Xenogears: what worked then and what holds up today
15 original professional reviews · 5 later professional/editorial reassessments · original coverage 1998–1999 · reassessments 2008–2026
In Lahan, Fei climbs into a war machine to defend his village and ends up destroying what he wanted to protect. Xenogears starts with that guilt, then takes you through cities, deserts and military bases, switching between exploration, dialogue and battles fought on foot or inside Gears. The journey is about discovering who Fei is and why his past involves so many other people. That story still earns praise decades later, but following it means accepting uneven pacing and a second disc that plays very differently from the first.
We compared a selection of what we consider some of the most authoritative reviews from the international press at the time, alongside later critical reassessments. The aim is to understand what remains convincing and which problems were already apparent, without letting nostalgia do the talking.
Consensus map
What endures and what is judged differently
Original reviews and later reassessments, considered separately.
Mysteries and characters impress, with dissent.
Its appeal lasts; clarity and pacing divide.
What changedIts complexity still demands attention.
Combos and Gears often earn praise.
Enjoyable, but not always used to the full.
What changedMore attention goes to what battles demand.
Jumping and camera control add possibilities.
Navigation and repetition remain problems.
What changedGood ideas do not remove the frustrations.
Direct narration has its defenders.
Reduced interaction is openly discussed.
What changedThe story and how you experience it matter separately.
The story gives you a reason to want answers
Fei does not leave home because he has finally found a heroic quest. He leaves after a tragedy he is responsible for, unable to understand what really happened to him. That changes how you follow the journey: each encounter might explain something about him, but it might also undermine what you thought you knew. The conflict between Aveh and Kislev gives you an initial direction. The protagonists’ pasts gradually turn that war into something much larger. You want to understand the world partly because it helps you understand the people living in it.
Original reviews often valued precisely that curiosity. The mystery did more than hide the next villain: it connected identity, personal relationships and power. Other RPGs had already told stories about war and amnesia, of course. Here, though, the questions surrounding the protagonist kept changing meaning as new information emerged. The praise came from how the story connected those elements, rather than the mere presence of religion, psychology or philosophy. Those references work when they help explain a choice or a wound. They would not improve the story just by being there.
That enthusiasm was not unanimous. GamesFirst! liked the overall story but found the dialogue and many digressions into the characters’ troubles unengaging. It looked forward to the next battle more than their introspection. GamePro rejected a story it considered slow, confusing and excessively wordy. These are different objections: in the first, the overall thread remains interesting; in the second, the way it is told prevents an attachment from forming. Reducing both to a lack of patience for RPGs would sidestep the problem they describe.
Later reassessments retain a strong interest in the protagonists, but they do not all reach the same conclusion about the writing. In 2026, RPGamer finds the dialogue, translation and emotional themes particularly successful. HonestGamers recognises memorable characters and scenes but thinks the plot loses clarity and continuity. The passing years do not automatically turn complexity into a strength. You can find the mystery compelling and still think some passages needed better explanations or fewer words.
There is also a difference between the central protagonists’ development and that of some companions. Fei and the most important figures keep changing, while others receive much of their attention when they first join the party. Original reviews already noted this limitation, and later ones return to it. Every party member does not need the same number of scenes. But an elaborate introduction creates expectations: when a character subsequently fades into the background, some of that work seems to promise development that never arrives.
The story remains the strongest reason to play Xenogears because it connects the world’s mysteries to personal conflicts that give its revelations weight. That success does not erase overlong dialogue or the party’s uneven development. Following it requires attention and a willingness to leave some questions unanswered for a while. The game often rewards that attention, but sometimes makes the journey more tiring than it needs to be.
Original reviews — 1998–1999
Story and charactersGameSpot · IGN · GameRevolution · Next Generation · Game Informer · Edge · PSM · Joypad
RPGFan · GamesFirst! · EGM · Player One · Consoles+
Later reassessments — 2008–2026
Story and charactersCombos change what you do; Gears change what you consider
In battle, you do more than select Attack and watch a character land a blow. You have a number of points to spend and three attack types assigned to different buttons. You can combine weak, medium and strong strikes and learn special techniques called Deathblows. Unused AP can be saved to chain several techniques together on a later turn. A gauge still determines when you can act: the resemblance to a fighting game lies in building sequences, rather than turning battles into action encounters that test your reflexes.
For many reviewers in 1998, that involvement made battles more enjoyable. A command became a short sequence to construct, and learning new moves gave you a reason to try different combinations. The animations helped distinguish an ordinary attack from a newly learned technique. It was easy to appreciate without wanting to inspect every statistic. Original reviews often emphasised that direct pleasure: watching a character perform a series of strikes you chose, instead of repeatedly selecting a single menu option.
Climbing into a Gear also changes the resources you need to consider. Attacks consume fuel, special techniques require appropriate attack levels, and the robot’s equipment affects its effectiveness. You can speed up its actions with the booster, but that costs more fuel. These decisions introduce a limit separate from the pilot’s health: attacking more often or choosing a powerful move can leave you with fewer options later. The robots contribute resource management to combat as well as their imposing presence.
GamePro instead found the two modes too similar and thought they failed to realise the robots’ potential. Having distinct systems does not guarantee that their differences meaningfully change every battle. RPGFan already noted weak offensive magic and a generally low difficulty interrupted by a few tougher bosses. You may have plenty of moves, but if one physical technique solves almost everything, there is little reason to choose another approach. The opportunity to experiment remains; the need to do so is much less consistent.
Later reassessments are less united on this point than the original reviews. Everyeye still considers the system a major strength for its immediate appeal, combos and Gear battles. Others like the foundation but observe that many abilities and combinations never become truly necessary. The difference largely comes down to what they ask of the game: how enjoyable are the moves to perform, or how often does an enemy force you to choose between different solutions? Xenogears answers the first question better, even though it has interesting tools for the second.
Combat works: combos give the characters personality, and Gears introduce distinct resource decisions. Its depth, however, is used inconsistently. You can enjoy learning new techniques without facing a challenge that requires them, and that gap becomes clearer across such a long campaign. It is a good system to accompany the story, but a less convincing reason on its own to play for dozens of hours.
Original reviews — 1998–1999
CombatGameSpot · IGN · Next Generation · Game Informer · Edge · PSM · Joypad · Player One · GamesFirst!
RPGFan · GameRevolution · EGM
Later reassessments — 2008–2026
CombatThe world rewards a look around, but can make movement harder
In towns, you can rotate the camera, look for passages and talk to people who add details about the world. Jumping lets you reach places you could not access by walking. That local freedom matters: environments have height, robots change your relationship with the space around you, and a city can offer more to notice than the route to the next conversation. Even when the story decides where you must go, moving through an area can make it feel like a place you are exploring.
At release, IGN placed considerable value on jumping and climbing, while other reviews appreciated choosing the camera angle and looking for details. The free camera could also create a practical problem: rotating it in a cramped environment might put a wall in front of the character or make the direction less obvious. Some reviewers found that an occasional annoyance; others ended up fighting the camera. The same feature expanded what you could see and added work when you simply needed to find your way.
That should not be confused with freedom to choose the course of the adventure. You can wander through a town and search for items without having many alternatives to the event required to move on. Original reviews already recognised the linearity. Side activities, including cards and the Gear arena, provided changes of pace, but did not turn the campaign into an open world you could tackle in your own order. Calling Xenogears freeform simply because you can rotate the camera would promise a different experience from the one described by the sources.
The dungeons also remain a point of disagreement. GameSource finds them generally well judged and appreciates their vertical movement. MeriStation instead emphasises similar corridors, random encounters and failed jumps that force you to repeat a route. The Tower of Babel brings those problems together. This goes beyond controls feeling less modern: when retracing your steps means fighting more battles, a movement mistake costs time and can also affect your Gear’s resources.
Random encounters become especially noticeable in these situations. Stopping to fight during a journey can support progression; doing it while searching for a person or working out a route you have already crossed can interrupt your concentration. Original reviews already raised the frequency of battles and repetition of enemies. It is therefore unconvincing to attribute all the difficulty of getting around to the years separating us from PlayStation. Those conventions were familiar in 1998, but some reviewers still identified their consequences.
Exploration gives the world scale and presence, and jumping adds useful possibilities. The results become uneven when navigation, camera angles and random encounters get in each other’s way. The biggest problem is not being guided through a linear story. It is that reaching the next event can take longer without adding an interesting discovery or decision.
Original reviews — 1998–1999
ExplorationLater reassessments — 2008–2026
ExplorationThe second disc changes how you experience the story
On the first disc, the story mostly moves forward through places you visit, people you meet and situations you work through. It does not always move quickly, but events often give you somewhere to act. On the second disc, the protagonists directly narrate a substantial part of that journey. Some developments are summarised, and interaction focuses more on particular scenes and battles. The story continues and reaches a conclusion. What changes is how much of it you experience through your own actions.
It would be easy to claim that nobody noticed at the time and that only retrospectives recognised the problem. That is not what happened. RPGFan explicitly described the change but also saw an advantage: reaching the explanations without adding more dungeons, while letting the characters interpret what was happening. For a reviewer mainly interested in the plot, that shift could keep the curiosity alive. The fact that it has become the game’s most famous limitation does not justify erasing that positive reading.
Later reassessments make the loss of continuity more prominent. HonestGamers finds that the second disc interrupts the relationship built between the journey, the world and its events. Other reassessments still value what is being told, even when they wish they could experience a more complete version of it. They are not all asking for the same thing: some focus on the quality of the revelations, others on how those revelations become something you experience. Those qualities can come apart, and here the separation is particularly clear.
You can be absorbed by an explanation and disappointed that an important event has been compressed into a narration. There is no need to choose between defending the entire story and rejecting the entire second disc. The earlier work on places and people creates specific expectations: you want to see their reactions, work through the consequences and revisit the connections you have learned to recognise. Moving straight to a report preserves the information but loses some of that participation. The loss is stronger precisely because the world already meant something.
The slow pacing does not begin with the disc change, either. Several contemporary reviews criticised the opening, the wordiness and text they could not speed up as they wanted. That makes an explanation blaming every problem on the final stretch less useful. Xenogears also has earlier passages that take a long time to say relatively little. A good revelation can justify a wait, but it does not automatically make every preceding conversation’s length necessary.
The second disc is a significant limitation in how the adventure unfolds, even though the story can still hold your attention. It does not prevent a conclusion, but it reduces your involvement just as events grow larger. Continuing can be well rewarded by the story. It is still reasonable to want a version that lets you work through more of what it tells you.
Original reviews — 1998–1999
Pacing and the second discRPGFan · EGM · Game Informer · GameRevolution
Later reassessments — 2008–2026
Pacing and the second discIts identity outlasts its uneven presentation
Characters are two-dimensional sprites inside three-dimensional environments, while Gears use polygonal models. This combination lets the game move from small figures in towns to the mass of robots in battle, and use the camera to stage scenes. Anime cutscenes offer another way to portray the protagonists. The result has a distinct personality: it does not simply try to reproduce Final Fantasy VII’s appearance with different characters, and it does not need to do that to be worthwhile.
Visual opinions were already sharply divided. GameSpot criticised pixelation, sprite animation, unstable textures and muted colours while praising the cutscenes. PSM instead found the expressive characters and blend of 2D and 3D particularly successful. This cannot be explained simply as one outlet judging technology and the other judging style: they also disagreed about how well the same elements worked. A recognisable look does not have to be flawless, but an obvious flaw does not account for everything the presentation achieves.
The cutscenes often earned praise even from reviewers who were less impressed by the environments during play. Some mainly complained that they were short and infrequent compared with expectations. That observation needs its context: the promise of anime sequences helped build anticipation, but much of the story is told through dialogue and the game engine. Their value depends on how they support the scenes where they appear, rather than simply how many minutes they occupy. Their rarity can disappoint without invalidating every other visual choice.
Later reassessments still recognise the value of the characters, robots and environments while discussing limitations in how they are rendered. You do not need to pretend that pixels and polygons have disappeared to appreciate those choices. How a scene uses the difference in scale between people and machines matters too, as does an animation that distinguishes one fighter from another. Those qualities are separate from image sharpness and can remain effective even when technical flaws are easy to see.
Yasunori Mitsuda’s music enjoys more consistent praise. Many sources value a specific quality: it supports emotional moments and gives places character, rather than simply filling silence. That does not make every opinion on the sound positive. GamePro and Total PlayStation were very critical of the music too; other reviewers highlighted uninteresting effects or out-of-sync voice acting. The compositions should therefore be distinguished from the audio as a whole. A successful soundtrack can sit alongside less convincing voices and effects.
The images and music work chiefly because they give this world and its contrasts a recognisable form. The visuals remain uneven, while the soundtrack more consistently supports emotional involvement. Xenogears does not need to be reassessed as technically perfect. Its greatest success here is an identity that remains recognisable through the limitations of its execution.
Original reviews — 1998–1999
Visuals and musicIGN · Next Generation · Edge · PSM
GameSpot · RPGFan · GamesFirst! · GameRevolution · EGM · Player One · Joypad · Consoles+ · GamePro · Total PlayStation
Later reassessments — 2008–2026
Visuals and music