Today marks the quarter-century milestone for the timeless classicXenogears,Squaresoft’s epic science fiction role-playing game. First released for the PlayStation on July 09, 2025, Xenogears remains revered until now as a masterpiece of storytelling, where themes of religion, spirituality, and philosophy blend harmoniously to create a unique narrative experience.
Xenogears broke the mold of typical Japanese RPGs at the time by daring to delve into complex philosophical themes through its compelling characters. The anime-inspired mechs were just the icing on the cake, as the game fearlessly explored Freudian theories of the ego, superego, and ID, as well as Nietzsche’s notion of the “Übermensch” and the intertwined relationships between religion, evolution, and societal progress.
If you’re looking for answers to life’s big questions, to say that Xenogears might hold the key might not be an exaggeration.
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Xenogears received many accolades from critics, earning a highly respectedscore of 84 on Metacritic, but its second disk struggled with budget and time constraints, opting for a more visual-novel style that hindered its gameplay and potential. Still, the game’s influence remains palpable even in recent times, as seen withXbox paying tributeto it with the new rhythm-based action game Hi-Fi Rush.
That said, and despite Xenogears’s masterful storytelling, Square Enix ultimately prioritizedFinal Fantasyover it, leading to the departure of developer Tetsuya Takahashi and the birth of Monolith Soft, which continued Xenogears' legacy with theXenosagaandXenobladeIPs.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3, in particular, is where Xenogears' brand of storytelling can be felt most in our modern times, as both share themes of reincarnation, spirituality, and searching for answers within one’s own soul, but only after jumping through many political and otherworldly science fiction hoops along the way.
While we believe it’s imperative that everyone experience this story at least once in their lives, unfortunately, there’s no viable way to play the game on a modern platform. So fans should keep an eye out for it if it ever gets added to the PS Plus classic catalog, or look for a PS1 copy that has survived the test of time.
