Xenogears: The JRPG That Dreamed Too Big and (Sort of) Pulled It Off

April 19, 2025

Released in 1998 during the height of Square's creative rampage on the original PlayStation, Xenogears landed in a golden age when JRPGs weren't just popular—they were cultural events. Final Fantasy VII had kicked open the door to the West with a meteor-sized bang, Chrono Cross was quietly simmering with hype as a spiritual sequel to a fan favorite, and Parasite Eve was doing weird science experiments with the genre—part survival horror, part RPG, part New York fever dream. Square wasn't just pushing boundaries—they were bulldozing them. If you were a PlayStation owner in the late '90s, it felt like every other month brought another genre-defining experience.

And then, out of nowhere, came this brooding, philosophical sci-fi epic that looked like Evangelion on a theology bender. It had giant mechs, amnesia, ancient civilizations, and three creation myths baked into one storyline. It threw around words like "id," "animus," and "Zohar" like they were part of everyday vocabulary. Nothing about it was safe, commercial, or even particularly mainstream. You could almost feel it—Xenogears wasn't built to sell millions. It was built because someone had to make it. It felt like a late-night fever dream from a group of artists who knew they might never get this kind of freedom again.

What made Xenogears stick—besides its infamously unfinished second disc—was that it felt like a game no one else would ever dare to make. It was too smart, too messy, too raw. It asked big questions and didn't always care if you had the answers. One moment, you were fighting in a desert mech battle; the next, you were neck-deep in a monologue about the nature of existence and human suffering. And it wasn't trying to be pretentious—it was what it was. Unapologetically.

It was the kind of game that wasn't just about defeating evil or saving the world; it was about figuring out why the world broke in the first place—and whether it deserved saving. It didn't hold your hand. It trusted you to keep up, or at least try.

And honestly? That alone makes it worth talking about.

Not Quite What They Ordered

Xenogears weren't part of a master plan. It was a creative outlier that somehow slipped through.

The original pitch? Believe it or not, it was intended to be Final Fantasy VII. Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga brought Square a concept loaded with psychological trauma, religious allegory, and heavy existential themes—wrapped in sci-fi, layered with political unrest, and powered by giant robots. Square listened, paused, and said, "Yeah, no. Too dark for Final Fantasy." Which, let's be honest, is saying a lot. This is the same studio that gave us planetary destruction, cloned identities, and apocalyptic summons—and this was too much?

But instead of tossing the whole thing, Square did something unusual: they let it live on a tighter leash. Smaller budget. Shorter leash. No promises. "Go do your weird little project," essentially. Takahashi did this with a team of relative newcomers, a mountain of ideas, and the quiet understanding that this might be their one shot.

And instead of playing it safe, they went all in.

Takahashi and Saga built a story that pulled from Carl Jung's theory of the psyche, Nietzsche's writings on morality and self-overcoming, and dense layers of Gnostic myth. It wasn't just inspired by anime or classic RPG tropes—it reflected human suffering, identity, memory, and whether people could ever truly change. And it didn't shy away from any of it. The game came out swinging, narratively speaking, and never really stopped.

And sure, it was chaotic. Tonally uneven. Overwritten in some places and underdeveloped in others. But you could feel it breathing. This wasn't a product designed by a focus group—it was something more personal. Maybe it's even too personal. A passion project held together with ambition and grit.

It didn't always work. But it always meant something.

That's why people still talk about it. Xenogears, flaws and all, never felt like it was made to sell—it felt like it was made because someone needed to say something, and this was the only way they could say it.

"This Is the End of Our Innocence"

Xenogears' story doesn't start or end like most JRPGs. It skips the whole "farm boy becomes chosen one" arc and goes straight to existential collapse. There's no magic academy, no dragon-slaying rite of passage. Instead, you're dropped into the life of Fei Fong Wong—an amnesiac martial artist with a quiet demeanor and some serious, unexplained darkness under the surface. Within the first few hours, he accidentally destroys the village that took him in. From there, it only spirals: military chases, underground cults, ancient civilizations, and a slow, awful realization that Fei isn't just caught in some cosmic war—he is part of the weapon being used to fight it.

But the genius of Xenogears isn't revealed in the shocking plot. It's in what the story asks—about identity, memory, and whether you can ever outrun what's inside you.

Fei isn't just one character. He's a fractured psyche, split into multiple versions of himself—each one born from pain, each with its own voice and presence. And the game doesn't treat that as a gimmick. It treats it with respect. You're not just watching a man piece himself back together—you're feeling every step of that recovery, watching him confront the versions of himself he buried to survive.

Then there's Elly. She's not a sidekick or a love interest in the traditional JRPG sense—she's a mirror, a counterbalance. Their relationship spans lifetimes, tangled up in fate, regret, and the pull of something that feels like love but might be the echo of something long dead. They're drawn to each other, over and over, across reincarnations, across wars. But it's not romantic in a fairy tale sense—it's tragic. There's a quiet heartbreak in how they interact, like two people carrying someone else's history on their backs, just trying to figure out if they have a say.

And the game leans hard into that emotional gravity. It gets deeply philosophical, asking questions most games wouldn't even touch. What does it mean to have a soul? Can trauma be inherited? If your life was written before you were born, do your choices matter? At times, it feels less like a game and more like a late-night conversation with yourself you didn't want to have—but can't stop having.

There's a moment late in the story when Fei finally learns the full weight of who he's been. Not just in this life but across thousands of years. He pauses and quietly asks, "Which of them is really me?" And it's devastating—not because it's shocking, but because it's true. Anyone who's ever wrestled with their past has asked something similar.

In 1998, almost no one told stories like this in games—not with this emotional complexity or vulnerability.

Xenogears tried to be Evangelion before Evangelion finished being Evangelion. But really, they were orbiting the same ideas simultaneously—different mediums, same pain.

Don't Call It a Gundam

Alright, let's talk about the giant robots.

The mechs called "Gears" aren't just flashy set pieces or late-game power fantasies in-game. They're stitched into Xenogears' identity, inseparable from the plot, world, and characters. These machines aren't just tools—they're symbols. Reflections. Echo chambers for trauma and transformation. Every Gear is uniquely tied to its pilot, not just in design but in what it represents.

Fei's Gear, Weltall, changes multiple times throughout the story—not because of mechanical upgrades, but because of who Fei becomes, thinks, or fears he might be. It's not just armor—it's his psyche in steel. When Fei fragments, Weltall transforms. When Fei reconnects with who he really is, it evolves again—more streamlined, stable, and in sync. The same goes for Elly: as her role in the story escalates into something mythic, her Gear, Vierge, grows almost angelic—graceful, glowing, otherworldly. These machines aren't just battle-ready—they're narrative devices.

Mechanically, Xenogears splits its combat between on-foot encounters and Gear battles, and that split isn't just cosmetic. On foot, fights are fast-paced, combo-driven martial arts affairs. When you're in your Gear, though, everything slows down. The weight kicks in—literally and metaphorically. Suddenly, you're managing fuel, juggling attack levels, and making calls that can backfire hard if you're reckless. Special attacks cost fuel, movement eats fuel, and even existing eats fuel. And when you run out? You're done. Gears don't just fall over—they become coffins.

It forces a different mindset. You're not just trying to win—you're trying to endure. Choosing when to strike and when to conserve becomes a mental game in itself. Every boss fight becomes a test of nerve as much as strength. And when you finally pull off a finisher after balancing your gauges. It hits harder than any Limit Break.

Were there issues? Sure. Some fights dragged on. Late-game balance could get messy. A few encounters felt more like puzzles with one correct solution than open-ended challenges. But none of that changes the feeling—the moment—of seeing your Gear, your burden, towering against a massive enemy as if your personal baggage had taken physical form to punch back.

Most JRPGs in the '90s stuck to swords, sorcery, and the occasional airship. Xenogears gave you a 20-ton weaponized metaphor for the human condition. They asked what you were willing to destroy—internally or externally—to survive.

It didn't feel like a gimmick. It felt like therapy wrapped in titanium.

Disc 2: Where the Train Derails (But You're Still on Board)

Ah, Disc 2. The part of Xenogears that derails the most—and yet, somehow, doesn't crash.

If you've played it, you know the shift. One moment, you're piloting Gears through vast deserts and navigating political coups in floating cities, and the next… Fei is sitting in a chair, narrating the story to you like an audiobook. No dungeons. Minimal exploration. Entire story arcs are reduced to summaries, with only a handful of actual gameplay sequences scattered. The game suddenly takes its hands off the wheel and says, "Okay, here's what would have happened."

And the reason is painfully simple: they ran out of time and money.

Square had bigger priorities—other flagship titles were eating up the schedule and the budget. Xenogears, already a risky bet, wouldn't get the runway it needed. So the developers made a compromise: tell the rest of the story however they could, even if it meant pulling back on the interactivity. What was supposed to be dozens of hours of playable content became a narrated sprint to the finish.

It should've killed the experience. But it didn't.

Instead of feeling like a lazy patch job, Disc 2 somehow lands with this strange emotional gravity. Something is haunting about hearing the characters tell you what happened instead of showing it. The stripped-down format draws attention to the writing, the voiceover, and the emotional beats. You start listening harder, feeling more. It becomes less about doing and more about understanding.

Sure, you lose the tactile adventure. You miss out on side quests and character moments that might've bloomed. But what remains still hits hard—existential spirals, betrayals, redemption arcs. They're all still there, just delivered differently. It's not a satisfying meal, but enough to keep you full.

Strangely, the broken structure mirrors the characters themselves. Fei is fractured. The world is fractured. Time is fractured. Why wouldn't the storytelling be, too? The medium becomes the message. You're left with a game trying to hold itself together like its characters are—barely, painfully, and with everything it has left.

Some games break and lose their meaning. Xenogears broke and found a new one.

The Music That Carries the Soul

Let's not sugarcoat this: Yasunori Mitsuda's score for Xenogears is absurdly good.

Coming off Chrono Trigger and working toward Chrono Cross, Mitsuda was already building a reputation for crafting soundtracks that didn't just complement the games—they defined them. But with Xenogears, he went deeper. There's a quiet, aching soul to this music. Celtic instrumentation, haunting piano lines, whispered choirs, and string arrangements that feel less like background and more like emotional undercurrents. It's not just setting the mood—it is the mood. The soundtrack doesn't follow the story; it walks alongside it.

"Faraway Promise" hits you early, and it lingers. There's this soft, almost weightless sadness—not depressing, just… distant. Like remembering something important you never actually lived through. Then there's "The One Who Is Torn Apart," which doesn't try to hide what it's about. It's tense, uncomfortable, and full of push and pull. It sounds like inner conflict, someone trying to hold themselves together and losing ground. And "Small Two of Pieces"—the credits theme—doesn't go for the big emotional finish. It's quiet, raw, and completely unguarded. You don't realize how much it's getting to you until it's already in your head. And once it's there, good luck shaking it.

And that's the real power of the score—it lasts. You'll still remember the music long after you've forgotten the details of the combat system or how that one dungeon worked. It keeps the story emotionally intact when other parts start to fray. The soundtrack holds steady when the pacing drags or the visuals show their age. Grounding you. Guiding you.

Sometimes, a song does what code can't. It fills in the silence with something that feels like meaning.

A Beautiful, Broken Legacy

Xenogears never got a proper sequel—no continuation, reimagining, or quiet spiritual revival tucked into a Square Enix showcase. Despite fan interest that's endured for over two decades, the game remains a one-and-done anomaly. Square let the rights sit dormant like they didn't quite know what they were holding—or maybe they knew exactly what it was: too complicated, too niche, too much of a gamble.

Internally, the team fractured. The people who had poured everything into this impossible project weren't brought back to refine it or build on its momentum. Instead, they moved on. Tetsuya Takahashi, exhausted but undeterred, left Square and co-founded Monolith Soft. And from that creative departure came the Xenosaga trilogy—a dense, heady attempt to pick up where Xenogears left off, this time with a fresh universe and a bigger philosophical canvas. It had the ambition, themes, and hunger—but it was also burdened by its weight. Episodic storytelling rushed conclusions, and production limitations meant Xenosaga never quite became the generational saga it wanted to be.

Years later, Xenoblade Chronicles showed up and became the new face of Monolith Soft. It was bigger, more refined, and way more approachable. Takahashi's work is the most successful in reaching and gaining recognition. And yeah, it kept many big ideas alive—fate, identity, the whole "gods playing with humanity like chess pieces" thing. But it came at them with a steadier hand. It knew when to slow down, when to guide the player, and when to hold back. You could tell it learned a lot from Xenogears—it cleaned up the pacing, trimmed the fat, and made the chaos easier to follow.

But even with all that polish, it never had that same spark.

It wasn't carefully engineered because Xenogears wasn't built to be smooth. It felt like a creative outburst—messy, unpredictable, and burning with too many ideas to fit in one place. It's the kind of thing you only get when nobody's micromanaging, when a team's just going for it, trying to build something honest before the clock runs out. It was overwhelming, clunky, and sometimes flat-out broken.

But it had a soul. And you could feel it.

You don't plan games like that. You survive them.

That may be why it still resonates. Xenogears feels like art made under pressure by people who knew they might never get this chance again. It wasn't designed to be safe, efficient, or coherent. It was designed to matter. And for all its rough edges—some might say because of them—it does.

Games today still echo its legacy, whether directly or unconsciously. You can feel Xenogears in the philosophical spirals of NieR: Automata, where androids ask questions they weren't programmed to answer. In Death Stranding, where isolation and connection dance uneasily. In the fragmented, multi-perspective structure of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, the past, present, and future bleed together under the weight of memory. Even in the quiet narrative ambition of Outer Wilds or the moral grey zones of Disco Elysium, you can trace its fingerprints. The influence is not always on the surface but deep in the idea that games can be more than systems. That they can wrestle with meaning.

But none of those games quite feel like Xenogears. Xenogears wasn't built for longevity or clarity. It was built for expression, for catharsis. It was a team saying something huge and deeply personal without guaranteeing anyone would hear it.

And maybe that's why it's never been replicated.

It wasn't just ahead of its time—it wasn't even of its time. It was a work completely out of step with the industry around it. There was no market research, no clean elevator pitch, just a game made by people with too much to say and barely enough time to say it.

In a way, Xenogears is like the story it tells—fragmented, imperfect, and constantly at war with itself. But also honest. And human. And still reaching for something bigger than it could ever fully grasp.

That kind of legacy doesn't need a sequel. It lives on in everyone who plays it and comes away thinking, "I didn't understand all of that… but I felt it."