10 Things You Didn't Know About Xenogears (No Spoilers)

[@joecelbetonio7110]

Yasunuri matsuda is a master composer. Even now the music of xeno and CC resonate so much

[@projectmayhem6898]

I bought the soundtrack CDs for this game, that's how much I liked it.

[@williamjarrett9119]

100 percent 🎉🎉🎉

[@trowa9960]

Easily a contender for greatest game ever made despite the second disc

[@takehirolol5962]

The most perfect Disc 1 ever created...

[@MegaKaos10]

I want a remake for the second disc

[@impalacrush2439]

Someone said to me about this game, xenogears is basically evangelion the game : ver. Chad And if you think about it, it does strike some interesting point

[@gaivsvalerivs5818]

Despite atrocious camera and awful platforming

[@docblade3270]

Exactly my thoughts!

[@MiamiSunrise]

The music from SquareEnix games at this time was really something else. You can hear in many of songs from this game, versions of them used in other titles like Final Fantasy Tactics as well. Brilliant sound direction in this period. It is interesting looking back at how society especially in North America was during the period of when this game was released. It was becoming more unhinged, rebellious, aggressive and in comparison to now a very different direction. That said a game with nudity (minor) and heavy religious themes I would think would have flourished then, but then again some things had not been primed as well as others for releasing edgy content. Xenogears will always be something special. With the remastering/remaking of Saga Frontier I'm wondering if this game is on their plate for a re-emergence in the future. Bringing back Saga Frontier would have been one of the last older franchises I would have thought they'd go with so now I feel anything is possible. Excellent video.

[@themojogamer75]

It speaks a lot that most RPG enthusiasts will say Xenogears has the greatest story in an RPG despite the second disc being often critisized for the state it was in. Also, as a Christian myself, I really think it's funny that Square was so afraid to localize Xenogears because of the religious themes. What Xenogears tells is REALLY not that bad, at least not to me lol. Heck, I kinda love the interpretations the Xeno series has.

[@ianp5367]

Ayyy, my favorite game of all time! We need a damn remaster, or re-release.

[@JohnSmith-hs1hn]

The game can be a lot shorter too, if they take out some of the more tedious dungeons. Put more story in, instead of blasting your face with it all, only in disc two. Make the combat deeper, and give all the characters, besides Fei, Citan, and Elly, more development.

[@blackmanjrpg17]

And give us the REAL content of the second disc

[@AniShikima]

I would love a proper remaster! (insert Futurama pic of Fry, Take all my money) lol

[@nifftbatuff676]

Emulators: exist

[@JohnSmith-hs1hn]

@@nifftbatuff676 They should re-make it. Actually, since there are supposed to be 6 parts, they should make a prequel.

[@xevious21]

Xenogears is one of the most influential games I ever played when I was younger. It was the first JRPG I ever played. It had the most thought provoking story I ever played. It even got me my best friend, we had the same class and I noticed he was drawing Ramsus's Gear from the back cover and it sparked a conversation. I never wanted a FF7 remake(there are mods for the PC version for that, and it's the whole game). All I want is a complete version for Xenogears, it doesn't even have to be a remake or remaster. Just a complete version. Hell it could be for mobile for all I care! Just let me play the true version of this fantastic game.

[@fattiger6957]

While I love the Xenoblade games, I do miss the darkness and deeper themes of Xenogears and Xenosaga. I hope this new IP Monolithsoft is supposedly working on is more mature than what they've been making for Nintendo.

[@docblade3270]

I liked the first xenosaga, but the second and third were really weak in my opinion, i think they promised too much in the first one!

[@ikaruga24]

Xenoblade X was plenty of dark and it was again full of real religion and philosophical and psychological in nature. It's my favorite in the entire series thus far. Gameplay being the best of the series as well doesn't hurt either.

[@xviinaichi3793]

@@ikaruga24 I wanna play it so bad man hope it gets ported even tho the chance of it happening is low

[@ikaruga24]

@@xviinaichi3793 Honestly my WiiU is still connected to my TV only for Xenoblade X. If it does get to be ported then i can finally retire my WiiU and pass it on my nephew. I have no idea why a port hasn't happened yet unless they are at work of bringing a definitive version of it on the switch which i would gladly accept.

[@Suedeash]

Dude this is perfect timing! I just burnt the game to discs, printed my covers for it and put it in my PSOne to beat (hopefully!) for the first time! 4 hours in and it's absolutely fantastic, I'm truly loving it

[@MrStarfire86]

This is my all time favorite rpg. I'm so hoping for a remaster or remake of this game and xenosaga

[@adibeniacz3598]

Love Xenogears . Best music and story . I back and beat this masterpice every 2-3 year . Magic on gears are so OP 😉

[@TKUltra971]

id KILL to get my hands on the original script. It was always a dark game with dark undertones but i wanted to explore the whole mindfuck that was to come. Disk 2 was stitched together cut scenes and everything else was a blur. Truly a missed opportunity. I still read Xenogears perfect works once in a while. Good stuff.

[@miguelghersi]

Great vid as always, one of the games i've always wanted to finish. I still remember being lost in that sewer nearly 20 years ago

[@jestaboss]

Red drum had me down for months. It was my first RPG.

[@cin.n.w]

Greatest rpg storyline ever. Haven't seen any other rpg dare to approach such a dark and deep storyline. Still hoping a remastered one while keeping the originality of the previous.

[@Lasjah]

My mind goes crazy just thinking how amazing this game would have been if Squaresoft would have backed it completely. It's current arguably incomplete form is still one of my favorite games of all time.

[@thecognitiverambler8911]

Even with all the hurdles they faced, this game still stands ahead of so many other giants. It's just a testament to the team's talent and vision.

[@Mr_Sin99]

Excellent Video Erick. Thanks from the bottom of my heart. If only we could rally the troops and talk to square and let the gamers fund the sequel, if square has doubts. Its been more than 20 years now. Takahashi and square should resolve this for the greater good. They should also respect the fact that when something becomes bigger that just a product on the market they should listen to the consumers as they are the reason the company is big in the first place.

[@fattiger6957]

Square's not doing anything with the IP. They should just sell it to Nintendo so Monolithsoft can actually do something with it.

[@Sellbow]

Absolutely agree with this view here.

[@seanbester1465]

Still remember the night I found a copy in the game store, all those years ago. I had played the demo and loved it, but the game was constantly sold out and it took me years to finally find it. BEGGED my parents to grab it for me and tuck it away for a few months for Xmas. So lucky!

[@tigmo55]

Wonderful video man! I have been a huge Xenogears/Xenosaga fans for a long time and it really is amazing how the developers were able to create such memorable games despite the obstacles they faced. It's such a shame that Xenogears was rushed but it's still a great game despite the second disc being so short. And the soundtrack is AMAZING. Mitsuda is one of the very best for sure. :)

[@zero_chevalier]

JFC!!! Square did a number on Xenogears and yet still is one of the most memorable JRPG in existence!

[@GameRumble]

You just know how to drag me here, don't you? With SaGa Frontier remaster I'm very positive of seeing one for this game as well sometime soon!

[@varsoonhks3211]

I'd doubt it. The difference is that the SaGa team is all still working with SQUARE ENIX and, thanks to the popularity of SaGa's gacha game, older games in the SaGa franchise have been remastered. We can probably thank the sales of the Romancing SaGa remasters for SaGa Frontier's remaster. A remaster of Xenogears by SQUARE is highly unlikely due to lack of financial interest in the IP and issue with the license.

[@gatz17]

I find comfort that somewhere out there, in a parallel universe, Xenogears got the green light and it was developed fully the way it was intended including all of it's sequels and prequels. (Of course, this includes a fully developed disc 2 of Episode 5).

[@thecmancan]

This needs a complete remake for PS5. I took an interest in psychology as a teen because of this game, the book Manchurian Candidate and X-Files.

[@ikaruga24]

If the remake ever happens (99.9% unlikely) it will be given to monolith soft again via collaboration between Nintendo and Squarenix and that means it will be exclusive to Switch.

[@zedgathegreat9122]

I was 17 when this came out, and had it nearly day one due to the demo (thanks to releasing a week after my bday!). I don't think there has been anything remotely as close, regardless of media, that changed and influenced the way I think and my own personal takes on existence, and everything else, as this game. It had such a fundamental impact on my own personal philosophies that I literally would be a different person if it wasn't for this game. I actually wanted to start teaching Philosophy as a career because of it, before I realized their pay grade... There has been so much from this game I will carry through my entire life, and try to impart on to others when I can. I honestly can't really say how much of this game had an impact on my life, but it really made me think on so many different levels about everything on nearly every level, and really shaped me into who I am. One of my absolute favorite scenes in the game, and one that will always stick with me and be at my core philosophy is when Fei and Elly first get to the church and Fei sees the two angel statues for the first time. Elly begins to describe them and the story behind them. Fei notices that each angel only has one wing. Elly goes on to describe that god created them with one wing each, so that in order for them to fly they needed to work together. They needed to prop each other up and work together in order to be able to do anything. Without working together they'd get nowhere, they couldn't fly, they couldn't do their work as angels... they'd be useless. So they had to work together as a team in order to achieve their own goals. That even the most ultimate of life forms needed each other and had to coexist in order to succeed.. It was such a powerful message wrapped in such a beautiful artistic expression... I really don't think I've come across anything that has really portrayed that idea better.

[@Mountainmonths]

what an absolute masterpiece. squaresoft are practically criminals for rushing, censoring, and not supporting this project fully.

[@denciolombos2510]

The very first RPG I tried out of curiousity... & Fell in love just shortly as I play.

[@jamesgomez9151]

If you think about it Xenogears has a ton of more in common with Nier: Automata than Final Fantasy and Crono Trigger.

[@GamingCinematicsPH]

I remember completing this game when I was a kid. Now I'm 31 and wishing a full remake

[@jmkos86]

Awesome video. My favorite rpg ever. I’ll probably die expecting a direct sequel cuz xenosaga didn’t make it for me. Yeah the game was rushed, but it’s still, to this day an amazing game. That story is unbelievable and keeps you stuck from beginning to end. I hope one day they take the time to release a remake. Doesn’t have to be all up to date with graphics, just a “finished” disc 2.

[@murkyfluid7625]

At the time it was noted the camera was clunky. we still rememered the Dos days so it still seemed fresh. Instant classic for me.

[@enoch1524]

Fantastic video Erick! This has always been my favorite game but boy did Xenoblade Chronicles come close. One Who Bears Fangs at God is IMO the best final battle song of all time. Keep up the great content and have a good new year.

[@bradi004]

Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeee my boy made a 10 things for my favorite RPG of all time!!!!! Psychology, identity, culture, classism, religion and spirituality a true masterpiece. Xenogears was ahead of its time and I’m glad when I was a young boy to have this story and experience about the notion of self and God. I know I sound a tripp but this game really hit different for me🥰 Thank you Erick 🙏🏾

[@takehirolol5962]

Eric...Europe is very Catholic like Latinamerica...that's no surprise there...

[@Bjontiss]

All these horrible problems, yet still such an epic game. Imagine what it could have been

[@yggdrasil7942]

I'm so happy that Sony made it's original PSX with a mysterious slot on the rear. But without it I wouldn't have been able to import this fantastic game to UK.

[@themarchinggoblin8294]

I realised today that Erick looks like the mandolorian 😀😀

[@armorvil]

the mandalerick

[@Eclectic.Nostalgia]

Played this game again and it just gets better the more I play it.

[@zymz7892]

OH man, now I wish you had a Xenoblade Video to follow up from this + Xenosaga, I'd also love a quick story rundown / analysis / idea-flow from XenoGears => XenoSaga => XenoBlade. Thank you for this though Erick! I was always wondering why Xenogears had a switchover cliff of change in the middle. I I wound up only getting halfway through it...

[@OMGmyFACE]

I can only imagine a complete-as-intended and unrushed version of this bad boy but, despite all the changes it's gone through, it's _still_ a masterpiece and a mainstay in my top 5 RPGs of all time.

[@matteobraso]

I'm glad that they at least released a book with the complete lore and chronology originally planned for the game ("Perfect Works" for anyone interested)

[@a_2010x]

Still my favorite game of all time and in my opinion the best story in any video game, ever.

[@a_2010x]

Why not crowdfund either a remake or a sequel? I'd lay down some serious cash for this and I'm sure many others would too. My only request would be that they continue with the combination of 2D & 3D. A full 3D game wouldn't feel right.

[@charlesajones77]

I never understood why people had a problem with this game's religion, which has nothing to do with any real world religion, but Final Fantasy Tactics got a pass, even though it is obviously based on Christianity. And in FFT's version of Christianity, Jesus is the villain.

[@stefanoannarumma4804]

One of the best jrpgs even made...still love it today. Played the American version back in the day.

[@troystrain2436]

I never knew any of this. Great video!

[@vateok6840]

I love this game for the imperfect game it is, idc abt the second disc, it is still one of the best, if not the best jrpg out there, along with legend of legaia n suikoden 2

[@dansmith1661]

9 was because they were allotted an amount of time and they exceeded it. Turns out the company meddling permitted the same amount of time to make platformers or RPGs, so they had to hurry the process. This was policy for many years and it was terrible.

[@xx_pit_xx8492]

Actually xenogears was a part 5 of 6. So let's just imagine what we could have got if that final fantasy movie wasn't made :^[ Maybe someday we will see at least a real finished disc 2 but man I doubt it. Anyways these were interestings facts, thanks for the good work put into the video

[@feifongwong4519]

You listed some elaborated reasons for Xenogears not being released in Europe, but from where you picked them? To be honest, they sounds like speculations. The main reason for the missed release is probably the one affecting most jrpg releases in that period: as you cited, the small market for rpg in general and more strongly the fact they would need to localize the game in multiple languages. I had read from printed magazine of the time that the religious themes of the game had given pause for the american localization, but i had read nothing in regard of this for a potential european release: frankly, i would say that the game would have less problems in that regard than the US which (my opinion) is far more strict on religious representation than most european states (i doubt in the nineties that it would have been a big problem even in Italy, for example). And the thing of PEGI rejecting it is really strange, because 1) PEGI is not a censorship board and has no powers to reject an application, only classify it and 2) PEGI didn't even exists when Xenogears released in 1998.

[@jenovaizquierdo]

I will LOVE to see a remake of this game, I love this game so much. 😊🥰🤩

[@teyanzi]

What a game! My favorite game of all time.

[@tamodolo]

they say Xenoblade 3 is a 3rd take on what Xenogears could be. The second was Xenosaga.

[@Moon-rune]

oh well banning Xenogears from European Release didnt stop me from buying & playing it back then :D but yeah it was not always easy to find US games

[@teefa85]

I totally want a Xenogears Remake! One that can add back the cut portions on Disk 2 (the better system power we have now would definitely allow for the room...it's still too bad that the various issues caused them to have to cut it instead of just making a Disk 3). This game was a lot of fun and I think it could be even better with modern control schemes. Heck, they probably could make that pseudo fighting game they were originally planning on... Of course, the creators leaving probably means it'll never happen! :(

[@The_Pikaboi]

Gotta believe Square would be nice enough to give Monolith the IP back

[@MilesMariae]

Banned from Europe is BS- EU got almost no square rpgs in those days. So not getting xeno was standard---, chrono cross, tactics, chronicles, brave fencer, valkyrie. Also, it wasn't 'banned' because I bought it in England, it was ntsc version, but still there it was, not banned by any means.

[@swaggalyktrey9423]

My fave Rpg of all Ps1 games

[@Roody4594]

Xenogears is among my top 3 rpg of all time and mecha conception,cant believe this game teach me a lot of topics that at that time i was studing and others push me to search for the real thing. like,psicology, make a secular tale of religion,gnosticism,real Religion, nanotechnology (before it became mainstream) besides it was released the same year as Metal Gear and Guilty Gear , i was riddled with gears that year. Tis a pity monolith soft current fate, sony japan lack of vision with them along with squaresoft lack of confidence with Tetsuya back then.

[@quikain17]

It is in my oppion the greatest game ever made if for no other reason than There has never been a world i wanted more of.

[@CPT85]

I definitely hope that someday we can see the original script and some of the unused ideas fleshed out in a remake. 😐 But who am I kidding? 😒

[@robnelms1418]

If they do remake this game one day, please make the story way less convoluted. I mean the main parts were OK, but really it was very confusing.

[@Fatalordi]

Xenogears should have been a visual novel. Focus on the story and the music, which are the best parts. I love JRPGs but I found Radical Dreamers quite fun too !

[@Sellbow]

Game changer of all game changers

[@mrspaceman2764]

Squar Enix is selling properties off like crazy, Nintendo should buy it and just release on Switch!!!

[@c0ym0nty]

great RPG! 1 of the games i kept and enjoyed in PS1. i didn't know how much issues the game had to go thru :-/ i think it was a game ahead of its time with regards to themes, gameplay, and whatnot

[@wellingtoncrdeseusamigos]

Even with the rushed development, still the best game ever made. ♥

[@Spacefrisian]

The 1 game where Square failed the world. The decision not to release it in Europe made me pirate my ps1 at the time.

[@docblade3270]

I live in brasil, so, in that time, i didn't even knew that existed non pirated ps1...

[@michigana1]

very nice research, this was the last jrpg that I have beaten. So cool the cpmplex large story!

[@Dominickun24]

commercial success? dude it bombed outright. even in japan.

[@mystic865]

I'm waiting for the remake with PROPER disc 2.

[@inphanta]

It seems Xenogears was successful in spite of Square and not because of it

[@fredlaroche6969]

My favourite of all time right there

[@narutoXstrawhats]

great video 👍 thanks man

[@redstratus97]

I hope I get the chance to play this game one of these days.

[@stevenvanbuskirk5038]

You could get it dirt cheap on the ps3 idk if yu still can tho

[@omegagilgamesh]

14:20, "Other nudity [was okay]" you mean those highly pixelated field models and the males in those cutscenes that are conspicuously missing their male parts? In a time period where even that was way, way more skin than was normally allowed in video games? "Strong religious themes [were okay with the company]" didn't you spend the first five minutes detailing how the company was hesitant even after heavily cutting back the severity of the religious themes, and how it was banned in Europe? "And the game still got a Teen rating from the ESRB." The same ESRB that gave a Pokemon game a Teen rating because it had "simulated gambling," but gave sports games with paid-for loot box mechanics E-For-Everyone ratings?

[@ВечернийБергер]

my favorite game

[@JGSMusic]

Most of this is not true man. I don't think you played this game cause if you did, you will realize The the first disk is very very long , has tons , almost months worth of reading and tons of dialogue. The reason why they did the second disk the way they did is because they felt the first disk already had too much and they were afraid that most Kids would be burned out by the time they got to the second disk, and they were right. The decision to use the second disk as the ending was the absolute right decision and gave the game perfect balance. This game took me 130 hours to complete and there is no way I or anyone else that actually played the game would have wanted the second disk to be longer. So it was a smart marketing and development move to keep the game from ending up too long and boring. Get your facts right

[@vvolfflovv]

this game deserves a remake

[@3n1x9]

Eu adoro esses seus vídeos excelente meu irmão 😍

[@Kig_Ama]

One of the best jrpgs ever!

[@MilesMariae]

The game had so many design flaws, if they wanted to convey the story effectively they should have eliminated some of the dungeons that are irrelevant and entire characters that are unnecessary to the story.

[@docblade3270]

That gave one more reason to think the FF movie was a shit!

[@scooterjones303]

Why is he counting down? lol

[@edwardmakabling418]

This game need a Nintendo Switch port.

[@docblade3270]

First rpg game that i seen show 2 characters having sex(not explicitly, of course)!

[@antiheroo26]

Best game ever made

[@LuisVazquez-hx3bk]

This is like the anime series "Gundam". They made the Jews as they were the Natzy calling there territory Zion and many.Jewish words.

[@Stonegoal]

I thought Xenogears was one of the best PS games. Xenosaga is good not great. Xenoblade Chronicles seems like a cool story from what I have seen but the game play is soso, i have not completed them.

[@gazhvys9543]

Xenogears not getting a pal release is bollox! USA is a far more religious country than England!

[@Beanfairy]

REMAKE THIS GAME!!

[@TheGameStampede]

Sore duria

[@AndreyOrochi]

Gotta suggest Elon Musk buying the franchise from SE lol It's 2023 and we can't get a remake of this genius game ffs

[@rjacda578]

yep, disc 2 is shit

[@melonusk6120]

nici young and froit KEKW

[@VoodooIMB]

Are you 12?

[@melonusk6120]

@@VoodooIMB stop age shaming u old man

[@ExquisiteTaco]

@@VoodooIMB i'm pretty sure he's like 8

[@SwordsmanOrion]

Despite all of the problems, Xenogears is still my favorite RPG of all time. So much potential for what it could have been, it makes me so sad. I just never connected with Xenosaga, I didnt' enjoy that even half as much.

[@dantelawrence4676]

What about Xenoblade?

[@user-kc2fu8iw3v]

@@dantelawrence4676 not him, but for me blade (the original wii one at least, didn't play the switch one) was the weakest out of the 3. i dunno if it was just the weird looking faces and british dub, or the game in general, but i found it less interesting than both gears and saga. then again, it wasn't even supposed to be a xeno game at first, it was just known as "Monado: Beginning of the World", but nintendo decided to rename it to xenoblade, so comparing the two to it doesn't really make any more sense than comparing them to final fantasy.

[@echa4015]

I replayed Xenogears again this year and I'm already missing the game! 😍

[@LOREWITHBLAZER]

This my fav ps1 jrpg I wish it got a remake it was so epic with Mechs battle and standard battle it has a good story and romance I just love this game, It even go into mature themes

[@insanityking4786]

I wish they stuck to making what was it, like 7-9 games but monolith ended up making Xenosaga and Xenoblade which I still think is their connected universe amongst different companies

[@ltb1345]

7:24 Lol, and then years later they finally got to make a hot springs scene in Xenoblade 2.

[@The_Pikaboi]

A xenogears video in 2020 just after i beat it for the first time? Wild. Stan Citan

[@hc6929]

Stan Citan !! Halfway through the game and he's my favourite character so far

[@derekminna]

Almost 30 years of gaming and this is still the best story Ive ever seen.

[@SomeRPGFan]

Most JRPGs of the 90's, including comparatively uncontroversial ones like FF6, were never released in Europe so I feel that the translation effort (potentially into multiple languages) was the actual reason they didn't want to release it here. Too bad a direct sequel never happened because I would have loved to see it.

[@Sawngawkuh]

That is probably the most likely reason. Especially since it's not just Europe, but PAL regions in general. Going and translating JRPGs for a global audience just wasn't seen as worth the effort back then for a lotta devs.

[@ricardolujan5571]

Chrono Cross and this game had to be translated by fans for us spanish speakers... I will always thank the guys that translated thus

[@nehylen5738]

I'd go beyond that. Generally speaking, publishers didn't believe, even after Secret of Mana's & FFVII's successes, that our continent was one for RPGs. Translation costs + minor sales in their views. It never was about being puritans (the US is way more along those lines). Maybe the German distribution would've had to deal with that (censorship is strong there), but the German-speaking market never was as important as others in Europe in the first place. The video mentions Xenogears and PE...But pretty much nothing Square made arrived here officially, and us fans imported the US versions. Chrono Trigger & Cross, Musashi, Bushido Blade 2, Tobal 2, FF Tactics, Saga Frontier, Dragon Quest... were all lost on us. Amazingly so, for Chrono Trigger & Tobal 2, as DragonBall Z was really popular in France and Spain.

[@brotbrotsen1100]

@@nehylen5738 OH back then there was no chance that the game would come here to Germany, the slightest bit of nudity or violence would have ended its chances and the game features both. There were a ton of classics we never got including pretty much every Mortal kombat until 9, wolfenstein, doom, dead rising, gears of War etc. It was a terrible time to be a gamer in Germany, thankfully nowadays it seems like our version of the esrb is permanently sleeping or just doesn't care any more since we get pretty much everything now, only thing they censor are swastikas.

[@Kaitou1412Fangirl]

Given everything it went through, it's kind of a miracle Xenogears turned out good at all.

[@SchutzBoysband]

My favorite PS1 RPG! Not knowing anything going in I just thought the second disk was an artistic choice and it didn't bother me. And its my favorite Mitsuda soundtrack. Everyone should check out Creid, and arranged album of some of the music to hear Mitsuda slay on fretless bass!

[@TheMrrafael2060]

I hope someday, they dare to remake this game. This game still has many things to be explored, some stories to be told.