After 3 whole months, I'm FINALLY done with Xenogears, and oh boy what a trip it was.
The story in-game is very very good. I will admit that it didn't really capture me for the first, like 2 dozen hours, but around Shevat is when the game really started to get me. It was a VERY wild ride from there. I will say that I actually kinda like disc 2, because i really liked the story but I will say the pacing is very odd. It just feels like things happen and it goes by so quick you don't have a chance to take it all in. I understand completely though, since they were new to game development and had serious time crunch. The story went from very good to AMAZING when I looked into Perfect Works, the Xenogears book speaking about the entire Xenogears storyline from the beginning to the start of the game, and I find it so fascinating, simple as. It's also fascinating how Perfect Works is kind of like the bible of the Xeno series, with many things from Xenosaga and Xenoblade being inspired by the original storyline of Xenogears. This story is amazing and I kind of wish Takahashi was able to tell it in it's entirety, but we might not have had saga and blade if it did so, whatever!
The gameplay is fine. It's good, but there a few problems. My main gripe is I'm not a big fan of the gear battles. I get that it's the main thing of the game, but even after finding out how to play them they're just...alright. I much prefer the on-foot battles. I think deathblows are a bit fun, If a bit hard to manage with all the characters in your party.
The music is reallll good! I really like the Shevat theme (can you tell I like Shevat?) The boss and final boss theme, very nice. It's got that PS1 twang to it. Oh, and, I don't usually talk about graphics, but I LOVE HOW THIS GAME LOOKS! The amazing pixel sprites on top of the PS1 environments looks so freaking good, I want to make a game that looks like this someday!
Overall, fantastic game. The reason why it's not a 5/5 comes with some gameplay issues, pacing issues near the end of disc 1 and most of disc 2, and the fact that it took a while for the game's story to really grab me, but that might just be because I came from Xenoblade and got a bit hyped up on this game before I actually played it.

This is arguably the most ambitious game on the PlayStation 1. The story is the star and addresses topics like religion and philosophy in a mature way. It even has its own retelling of Genesis. As fascinating as this game is, it has some problems.

The story is extremely complicated and poorly paced. Characters are introduced to you far too early and a lot of them are referred to as "her" and "him" throughout the game. It seems purposely confusing with the intent to wrap up everything up later. Which it does, to be fair.

I found some of the combat elements irksome. The main one being how you heal your gear. It is one of the more annoying mechanics I've experienced and is very inconvenient. This became an issue in the lengthy dungeons and later battles. Other complaints are questionable design choices (like collecting 3 books to advance), scripted battles, and tedious dungeons (mainly in your Gear). Thankfully, some dungeons include a map, which is a lifesaver.

I had not played a JRPG in many years. Despite my gripes, this game renewed my passion for the genre within a few hours. With its intriguing story and beautiful soundtrack, this is a game that will be hard to forget.

I usually don't write real reviews on here but I feel like I really felt like this one deserved it.

I didn't really expect much of this game to be completely honest. I've been wanting to go through the entire "Xeno" series for awhile and as this is the first game, I had to play it.

This game is a fucking masterpiece. ...and I mean it. 90% of this game I was in genuine awe at what I was playing. I could not believe that this was a PSX game. Phenomenal music, phenomenal plot, phenomenal characters, phenomenal everything.

All of this to say, PLAY THIS GAME. I loved it, and I'm sure you'll love it too.

This game oh boy.
Loved the story, all the ideas it throws at you, loved how the main characters actually had depth to them, loved to explore the cities. The approach to graphics was pretty clever, with the world being 3d and characters being sprites. The gameplay was fine for the 2/3 of the game and then it really started to grind my gears, with the constant random encounters and boring combo system (gear combat was a bit better since you need to manage fuel).

Overall a game totally worth playing, but the gameplay made it feel like a chore sometimes

There are a few things I dislike about this game, chief among them are the insanely high encounter rate and most of Nortune (especially the fucking sewers). However once you get Thames this game is incredibly smooth sailing.

Gameplay is not the most stimulating considering every time I fought monsters for a bit I'd proceed to open my menu, check progress on deathblows, close menu, over and over and over (might have just been a me issue). Also inputting the same combo over and over to grind up deathblows, having to watch the animation tends to get a little stale. Had it not been for the incredibly interesting world/lore and an engaging story I don't think I would have been able to get through this game.

Overall I'd highly recommend this game with an emulator to make some of the encounter rates more bearable. When this game gets going, it gets going. Easy recommend (with emulator).

Very ambitious and captivating story with adult themes that keeps you playing, especially the further in you go.

The music in this game is great and I wouldn't have expected anything less from Yasunori Mitsuda.

The gameplay is interesting and unique and comes with two modes of combat which helps with the repetitive aspect of battling in a 90s JRPG.

Although this game was arguably too ambitious and forced to take a more story mode pace in the later half of the game, it still managed to turn out great.

This game instantly became my favorite at the time upon playing it on release in 98.

I didn't think this game would age that well but was wrong after replaying it a few times over the years.

Time has not been kind to this game, feels awfully dated.
I'm not a graphic whore but there's a point where the overall bad look of the game gets between me and enjoying the game.
Also it suffers from a lot of JRPG "old ways": Bad camera work, way to much and way too repetitive random encounters, lack of personalization on characters, slowness... I can force me to endure some of those thing in old games, but the game has to hook me with something else, i don't feel that "something else" here so i won't keep playing it.
I'm sure story will get good, but i will pass and wait, maybe the future will bring a remake or something for this title.

Nota: 8,0/10,0

Vamos aos aspectos técnicos, arte desing maravilhosos, arte pixels é vida, batalha em turno que são ótimas, trilha sonoras algumas sé destaca, progressão do jogo pode afastar muitos pela forma extensa de conteúdo, mas infelizmente peca pós game.

História é maravilhosa, incrível, uma obra de arte extremamente polida de uma forma que não consigo por em palavras direito, um elenco grande parte maravilhsoso, um mundo que interessantíssimo de explorar e uma reta final meio complicada, por conta de ser muito rushada e falta de alguns contexto da história que estão em outras midias.

Favorite game of all time. Where had this been my whole life?

I'd started it sometime in mid-2020, got distracted and dropped off in Nortune, restarted it in mid-2021 to play alongside Resonant Arc's Xenogears podcast series (highly recommended for first time players). Suddenly became obsessed with it after finishing Xenoblade 3 in 2022 because it had so much Xenogears influence, making my mind go back to XG again and again.
~~
I'm the kind of person who primarily plays games for the story, gameplay second. In this case, the combat is lacking, but I still enjoy it, both on foot combat and Gear combat.

On foot combat is fun, but eventually gets repetitive with only really using the most recent deathblows acquired. The game doesn't make full use of its own combat system, I think. It needed more difficulty so that you actually make use of more ether spells and items, I think. And make special attacks actually deal more damage than just normal attacking, because why use them instead? That goes for Gear combat as well.

Gear combat is also fun, but in a different way. One thing the game doesn't explain (until very nearly the end, and hidden away in an optional area, no less) is Hyper mode. Some people call it "infinite attack", because its indicated by an ♾ icon in the attack level UI. Recommended to look up how that works after you finish Shevat, as that's when it becomes available to use. Hyper mode adds another whole level of strategy to Gear combat that I completely missed out on during my first playthrough.
Gear combat is largely about managing your fuel, though. Every time its an iron man until the next fuel-up point, basically. (or until you find a Fix Bot or Heal Seraph in combat)

(The best way to play it nowadays is the Perfect Works Build mod. They've done an excellent job reworking the combat, enemies, rebalancing characters, etc, adding more of a challenge. That mod is still in the works, getting updates to this day. It does more than just combat; retranslation, JP voices, FMV subtitles, fast text with no softlocking- and all of the options are stackable, you could have the retranslation with no other changes if you wanted. I highly recommend it.)
~~
The story is where its at, though. Best story in gaming, for me personally. And with the addition of the Perfect Works art/lore book its through the roof. Seemingly endless amount of lore to learn that spans 15,000 years.
There's a reason why its the "inspiration" for the rest of the Xeno games that have come since. Takahashi loves this kind of storytelling and its clear a lot of Xenogears' elements have been reworked and incorporated in different ways into Xenoblade 3.

People gave me a bad impression of disc 2, so I guess since my hopes weren't high it helped because disc 2 is amazing. Just about when Ive gotten my fill of gameplay the story takes over. Then just about when I'm getting the urge for more gameplay disc 2 delivers more exploration and combat.
The cliffhanger of disc 1 and it going straight into the iconic chair sequence and flashbacks of Lacan and Sophia is fantastic. If they ever remade this game that'd HAVE to stay the same. The monologues and music during that scene make me so emotional, honestly.

Of course its not all perfect, any XG fan will admit that freely and easily. It suffers from introducing party members and then basically never using them in the story ever again. The story is very much focused on Fei and Elly with a side of Bart and Citan.

For example, Billy had a pretty good story arc start to finish with a "supporting cast" so to speak of Jessie, Prim, and Stone, but as soon as you're done in Nortune Rico is basically forgotten about and his story's supporting cast only consists of Hammer with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Sigmund. He had so much potential.
Same goes for Maria after you finish Shevat.
As soon as you get Emeralda she is never given much attention ever (until the optional area at the end. the poor girl got the "we've only got 2 flipping years to work on this huge game" short end of the stick. even had her omnigear cut)
And the first time (only time?) Fei and Billy interact its when Billy tells him he doesn't know how to treat a woman. (lmao)
~~
Having a moveable camera, 2D characters in a 3D world, is something I really love. And the 3D maps are beautiful! Of course, it isn't always handled well in gameplay, especially when paired with platforming, but Ive got a lot of patience for old controls and jankiness like that so it doesn't bother me much.

Primarily, I love how they use the camera in cutscenes, the game's cinematography. Specifically the part when Fei wakes up after the opening events and how it pans to Weltall looming behind him, how it shows the camera from over Weltall's shoulder showing its perspective as Fei walks away.
The perspective of the monster in the sewers, using a red or green filter over its vision to foreshadow something, or another similar monster later where its perspective has no colored filter.
The scene right before the end of disc 1, showing events down at the characters' level rather than from high above (keeping this spoiler free).
The transitions from one scene to another like the scene with Fei and Elly where it pans upward to Shevat in the sky, and then back down to Bart elsewhere. Beautiful!
~~
Ive played this game about 2.5 times now. No idea how long I've spent playing it. At least 200 hours so far.
Just recently finished my second full playthrough. Going to be starting another playthrough (with the most recent PW Build mod update) soon-ish because I miss disc 1 so much.


~~
As an aside, I have to shout out the profound impact this game has had on my life.
The amount of external sci-fi this game has gotten me into is unprecedented for me. I wasn't a mecha person before. Now I've got them all over my desk, Takahashi style. Never would've read books like Childhood's End or watched movies like Logan's Run, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Soylent Green otherwise.
Its gotten me into contributing to the fan wiki, translating pages of PW to have accurate info for english sites, modding the game myself, the list goes on.

Without Xenogears I most likely would've stopped drawing/painting by now, I was nearly to that point of quitting entirely after years of being in a slump, but it inspired me to continue this hobby. And in connecting with the fans online I have had such a great experience. Everyone is so kind.
I am not kidding or overreacting when I say this game has changed my life so much for the better. For me it was that once-in-a-lifetime experience that impacted me to my core, and I didn't even realize it until 9 months after I finished it.