by its narrative and everything about it is in support of that narrative. Basically, there are no overly frivolous gameplay aspects, they're all there for the story. This could very much just have been a novel. Not sure how I feel about that, but it is an interesting way to approach a game.

The pacing is also pretty slow and there's a lot of dialogue to not say so much. That feels like a pretty common Japanese poetic choice. A lot of battle scenes feel like 61 episodes of DBZ.

This review contains spoilers

So many great ideas but between the awful pacing, bloated cast list with characters who have no relevance to the plot after they join and the famously rushed second disc I just could not get through this game. Truly a shame because I did finish watching the game on YT and there IS the foundations of an amazing game it's just executed poorly. Could really benefit from a remake

The best in the Xeno series, despite its own problems.

This was a very human game. I enjoyed each character individually and how they grew (especially Bart). I REALLY liked Doc too. I honestly liked everyone a lot. The game didn't age in some ways very well but it never got too difficult so I really appreciated that. I need to be able to enjoy a story and not get pissed at getting filtered for a while and I never really had that problem. That being said, my biggest complaint is actually the music.

I went in with high hopes knowing the composer hoping that the game would be filled with lots of great tracks. The reality was that there weren't that many. Only a few good tracks. A lot of the music was extremely overplayed and got repetitive after a while.

I was able to play an official release of this on my Playstation TV in 2024 and this is an experience I will remember for sure.

This was one of my old friend's favorite games. He had high things to say about it and it was cool being able to finally live through that. We aren't on speaking terms anymore which is a shame because I would have loved to have been able to share my experience of the game while playing it.

I’d say overall, I really enjoyed this game, but man it sure liked to show its age. I’m not sure if it’s because of the PS1, but most everything felt so slow. Menuing, load times, and especially the text speed probably had to have made up 7 hrs of time in my about 50 hrs of playing.

The gameplay unfortunately is not too interesting. Deathblows all look really cool, but unlocking them was not super well explained, and once you got them you kinda just spam your strongest one except if you’re an Ether character. It sucks cause it makes the AP and Combo system irrelevant. Gear combat is so much worse though. It being reliant on fuel, and healing taking up so much fuel was so unnecessary and annoying. Luckily the game is not that hard, but that has the effect of making the combat boring most of the time instead of tedious. Some dungeons were pretty atmospheric and cool, but most end up being a slog to go through.

Now the main draw of a Xeno game for me is its story, and oh MAN did it have me hooked for the whole game. I won’t spoil it, but everything related to Fei and Elly was fantastic. For the first half I was really excited to see where everything was headed because of how many characters and areas were being introduced. It was also cool how natural it felt when each party member joined in. I heard tellings of Disc 2 and how infamous it was, and it definitely has a noticeable drop in quality, but it didn’t ruin the experience. Some of my favorite moments are actually in Disc 2 (iykyk). The only thing is I wish there were some side quests or something along the journey. Something to space out the big moments a little more or get some more worldbuilding, even though what’s there is really good (probably just the Disc 2 experience talking right now).

As per Xenoblade 2 and 3, Yasunori Mitsuda killed it with this soundtrack. Weirdly enough, I think the cutscene songs are some of my favorites in the game. But that’s not to say stuff like the boss battle theme, Shevat, and the late game dungeon theme are also some big standouts. Not really any misses. Still insane that Mitsuda was also doing Mario Party around this time.

It’s a shame because if the rough parts of Xenogears were fixed, it’d probably be one of my favorite games ever. It’s definitely one of my favorite stories. I’m now in the group who absolutely wants a remake of this game. I saw the Star Ocean 2 remake recently, and I think something like that would be perfect for Xenogears. It’s crazy to think that if Disc 2 was fleshed out, this could’ve easily been a 100 hour PS1 RPG. Also the fact that this is Episode 5 of what was supposed to be a 6 episode epic is so sad to think about. I’m looking forward to reading into this game's development journey and going through Perfect Works. Now all that’s left is Xenosaga and Xenoblade X.

PS. I really need some gunplas of the Gears. This game’s got me even more interested in checking out Gundam

PSS. It was SO COOL seeing how much of this game’s DNA is represented in Xenoblade 3, considering it’s still Takahashi at the helm for both games.
Also Joanne Hogg :)))))

Maravilla de historia, gráficos, y mecánicas interesantes para su época. Si quieres que una historia toque tu corazón, este es tu juego, dale una oportunidad.

Xenogears is a game that’s reputation precedes itself. Intimidating, yet fascinating. A game truly greater than the sum of its parts (a characteristic I find most great games share in common). The term “flawed masterpiece” was practically tailor made for the likes of Xenogears. Because while it’s a tour-de-force in storytelling, its shortcomings are numerous, and I’m not just talking about the obvious suspect, either.

Xenogears, being a Squaresoft PS1 JRPG, was born in what could be considered the genre’s golden age, within the walls of the genre’s greatest champion. The pedigree brings about a lot of expectations, which I think it mostly fulfills. But you can tell that this game is the work of less experienced game designers than the ones upper management at Square tasked for the Final Fantasy series. I don’t want to come across as too harsh, because the gameplay of Xenogears is a cut above your typical JRPG battle system, especially for the time, but it’s rough around the edges, without a doubt. The fighting game-esque “deathblow” mechanic isn’t ever properly explained to the player, and while it’s possible to futz around in the dark and stumble into learning these powerful moves, it doesn’t go far enough in readying players for the challenges ahead. I spent a decent amount of the early game just spamming the deathblows I had learned by accident; Something which rewarded me in the short term, but would’ve screwed me over hard if I hadn’t had the idea to consult a guide before the going got really tough. It’d be one thing if I understood what I was doing to be a short term solution, but I didn’t. Which is the part I find should’ve been the game’s responsibility to teach me about. Something I think the game did tremendously well though, was portraying the scale and power of the Gears. On foot combat I found to be the more interesting of the two sides of the battle system, but there’s something to be said regarding the sheer number inflation that occurs when piloting a gear. Wailing on these massive creatures and doing thousands of damage while barely being able to crack four digits on foot feels tremendous. Gears are devastating, which the game constantly portrays to the player.

Visually, Xenogears is almost this perfect marriage of two-dimensional characters in three-dimensional environments. It’s a look that surely wowed players back in the day, and has come back around to being incredibly appealing in a whole new way. This look was supposedly a compromise, after it proved difficult to get a fully 3D game the scale of Xenogears off the ground. As far as compromises go, this was a fair one. I feel as though any push further towards 2D would’ve sacrificed too much of the gravitas that accompanies the Gears. Still, there’s a lot about the “feel” of Xenogears that slowly got on my nerves as I played. Text speed is much too slow, which made me apprehensive to talk to many NPCs the further and further I proceeded through the game. God forbid I had to replay a lengthy cutscene due to a boss wipe. If I ever play this game again, I’ll most certainly employ the “fast text” cheat 100% of the time. I’d probably shave at least an hour off my playtime if I did. Many other aspects about Xenogears feel sluggish. The less said about the platforming, the better, so this is all I’ll say about it. No, I think the bigger culprit to my frustrations playing Xenogears have to be the random encounters. Complaining about random encounters might just be the biggest canned criticism of the JRPG genre, so let me attempt to get in front of the eyerolls and say I don’t hate the concept in the slightest. I’m far from some radical that thinks all RPGs should do away with them. They’re a mechanic that can be done well, or done poorly, like anything else put in a game. That said, I’m sympathetic to those who dislike random encounters, and certainly wouldn’t give them Xenogears to try and change their mind. Xenogears has one of the most egregious random encounter systems I’ve ever experienced. If you ask me, the key to preventing frustrations with random encounters requires at least one of two things: infrequency, or speediness. AKA, if you’re gonna have a high random encounter rate, you need to get the player in and out of the battle quickly. Battles shouldn’t require too much character management, and should be done under a minute, to choose an arbitrary time. Inversely, if you want the player to think and strategize throughout these fights, then they shouldn’t be occurring every seven steps or so, to choose an arbitrary number. Xenogears is the worst of both worlds in this regard. Random encounters take a decent amount of time whenever they occur, and they occur often. I think a decent litmus test for knowing if a JRPGs random encounter system is poor, is if the player fears navigating a dungeon outside of the bare minimum, which is a feeling I definitely had playing through Xenogears. The biggest joke of all though, is that the game has a bit of a delay between deciding a random encounter will happen, and actually putting the player through said encounter. This results in having to fight battles as they’re leaving a room, or opening a chest. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that’s done that before, it was very strange, and very frustrating.

This whole time I’ve avoided talking about the narrative, and that’s because I sorta feel out of my depth discussing it. While playing the game, I would frequently tune into Resonant Arc’s discussions on the story (seen here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJCH8faf6GaxQ_7bA7cD0lROu3yMRmwh5).
Which kept me grounded and able to keep up with many of the complex ideas the game throws at the player. It’s a fantastic story, held back by things mostly out of its control. Like the translation, which feels stilted for much of the playthrough. It’s hard to put too much blame on Richard Honeywood, the translator, after knowing the behind the scenes story, but regardless, the conditions surrounding Xenogears localization resulted in the translation suffering. The big elephant in the room, however, is the infamous “Disc Two”, a turn in the structure of the game which sees much of the story progress via abstract narration of events rather than the more typical structure of disc one where we play through the events as they happen. While this surely shocked players back in 1998, these days its reputation precedes itself; I knew what I was getting into beforehand, so I wasn’t completely blindsided by this shift. I wouldn’t go so far as to defend this change as a good thing, mind you, but with how much of the story is covered by this second disc, it’s clear that if the “true” vision of Xenogears was to ever be realized, we’d be dealing with an incredibly bloated game that would’ve taken years to finish. I think I agree with Tetsuya Takahashi when I say that it was better to finish the story then and there. At the very least, it sticks the landing. The truncated narrative of disc two also means that the amount of monotonous futuristic hallway dungeons is kept to a minimum. Although a few still managed to sneak their way onto it.

To borrow a phrase, Xenogears is: “...the type of game that relieves my fears”. A collaboration between a team in way over their heads. A project that should’ve completely buckled under its own weight and resulted in a mess few could find enjoyment in. Instead, it’s proof that vision can shine through even the roughest of circumstances. I hope that one day I can make something that’s even a quarter as profound as something like Xenogears. Which I would recommend to anyone into JRPGs who hasn’t played it, despite the game’s numerous flaws (many of which could be remedied with some simple number tweaks, or a tasteful remaster, perhaps). It requires a lot of patience, but it rewards that patience in spades.


I won't give this a lower score because I truly appreciate the effort that went into developing the world of Xenogears. It's hard to get a coherent message from the total mess of themes that the scenario delivers, and the combat system is surprisingly shallow, often feeling like a mere formality...
But yeah, it's cool to see the results of Takahashi's obsession with psychology, philosophy, religion and mecha anime

Ambitious and layered narrative that is hindered by a poor English localization, a soundtrack that is far too short, a disc 2 with pacing and presentation issues, bland dungeon design, and combat that feels good but soon becomes trivialized by a lack of depth in its systems. How the game became flawed is no secret. Rather than contemplate what could have been, I am instead appreciative of its delightfully complex narrative framework that would be put to good use in future games.

Insane roller coaster of pacing. This could arguably be the best jrpg ever made if the back half didnt have to get condensed into a picturebook. Still peak tho and very funny in retrospect how many elements of this and other xeno games keep getting brought back.

Much like with Xenoblade, Xenogears was one of the first RPGs I tried playing. I initially picked it up shortly after beating FF7 and I remember loving it back then though I only got up to the stalactite cave. Now that I've beaten it, my thoughts on it are much more complicated, the game was a real rollercoaster and I'm still trying to process how exactly I feel about it.

Upon replaying it again now, it's clear to me why I dropped it back then. Its all down to the narrative and how intimidating it can be at times. Right from the opening cutscene, you are assaulted with questions and for every one that gets vaguely answered, you get like 3 more. Using enigma codes to push the player to keep going on so they can figure things out isn't a bad thing, but I think Xenogears crosses a line where it just became disheartening for me at points with how little of the narrative I felt I had a good grasp of. The worst parts for me are the early scenes with the Gazel Ministry with how terms that haven't been explained to the player yet get flung around constantly and it reached a point where I was mentally checked out during these scenes. The story can feel extremely daunting at times and I initially wasn't too keen on it, but as I progressed through it and more of it started to make sense, it ended up really gripping me. I can't help but admire just how grandiose this narrative manages to be and the wide range of topics it tackles is something to behold. Slavery, warfare, psychology, mysticism, gnostic imagery, nature of humanity and God and so much more. I beat the game but I only scratched the surface of what all the symbolism and motifs mean because it feels like every dialogue exchange and every area is so meticulously crafted and filled with purpose. Despite covering such monumental subject matter, I think Xenogears is equally strong when it focuses on the smaller scale character moments. From Fei telling Elly how he acts the way he does not because he's "heroic" but merely so he can find a place of acceptance, to Maria talking about what Seibzehn represents to her and how her memory of her father is gradually fading. Scenes like this are so powerful, but are few and far between since they get buried under the rubble which are this game's larger themes. Still, whether its focusing on the small stuff or the big stuff, Xenogears' narrative is quality throughout once you start piecing things together. The only area where the story can feel a little questionable is in its handling of the core cast. Fei, Citan, Elly and Bart are all great, playing a role in the story that remains relevant for the whole game, but the same can't be said for the others. Billy and Maria gets introduced in an area, and their entire arc is resolved in that area, afterwards they just sort of hang around and help out but never really feel important. Rico and Emeralda don't even get the luxury of having anything that resembles an arc and they can be taken out of the plot entirely without anything being lost really. I still like these characters, particularly Billy, but this shift to having a more episodic approach in the middle of the game does create a disconnect between the care that went into integrating the first 4 party members and the ones that come after. Also, to me, this game just looks beautiful, the blend of sprites for human characters and 3D models of the Gears works really well and a lot of the cutscenes in this game make me forget this is a PS1 game, particularly Weltall IDs introduction.

All the games cutscenes are beautifully punctuated by the soundtrack. Talking about music is just something I rarely do when reviewing games because I don't think I have the ability to properly put into words what makes an OST good or bad, but what I can say about Xenogears' OST is that it makes you feel things. Yasunori Mitsuda does a wonderful job at elevating the emotions of a scene with his music here and it is easily his best work imo. It's not always perfect though, the music always sound great, but the number of tracks is quite low for an RPG of this length so some tracks end up getting really worn out and there is even the occasional instance where the music doesn't quite fit the scene, or is completely in contrast to it. Luckily, this issue doesn't occur too often.

So in terms of story, graphics and music, this game is beyond incredible, but the problem is just about everything else. This game is insanely uneven. Anything gameplay related plays second fiddle to the games story. The combat is okay at best, it's split into two parts, one where you control human characters and one where you use the Gears but both are extemely simple. There's no strategy involved to either, around 95% of gear battles can be won by turning on the booster function and spamming deathblows on the enemy and human fights are also won via constantly using deathblows and occasionally healing. There is some fun to be had just from how cool deathblows look and using the Combo function to decimate enemies is satisfying but for a 60 hour game, the actual gameplay here feels shallow. It has also got a lot of things that irk me, switching out party members is a little annoying with it usually requiring you to go back to the Yggdrasil every single time, certain characters leave the party for long stretches of time so getting their deathblows is just not worth it and the game makes no attempt at explaining how exactly you're meant to unlock new deathblows, levelling up here feels almost pointless since human fights are too easy and Gears' stats are dependent entirely on their equipment. Honestly, the only time I really loved the gameplay was in Nortune, where the game randomly turns into a 3D Fighter, other than that, the actual RPG elements of this game are underwhelming. Then there are the dungeons, Xenogears' cutscenes can often feel like never-ending dialogue dumps so, to balance this out and not make gameplay feel like an afterthought, the game's dungeons are designed to take as long as possible by being structured like mazes that are exhausting to get through. Except, this isn't a solution, it just makes gameplay sections in this game feel like a chore at points, with the worst offenders for me being the final dungeon, the solaris elevator shafts and the platforming required in Babel Tower. Not every area has a dungeon required to progress, like the section on the Thames which only has like 2 battles total and the rest is all dialogue but this brings me to another issue, pacing-wise, this game is all over the place. Xenogears never reaches a state of equilibrium between its gameplay and narrative so the entire experience feels lop-sided and anytime I had to play the game instead of read it, I just wasn't as interested. Also, there's like no side content here, the only time the game opens up is right at the end and even then, there isn't much to do.

Then there's Disc 2 and it is a little tragic, the fact that a game that up until that point paid so much excruciating attention to detail is now relegated to having to give a rough summary of events followed by a battle at the end is a real shame. It's not all bad though, there's still striking imagery to be found and it does have my favourite part of the game, that being the backstory of ID and "The Coward". I like also like how it's presented with the pendant swinging back and forth while a character narrates, it's oddly relaxing. The fact that this disc is so light on the gameplay is something I'm actually fine with since the story is the best part of this game anyway. A lot of plot threads from Disc 1 end up being either abandoned or rushed through but I'd still say I enjoyed this part of the game almost on par with the first one, which only makes the fact that it's unfinished sting more because I can't even fathom how incredible this story could've been had it been completed.

I complained about a myriad of things here, and I don't think I'm really wrong in doing so either. Xenogears is a fractured, uneven, and incomplete mess but beyond all that, it's also a game with so much passion poured into every pixel that I can't help but ultimately respect and enjoy it even if it took a long time for me to feel this way.