Xenogears

aka: Project Noah, Xenosaga Episode V: Xenogears
Moby ID: 4154
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Description official descriptions

A war has been raging on the continent of Ignas between the Kislev Empire to the north and the kingdom of Aveh in the south. It has gone for so long that people have forgotten the cause. As a mysterious organization known as "Ethos" introduces an ancient technology in the form of huge mega-robots, the tides are turning. Gebler, a military organization with an unknown agenda, is pulling the strings and supports Aveh to regain its authority over Kislev.

A failed attempt to steal one of Kislev's new Gears, a giant robot named "Weltall", leads to a fight between a group of Gebler and Kislev guards in the remote town of Lahan in the outskirts of Aveh. One of the villagers, Fei Fong Wong, impulsively takes possession of "Weltall" and steers it to fight. As Fei's best friend Timothy is killed during the battle, he releases a massive wave of energy and destroys the whole village together with one of his close friends, Alice.

After this tragedy, Fei is blamed for the destruction of the village and the death of his friends. Pursued by military governments and mysterious forces, Fei sets out on an epic quest for answers and his own forgotten past.

Xenogears is a Japanese-style RPG with a few distinguishing features. The characters have the ability to jump, which must be used on several occasions to access specific locations. There are two types of combat in the game: standard and gear. In standard combat, the characters fight with equipped weapons, learning and performing different combos that can be executed in one turn. But often the heroes will have to explore dungeons while piloting giant robots called "gears". Gear combat follows different rules: they are able to perform actions until they run out of fuel, therefore the player must concentrate on finishing the enemy quickly. It is possible to equip various accessories on the gears, including those that will let them partially restore fuel. Gears cannot level up, but can be upgraded in workshops.

Spellings

  • ゼノギアス - Japanese spelling

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Credits (PlayStation version)

292 People (282 developers, 10 thanks) · View all

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Music Compostion-Arrangement
Character Design
Mechanical Design
Co-Character Design
Co-Mechanical Design
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Chief Artistic Design
Localization Coordinator / Project Leader
Localization Assistant Coordinator
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Localization Management
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 91% (based on 23 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 97 ratings with 5 reviews)

The reason why even after some slips I still respect Squaresoft

The Good
Xenogears is truly an incredible experience, and much of it comes thanks to the fact that it is a very experimental, chance-taking game. Riding hot on the success of FF7, Square took a big chance and released a very atypical rpg with the knowledge that even if it bombed due to it's weird graphics, complex and philosophical story, etc, etc. FF8 would redeem it since it was tailor-made to please the masses. I really don't know if Xenogears was a commercial success or not, but I do know that it is one Square's greatest games.

The game takes place in a fantasy world (which is, in turn, surprisingly similar to ours) where two powerful nations are at war with powerful mechs named Gears, and secret organizations move all sort of strings from the shadows. Suddenly the war will reach an innocent village, home to an orphan named Fei, and when said village becomes attacked, the naive Fei will take control of a Gear and in a sudden release of power, destroy his enemies, the village, and everyone he loves in it. That small confrontation will be the stepping stone to one of the most complex and ground breaking stories I've ever encountered in a game, as Fei leaves the remains of his village in a self-imposed exile, he'll become entangled in the war that is brewing and find out that his release of power wasn't all that accidental. He'll eventually join a revolutionary movement and discover that the war is secretly being motivated by a shadowy nation whose objectives will grow to be larger than the typical "world domination" scheme and actually include human evolution and very deep religious and philosophical affairs. And if you think you have seen that before you are right, the game is heavily inspired by that masterpiece of animation known as Evangelion. But Xenogears, free of the constraints that a tv show has, is able to go the extra mile and pose all sorts of questions regarding life, religion, and our own identities. But perhaps the finest achievement in Xenogears is the way the story is presented, instead of marching proudly to accomplish an objective or perform a specific task, the plot is revealed in layers and layers that transcends each other, the patented Square "complex hero" plotline reveals a deeper dilemma when all reality is shattered and exposed as a lie, after which you find yourself confronting god itself (if it can be called that) and the source of all creation... and after which you come full circle in a... well, let's leave that as a surprise ;)

The graphics in the game are also very rare, instead of CGI cutscenes Square used traditional cel-animated ones, and for the in-game graphics they used a mix of 3D backgrounds and objects, with 2D characters! That's right, I told ya this game took chances and none are more evident than the graphics. Plus instead of going the super-realistic route, the characters are rendered in the traditional "Super Deformed" way that make them look like they were ripped right out of a Snes, given a technical workout, and placed in a fully 3D world. You may ask how can I include such an unholy union in the "good" part, and that is simply because it gives the game a unique and excellent style that no other has. It takes the subtleties that only simpler art can give you and the freedom of exploration that a 3D environment give to make one stunning game world.

Also interestingly inventive is the game system, which includes some platform-game touches (tough don't worry... or actually do! [read "the bad"]) and features a fighting game-like fighting system. Fights are turn based, and can be on Gears or mano-a-mano, but instead of being handled over a buttload of menus, they are controlled by your pad's buttons: press X and you execute a hard blow, press O and you do a kick, etc. with your only limitation being a series of Action Points. As your character goes up in levels you'll be able to execute "special moves" by pressing sequences of buttons and even unleash combos by not attacking and storing those APs. Once again this system works perfectly with the game and seems like a breath of fresh air by cutting out the hassle and enhancing the action for each encounter.

The Bad
Well for starters some of the stuff in the game are, due to their experimental nature, love-or-hate. I loved the graphics and the arcade-like battle system, but I'm aware that some of you will grow to hate them (especially the graphics), ahh...what can you do...

The only big gripe I've got with the game is that it is completely linear in nature, even for a console rpg! Save for some secret items and the choice to finish the game with merely a competent cast or with every character at level 1.000.000 there's not much you can do. There's one BIG (and I do mean BIG) side-plot that explains some stuff, but all there is to do is obligatory, so there's no "buttloads of secrets" in this one like on the FFs. Also, for as chance-taking as the storyline is, there are unfortunately quite a bit of the Square-touches (cue in the patented flying ship, the cutey character, the "big-strong-character-that-is-menacing-but-really-has-a-heart-of-gold", the hidden traumas for the main character, etc. etc. etc...) not enough to detract from the experience, but enough to make you think "Couldn't they leave those things out at least ONCE??!".

The other big gripe I've got is with the platform touches, they include some stupid jumping puzzles and obstacle avoiding, I said don't worry because unlike other console rpg's (hello Nintendo!) they are few and far between, but this is also bad because it means that when you get to them you'll be ill prepared and get incredibly frustrated as you fall, get killed, etc.

Lest I forget, the dubbing is HORRIBLE! I hear this is not Electronics Arts fault since the animation wasn't even done for Japanese dialogue in the beginning, but still... the mouths keep moving for up to 5 seconds after the dialogue has ended!!

The Bottom Line
A very odd console rpg that holds one of the most complex and well constructed stories ever to grace a computer game. I usually tend to think of this one as FF7.5, but it is actually a great game in its own right. Despite it's few flaws (which were something to expect in a game that is really one big experiment) it is quite simply a game that is too good to be true. If only Square dedicated to take chances more often instead of trying to keep making "hip" pseudo rpgs...

PlayStation · by Zovni (10504) · 2001

Potential ruined at every corner. A huge let-down, a frustratingly stupid game.

The Good
There is a lot I wanted to like about Xenogears, and while I thought it was a hugely idiotic game, there was still quite a bit lying around that at least made some of the game worth putting sixty hours into.

Around the time the game came out, console RPGs were going under a graphics trend involving 3D characters on prerendered two-dimensional backdrops. I appreciate that this game does the exact opposite: 2D characters on 3D terrain. It not only makes this game stand out, graphics-wise from the rest, but it also works very well and looks fantastic. Especially with a Playstation 2's "smooth textures" option, which blurs the sprites so that they don't appear quite as pixelated during close-ups.

Like a long, complex, deep story? Xenogears has probably the deepest story I've seen in a console RPG. Throughout this two-disc adventure it seems that every fifteen minutes you uncover a new layer, a new plot twist, a new side of Fei. The story dives so far under these layers you might want to keep a notepad handy to keep track of everything going on.

There are two modes of combat: with a Gear and without. Outside of a gear you fight using weapons and martial arts and can string together combos and such, and inside a gear you have to manage your status and fuel consumption. While I thought both modes were very lacking, I still enjoyed having to adapt to two distinct fighting environments to survive.

The Bad
Unfortunately, it seemed that for every great idea this game had, there was something there just made to counter it. As I said, this game's storyline is long and complex and very, very deep. But rather than immersive and exciting, I found it to be convoluted and annoying. The storyline itself is very good, but the execution and presentation of it make it far too annoying to enjoy.

This game has hands-down the most stupid and annoying dialogue I've ever seen in any game. It almost seems as though it's just a really, really poor translation. Awkward grammar, misspellings, incorrect punctuation, and more "..." per conversation than any game I've ever played. Here's a pretty good example of what 99% of the dialogue in the game looks like:

Fei: "..."

Elly: "...?! ...What's wrong, Fei?!"

Fei: "...What? ...Nothing?!"

Elly: "..."

Fei: "...?!"

Elly: "Okay?!"

Fei: "...I'll be okay?! ..."

Now, I just made that up...I'm pretty sure. But that exact conversation is not unlikely to have been found in the game somewhere. Having to sit through that kind of crap made whatever story this game had to give almost unbearable. I wanted to like the characters, but I just hated them instead. Or rather, I hated the people who wrote the damn dialogue.

If you can get past the bullshit dialogue, sometimes the characters are almost worth their presence, but then you realize that this game consists entirely of cliched characters. Characters such as the nerd, the rebellious royal youth, the annoying kid, the shy, deep main character, the large, detached mean introvert who has a soft side to him although he'd never admit it, the mad angry villain who wants to rule the world for no real reason...and the list goes on. As I said, sometimes the characters have...something in them that really shines through. But those instances are a rare occurrence.

Having to play through the game utilizing two different methods of combat was a neat thing, but I really wish they'd have just left Gear combat out of the game altogether, or just changed it to something better. Unlike normal combat, which is flawed but still fun to do, Gear combat consists mostly of making sure you don't run out of fuel. The fights in Gears are never hard, unless you run out of gas, in which they're still not very hard but they're more annoying. Combat on the ground is fun, and the sprites are great to see kick each other around, but about a half hour into the game you get pretty much the most powerful combos you're going to get and there's no reason NOT to use these combos. You can stack up some points by not using these combos and then executing a really long combo, but do the math and you'll see that you'd be doing just as much damage by doing the combos as you would by saving up combo points, and you'll probably get hurt less too.

The game has a pretty deep story for you to experience, but be prepared to grab a walkthru or something before you play this game. There's almost never a clear indication of where you're supposed to go next. Sometimes, the only clue you're given is "make yourself at home" and the plot WILL NOT advance any further until you've spoken to one specific character in some specific area, and there may be a hundred different characters in twenty different areas for you to talk to, and there is no clue for whom you're supposed to meet! If I put sixty hours into the game, I'd say at least twenty were spent wandering around talking to every single person and sitting through line after line after line of increasingly stupid dialogue until I finally found that one guy - who, by the way, may not have had any importance at all as far as the story goes! - that allowed the plot to go a little further until the next vague "why don't you make yourself at home" mission. In one particular part of the game, the plot doesn't advance until you've spoken to EVERYBODY in a certain area. That's like thirty people. AND it does not indicate that this is what you're supposed to do! As a rule, I only use a walkthru as a very last resort, but having spent two hours in the same fucking area I finally looked it up and found, hey, you have to talk to EVERYBODY and I missed one or two people during my frustrating need to advance the story.

There are areas in the game where encounters come at an insane rate. I can't remember many battles, save for boss battles, being very hard, but it's just throw-your-controller-against-the-wall annoying when you can get from Point A to Point B because you get an encounter every two seconds.

The Bottom Line
Looking back at this game, I think I could have enjoyed it if they had just made a few changes. Rewrite the entire damn dialogue (or shorten it by about sixty thousand lines by getting rid of all instances of "..."), and make a clear indication of who you have to speak to next, and I think I could have really enjoyed the game. Sure, it would have been flawed, but at least it would have been bearable.

Xenogears has a deep story, a lot of interesting characters, a unique graphics style and two unique modes of combat. Unfortunately, the dialogue is horrible, the quests are frustrating, the characters taken from the Big Book of Cliches...

Oh, there's something there. But it's buried under a mountain of frustration.

PlayStation · by kbmb (415) · 2004

Ye Olde Bible Could Use Some Japanese Mecha In It

The Good
You know those games. Games, that don't require you to save the world, don't feature outlandish mixes of fantasy and sci-fi, short on exposition and usually dealing with "relationship" problems and personal dramas. These games can be adequately described as chamber games, taking cues from filmmaking and classical music. Do you like the sound of it? Well, suck it up, pal. Because, Xenogears, is the exact opposite of the game I described above. It's 100% concentrated epic. Hell, if you ever wanted to define "epic" in a single word, Xenogears is the word to go for. This game is grand, it plays with titans and gods, Freudian psychoanalysis, organized religion and Jungian philosophy. It doesn't shy away from destroying nations and exploring the genesis of life itself. It's an enormous leviathan, filled with delusions of grandeur and megalomania. It's monumental and relentless on its mission to explode your brain from within, with hundreds of plotlines, dozens of twists, numerous characters and the whole library worth of backstory, shifting gears (no pun intended) far beyond the capacities of any reasonable gearbox. And it also has giant robots and a cutesy sidekick animal that says "chu" instead of "to" or "too".

You can immediately tell its a Japanese game. The maxim of making everything either as cool as possible, or as grand as possible or as saturated as possible is in full play here. However, there is also aplenty of stuff that really separates the game from other <moby>SquareSoft</moby> RPGs. The most important difference here, is that story is the ultimate boss, not a single character can be named a protagonist, even Fei - the character you play with most of the time is but another thread in weaving the tapestry of Xenogears story. Leave your emotional problems upon entry, nobody cares if your father didn't appreciate for what you were, nobody cares if you can't express your feelings adequately, here people play with gods and demons, far beyond the petty problems of mere mortals.

In the end, it's definitely cool, that moving at a breakneck pace, in effort to tell its grand story, the game forgets the half of its cast on the sidewalk, once they've served their function as many cogs moving the story of Xenogears forward. Including an obligatory cutesy animal, thankfully. No time for comic relief, we have a powerful story of majestic proportions to tell! Actually, there is rarely time for anything. Thinking about it now, it seems that the game pace moved with the speed of light, changing major players, motivations and identities every two minutes or so. Which is rather impressive, for despite its length, neither part of the game's narrative feels dispensable. Something happens all the time, the development of plot never stops. And it's nothing but commendable, in light of many jRPGs, artificially prolonging their narratives, just to put a bullet point about 100+ hours of story and gameplay.

About gameplay. It's hilarious how immersed the creators have become in their story, that they often forget that its actually a game, and that the player is also expected, by definition, to do... stuff. It feels like they've hired someone specifically for the purpose of entering the busy room of developers team once in a while, and saying "Are you working on gameplay portions?" followed by the disgruntled sighs "Oh, yeah... totally forgot about that. Let's put a boss fight here... or something". Not to say that the gameplay isn't without its share of imagination. It's part generic jRPG fare, with random battles and grinding, part a fighting game with combos and special moves. Once a selection of moves has been learned, one can employ those abilities while fighting in giant robots or, as they called them in the game, gears. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really have time to explore this promising system at any significant depth, for the reasons mentioned above. Thankfully, the gameplay portion of this visual novel is never a nuisance, the game is very easy. Every single boss requires only but a few strategically placed kicks in the nuts to get out of your way.

Another thing worthy of praise is the game's presentation. It's basically a Playstation game with SNES sensibilities. No need for fancy 3D model, if a lushly animated sprite will do the trick. And looking at the horrible simplicity of character models in <moby>Final Fantasy VII</moby>, I think it was a correct choice. The environment is in full 3D, however, removing much of the annoyance of pixel hunting in the prerendered stills of Xenogears bigger and more popular <moby game="Fina Fantasy VII">sistergame</moby>. The design is also great. Especially the interiors. Little cups, pots, pictures, sinks, stoves are painstakingly detailed with warm light flooding the room through the open window, evoking the first moments of <moby>Chrono Trigger</moby>, the game featuring the same level of detail. Another similarity with <moby>Chrono Trigger</moby> is Xenogears score. While not exactly well-versed in Japanese game composers, I have still unmistakably identified the author of Xenogears music, by his style and touch alone.

Robots are cool too. I'm not a mecha fan, but I definitely enjoyed the introduction of every new gear, and always looked forward to trying them out in battle. <br><br>**The Bad**<br>The major problem is the one I've already mentioned. While I don't mind long cutscenes to munch popcorn (I hate popcorn, btw) to, I do become easily annoyed when I'm asked to hit a confirmation button every time someone finished a sentence, or even performed the infamous Japanese art of dots pronouncing i.e. ".....", ".....!", ".......!??!", and my all time favourite  "!!!......!?..I..?". No idea what those are supposed to mean.

No to say that substituting dots with actual words makes sentences any better. While on macrolevel, the narrative of Xenogears is incredibly complex, entangled and rich, on microlevel of words, sentences and phraseological units, its rather dull and pedestrian. A sin shared with many other jRPGs, so no big deal, if you're used to this strain of Japanese/American teenage anime talk.

Another point I would like to make deals with the fact, that the game is unfinished, and obviously was rushed towards the release by the forces unknown to me. The 2nd disc is a good indicator of that. Having lost the support, money or time, but not willing to sacrifice the original story plan, the developers chose to present the rest of its grandiose storyline with walls of text backgrounded by a handful of still frames. Obviously, the game suffered as a result. The already fast pace nearly skyrocketed, with events happening so fast, that its beyond human abilities to keep up. Side plot lines like those of Rico's claim to royalty, or the relationship between Bart and Sig are also never explored, let alone resolved, the same with many other characters arcs like Billy's, Emeralda's etc.

And lastly, although it isn't really fair to criticize the game for being what it is, I can't help but feel, that perhaps Xenogears does take itself too seriously. Don't get me wrong, I did dig all the Biblical stuff, and as I said in oneliner, it definitely is a much more enjoyable piece of work than Bible, now that it has giant bipedal robots, and god is nothing but a... nah, won't spoil it. But really, sometimes, it does go a bit too self-conscious with its epic madness of a story. And given the amount of symbolism it carries over from religion, philosophy and psychology, it wouldn't have hurt to be, I dunno, more playful with it. Mirroring the crucifixion scene at Golgotha, with Jesus substituted with a giant mech is an example of that. And, unfortunately, it never gets any wilder that that.

The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that if you never experienced even a faint interest in the genre of jRPG, Xenogears won't sway you over. If, however, like me, you are equally mesmerized by them as you are frustrated by their deficiencies, Xenogears is a gem. It's a game, which couldn't have been made outside Japan. It's a grand, awe inspiring and a genuinely deep adventure, with no equivalent to be found in miles. It's better than any Final Fantasy and it's one of my favourite jRPGs ever.

Basically, if there ever was a way to convincingly marry Jesus and Freud in a ceremony involving giant walking robots and flying submarines - this is it.

PlayStation · by St. Martyne (3648) · 2009

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
2D Sprites? SharkD (425) Aug 17, 2009
Preparations for the final boss Donatello (466) Sep 28, 2008
Question regarding gear deathblow skills Donatello (466) Sep 4, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The PS1 version of Xenogears appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Artbook

A companion artbook called Xenogears: Perfect Works exists. In addition to containing tons of original art from the game, it also contains details on events, character names, places and references to the backstory including all the other Xenosaga games (published years after Xenogears)

Controversy

There was some controversy surrounding the US release of Xenogears regarding the religious context of the title. Apparently the game was originally going to be heavily edited during the translation process. The reason? the game makes use of lots of catholic references (the Babel tower even appears as a location in the game) and makes some...controversial allegories on the game (ie. -SPOILER- the major religion on the planet turns out to be an entire fraud and a front to exploit people, etc). Fortunately save some item/monsters renaming the entire translation ended up being faithfull to the original.

German Language Usage

The creators of Xenogears made much use of the German language, in particular when naming the gears. A large amount of gears' names are actually German words. For example, "Weltall" means "universe", and "Stier" is "bull". Two gears are named Achtzehn and Seibzehn: the first word means "18", and the second would have meant "17", if it were not incorrectly spelled: the German word for 17 is "Siebzehn". Another gear is named "Vierge"; this is not German, but French, and means... "virgin". Hmm. If you say so... ;D

Kislev

Kislev, the name of one of the two rival empires of the game's universe, is actually just a month of the traditional Hebrew calendar!

References

  • There's a ton of sci-fi references in this game, both to the obvious japanese "giant robot" series, as well as some western sci-fi. For instance, the elements final form of attacking you is by joining their gears in an exact replica of all the Super Sentai (Power Rangers, etc.) sequences; When the Yggdrasil joins the Norturne city to form the super-gear you see it's called the "Super Dimensional Gear Yggdrasil" this is a reference to the old Robotech show were the big city-ship SDF-1 transformed itself in a giant robot (on the original japanese version (Macross) the ship was called Super Dimensional Fortress Macross).

  • References to western sci-fi include the name of the ship in the opening, the USS Eldridge (remember the Philadelphia Experiment?) and the Soylent System, which is, of course, made of peopleeeeeee!!

  • Heavy references to the Bible are found in abundance in "Xenogears". The old legend about the first humans who ate a forbidden fruit and thus "became like gods", which is the core of the game's story, is taken from the beginning of the Old Testament. The Babel Tower also appears in the first book of Moses. There are some subtler references. For example, the three wise men Gaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior are the exact names of the three mages who visited Jesus in Bethlehem.

  • Lucca from Chrono Trigger makes an appearance in Xenogears. She can be found right in the beginning of the game, in Lahan's Information House, teaching you about save points.

  • The name of one of the key characters in the game, Citan Uzuki, is a reference to Dr. Gitanes, the hero of Square's very first game, The Death Trap. Also note that both characters are doctors.

Special edition

There is a special edition of the game available in Japan as part of Squaresoft's Millenium Collection. The game is the same but can be found on two different packages with brand new cd art, one featuring Fei and the other Elly. Also the Fei package comes with a Fei and Bart plastic figure and the Elly package comes with Elly and Chu-chu.

Information also contributed by Ash Ligast II, Unicorn Lynx and WildKard.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by msl.

PS Vita added by Fred VT. PlayStation 3, PSP added by Charly2.0.

Additional contributors: Zovni, Unicorn Lynx, Shoddyan, DreinIX, —-, Patrick Bregger, Thomas Thompson, FatherJack.

Game added May 25, 2001. Last modified January 16, 2024.