Xenogears is a PlayStation role-playing game (RPG). It was released by Squaresoft in February 1998 in Japan and October 1998 in the US.
Its fans think it's fantastic, one of the best RPGs ever. It was notable for being very long (Its creators claim its 70+ hours long, though if you've played some RPGs in the past, you'll probably use about 50 - which is still a lot) and having a very complicated, involving story. Unfortunately, its story was really too long to be completely told in one game, and so towards the end lots of things are explained in text screens rather than being shown as story. The real reason for the last part of the game being text-heavy storytelling is that when the game was about 50% complete, they had used almost all resources allocated to the peoject, resulting in a rushed last half. It also suffered from what many might call excessively frequent random battles, but it doesn't have more than other RPGs really.
Xenogears is a game about a young man who has no memories of his past who is suddenly thrown into a conflict that will decide the fate of the entire world. The story is very detailed, with references to a history that spans thousands of years.
The battle system is based on combinations that are executed using the buttons on the Playstation's controller; it was probably the model for the control in another Square RPG, called Chrono Cross.
The game's outstanding music was composed and arranged by Yasunori Mitsuda, who also composed and arranged the music of Chrono Trigger, Radical Dreamers, Gunhazard, Tobal No. 1, Mario Party, Bomberman 64 2, Chrono Cross, Shadow Hearts, and Legaia 2: Duel Saga. He was employed by Square from 1992-1998, after which he went freelance.
Xenogears' story has many religious references and (rumor has it) was almost not brought to the U.S. because of them.
Xenogears is really the fifth installment of a series of six, but no Xenogears games were made before this one. Square declined to ever develop a sequel/prequel. Some of the original developers, however, have left and created a company called Monolith Soft, where they are developing a prequel called Xenosaga: Episode I The Will to Power. This is being released by Namco in Japan in Feburary 2002 for the Playstation 2. Eventually, they hope to bring out the entire six part series of games.
External links
- Yasunori Mitsuda's Homepage : http://www.procyon-studio.com/
- Remixes of Yasunori Mitsuda's Work : http://remix.overclocked.org/detailcomposer.php?compid=4