Going into Xenogears, I knew 3 things. The first was that this game was supposed to be Final Fantasy VII, a game I played just a few months ago and became an instant favorite. The second is that due to a hard locked release schedule, the team didn't have enough time to properly "finish" Xenogears. The third is that it's basically just Evangelion.

I also felt it was fair to assume that this was gonna be a favorite. What I didn't assume was that this game would challenge the way I think about my relationships. At the age of 22, I didn't really think I would be able to have my worldview shifted by stories anymore. That was a thing for my teenage years. I get now this was a stupid thing to think.

I struggle to think about what I can even say about a classic like this that's unique or fresh. It's an old beloved RPG, everything that can be said about it has. So in order to talk about it I have to get vulnerable. Hi. My name is Mads. I have BPD.

The way being borderline has impacted my relationships is almost all internal. I seek validation, I want to belong, to have an impact on the people I love. Nothing I or they can do is able to convince me of that. I feel incomplete. Consequently, I feel my relationships are hollow because of me. I'm not able to get as intimate as I'd want to. I'm not able to ask for a shoulder to lean on. It feels selfish. It feels undeserved.

There's a scene about a third into this game that hammered home just how much this game made me feel seen. Without going into specifics, it involves 2 of the main cast members talking about how incomplete they feel. One describes their acts of kindness as a selfish act because they don't feel they belong, and all they hope to get out of that kindness is a place to be. The other validates that it's ok to act kindly out of selfishness. Eventually, in trying to fill yourself up, you'll complete yourself with the lives of those around you.

Another scene in disc 2, which was a flashback regarding the history of one of the main characters and explaining why they are the way they are, filled me with an intense urge to call my abusive mom and say "I'm sorry." I can't explain that. I have nothing to be sorry for. It's not my fault she treats me the way she does. I don't know what else to do besides talk about it, because god knows I have no interest in following through on that.

As far as this game not being finished goes, well, I don't think it's fair to call it that. It's a front to back story. It covers all the beats it needs to in order to function. Sure it's not fully realized, but I think it's okay to not be whole.

First time I heard about Xenogears and its narrative’s incredible reputation was sometime around ten years ago. I tried to play it not long after, but my inexperience with JRPGs at the time and Xenogears’ unreliable special ability leveling mechanic failed me and I didn’t progress far. All that time since then I kept thinking about this game and how cool, deep, and entrancing its story must be. I adored its aesthetics. Now I have finally completed it. Has it lived up to its unfathomable reputation?

Yes! Yes, it did. Well, I probably wouldn't call it the one and only best, most definitive story to ever exist in the form of a videogame, but it surely is one of the most interesting and grand. I loved its sense of mystique, a world drenched in thousands of years of sinister history, a slowly unraveling, heavely foreshadowed story about fantastical concepts grander than the universe, but still about human condition at their core. I loved the way characters are reflective about themselves, and how their flaws and dilemmas are expressed particularly well.

It’s not all ideal of course. Most compelling characters are the main duo - Fei and Elly. Citan and Bart are also good, although have way less depth. And all other characters feel severely underdeveloped compared to the aforementioned four. They still have cool things going for them - I especially enjoyed the church arc with Billy, and the concept of Emeralda is interesting - but their involvement in the story is almost nonexistent.

Story is also feels a little uneven in its quality. Many bits like battle arena in Nortune (FUCK SEWERS) or Shevat are interesting from worldbuilding standpoint, but feel unneeded otherwise. I guess most of this comes down to the fact that some characters’ stories - like with Rico in Nortune or Maria in Shevat - are a lot worse than others.

Second disc is a pretty big imperfection, no way around this. But it didn’t grate my opinion too much. Honestly at that point in the story I even appreciated that it became more straightforward and stuck to storylines that mattered most. It’s not the ideal way around things, but considering the game’s overflowing storytelling ambition - it was the best one. Honestly I think even if Takahashi’s team had time to make a full proper part of the game out of disc 2 - it would crumble under its own weight, because it just has way too many events for one game for it to be paced in a fulfilling way. First disc already had slight problems with focusing on what matters most, and, strangely enough, disc 2 cuts gave the story a much needed focus, even if at the expense of other things.

Gameplay is admittedly barebones and rather boring, but I think the game understands that and doesn't let the player spend too much time fighting enemies except for a couple annoying dungeons like the final one or the fucking sewers.

I'm not sure what I can really say that hasn't already been said by someone, somewhere else. The story is obviously the main draw here, and it is incredible, but there's a lot more to love here as well.

The decision to make the game 3D with 2D characters really pays off. In-engine cutscenes are numerous throughout and are a cut above its contemporaries' pre-rendered ones, sometimes even Xenogears' own. The cinematography and direction of some of these are very well-done. The spritework and character portraits are beautifully done, as well.

Another thing I appreciate about the visual design in general is the verticality and sense of scale. There's always stuff in your way, from ceiling fans to overhanging pipes to bridges. Even later fully-3D JRPGs don't often play around with perspective and scale to the degree Xenogears does.

The towns are among the best in any JRPG I've ever played, so full of character and life. Every NPC has something interesting to say, and there are tons of little easily-missible moments scattered throughout. One of my favorites was a merchant in Av who tries to haggle with you if you wait too long before giving a response. There are tons of moments like this in all 8 or so major towns and cities.

The dungeons unfortunately are rather bland, with the exception of Babel Tower. If they weren't going to design these as thoughtfully as all the other locations, they should have been trimmed down a bit.

Yasunori Mitsuda's score elevates the entire experience. Continuing the trend from Radical Dreamers, Xenogears' score is a bit more subdued than Chrono Trigger's, but it sets the mood perfectly... sometimes. It's quite a shame the soundtrack is so short for a game of this length because some scenes lose their impact a bit due to repeated track usage.

The combat isn't anything to write home about, it's just there to give you something to do. The UI makes it look more complicated than it really is. There's ATB bars for some reason, but the system is actually standard turn-based. You can ignore all the gear combat UI stuff, none of it affects anything. Saving up your AP to do multiple moves in one turn sounds like a great idea until you realize the damage doesn't scale, so it's useless outside of the 1 or 2 bosses that heal themselves a lot. Gear combat is more interesting on paper since you have to be careful managing your fuel, but in practice it means you'll only be using your most efficient moves. I do at least appreciate the plethora of game-breaking gear to be found in this game, it's kind of a lost art. JRPGs today are too afraid to have things as insane as Ether Doublers and Speed Shoes.

This is a game you play for narrative and presentation first, so thankfully while the combat is undercooked, it never gets in the way, either.

Stories are a bit more subjective to talk about, so I'll just say this is the kind of story that only gets better the more you experience it and the more you read into its allusions and inspirations. While we never saw the full 6-part Xenogears story realized, the way Xenogears unfolds and dilvulges its secrets, including bits from previous parts, I think ends up working in the game's favor. Perhaps my favorite quality of it simply the structure of the plot, which feels like you're slowly unraveling things layer by layer.

Well worth checking out if you enjoy story-focused RPGs, there's nothing quite like it, not even Xenosaga. Runs great on DuckStation, and there are mods you can get to speed up text boxes and provide other QOL features if you so choose.

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 gameplay side isn't quite as fleshed out, 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.

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.

Most people nowadays that pick up Xenogears go in knowing it's going to be a good game, a great one, even. Word of its quality has spread gradually over time, primarily due to the success of its descendants; Xenosaga and Xenoblade. What people don’t seem to know is how ambitious it was.
The game having a good story is practically a given thanks to the names behind it, but it's the rest of the game that really impresses. Not only does the game have a ‘normal’ form of combat, in which up to three of your party members use their three attack types to combo their opponents into hell, there’s also gear combat. Gears are the mechs in this game, and unlike the normal characters, gears need to build attack level to combo, rely on fuel, and can’t be healed normally. The game switches between these two combat forms depending on the situation, and each of them are remarkably fleshed out, making it much harder to tire of combat than it is in most jrpgs.
Besides the main combat forms, there are also side modes and mini games such as gear combat. Not the same gear combat as before, the battlin’ gear combat is a lot more comparable to an arena fighter (albeit much less fleshed out) giving the gameplay even more variety. There’s even a speed minigame, a goddamn fully built card game that looks pretty good even now.
Xenogears bleeds creativity and is fully deserving of its legacy. The game is far from perfect - there are some glitches and some party members feel a tad underdeveloped, for example - but it's a truly one-of-a-kind experience worth anyone’s time.

Oh man, Square Enix, why have you forsaken this IP and won't give us a port, a remaster or even a remake of this amazing game :D Xenogears, even if it's obviously unfinished, is a fucking masterpiece. The themes addressed here are simply not found in current JRPGs which is super unfortunate. Among other things, it deals with the abuse of religion and power, human experimentation, racism, metaphysics and much more. The soundtrack is one of the best I've ever heard (Mitsuda at his best), the combat system (or rather combat systemS) is innovative and fun, the characters are almost all very well written and the story is the big highlight of this game. Unfortunately disc 2 really isn't finished but also not as bad as its reputation and yes, the story is completed and finished, only some passages aren't playable and are presented as a slide show.

The game is phenomenal, it's amazing that Square was capable of producing something like this in the past.

My first venture into Takahashi's video game design, as well as the "Xeno" series and well... it's interesting that's for sure.

This game is insanely ambitious, to a fault. The combat is unique, but poorly executed and therefore mediocre. The platforming is atrocious, and the sudden shift in puzzle-heavy dungeon level design near the very end is confusing. It just doesn't mesh. But at the same time, I respect the game even at its faults because I can tell there was a lot of innovation, or at least an attempt.

What makes Xenogears iconic is its story and presentation and, even then, I'm widely conflicted. There's much that I really liked, but much of the plot beats and resolutions either just didn't hit or were compelling but extremely convoluted and so rushed that it all comes at you in waves of exposition instead of natural build-up. It's a real shame that the most intriguing portion of the story (Disc 2) is incredibly rushed and cut. Therefore, the most climactic and important part of the story felt kind of... hollow.

I respect the hell out of the ambition this game has, but I also equally don't care for how much that ambition really got in the way of itself sometimes.

well..... not sure where to start with this review. disc 1 was a solid 5 stars for me and i really underestimated how much of a let down disc 2 was going to be for me.
while the turn based gameplay is solid, the mech gameplay isnt for me and i Hate the platforming so much it made me use save states when i usually do not use save states. also didnt find much enjoyment in the speed minigame or the random puzzles in the dungeons in disc 2.
getting that out of the way, the story is kind of amazing or at the very least high potential. i knew i was going to like this at least a little bit since id seen a few spoilers and knew the general premise and its relation to ff7 and it definitely met my expectations in that regard. it definitely shows that takahashi is really knowledgeable about religion which definitely makes the game hit harder especially for someone like me whos not religious but was raised in that way. i also really enjoyed seeing all the little similarities to gundam and im definitely going to try watching ideon after this as well. as for the psychology stuff, im the kind of person that can find jung/freud shit to be rather obnoxious so id be lying if i didnt have a few good laughs over that. and of course theres a lot to be said about how feis did is written and i have to say there was a couple aspects that were a little bit disappointing but im unsure what information on the disorder was available in the 90s so i dont know how well takahashi did in relation to that... elly started out as one of my favorites but after disc 2 i just wasnt crazy about the whole mommy stuff going on with her and miang and i get its supposed to be like religious symbolism and also more freudshit but it was kind of annoying. the ending was peak though. citan ended up as my favorite since hes goofy.
all in all i have mixed feelings im unsure of how to word correctly but maybe ill be able to word my feelings on the game better later down the line.
my final thoughts are i cant wait to finish reading dune so i can draw out a venn diagram of that with its relation to xenogears in political writing and i need to hop on ideon soon so i can see where a good chunk of the inspiration came from.
slog of an experience but i found it personally worth it as someone who loves jrpgs and mecha.

Xenogears is a story the goes into themes of psychoanalysis and Gnosticism and freudian principles of personality development concerning the character of Fei fong wong who's development is one that is wonderfully capitalised upon dynamics with characters like Grahf, Ramsus and Krelian 3 very good antagonists that fufill there role greatly across the grand scheme of Xenogears.

lemme take a look at just the main plot of Xenogears with just the plot of disc 1 and disc 2. Disc 1 starts off with the introduction of Fei fong wong an amnesiac in Lacan villlage that due to unfortunate events has to leave his village, this enables fei to go on a globe trotting adventure (going to cut this short) the entire game makes visiting each of the locations so unique as there's so many different cultures and history in each region like the desert region of Aveh and Kislev as each region is able to feel so incredibly distinct as class discrimination and different ideaologies regarding which citizens are worthy of luxurious treatent makes the world of xenogears so alive. The plot is something that is able to captivate the audience with every development of it's plot with twists and turns that i wasn't expecting with disc 2 being a complete brainrot with what it does with the story so many new thing that just add so mmuch onto the plot of disc 1 to say that Xenogears wasn't anything mindblowing is selling the game short in my eyes. but with the mindblowing positives there are shortcomings that come along with it as oh boy it feels really unfinished as the game atp really just wanted to tell the main story and flesh out Fei,Elly and Krelian as the gameplay rally just entirely felt like an after thought and really shoved in there and the side cast while i actually like all of them, they barely gotten screen time which really sucks cause character's like rico was a really nice introspctive into the racial mistreatments the demihumans were facing due to the laws instilled by the Aveh goverment and thus had to resorted to using physicaal strength to be able to rise through the prison ranks in Nortune. ( i don't find the amount of cutscenes a problem as i like Vns but i really would've loved more gameplay in the actually game )

AAnyways the entire realisation at the end of Xenogears tells e that i won't find anything like it as Xenogears is well Xenogears it separated itself from the pack and stands as an entirely unique story so bless you Takahashi hope you can pull off something as good as this and hopefully xenosaga can make me feel something simallar to what i felt in gears.

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.