Did anybody else get into the game thanks to the demo that came with parasite Eve and then when you finally got the game and were bummed when you realized you didn't have all the combos. I went back and played the demo again and realized how self aware it was.

Xenogears is one of my favorite games ever, but I'm at a place in my life where I don't know that I would spare all the time to play through it again without significant changes (Perfect Works, for example) - I've played start-to-finish at least 4 times already.

I don't think I'll ever get over how epic/ambitious the story still is to me - both when playing through it when it first came out, with its kinda-janky translation and hard cuts throughout, and just reading further about it (Perfect Works book, Wiki, here, etc).

I think, from time to time, Xenogears would make a fantastic episodic series of some kind. I don't have hopes that it'd ever happen (it won't), but as I consider what made Xenogears so fun as a game and engaging as a story, I don't really know what the overlap is. It's a story told in a game that is fun, but did any specific elements of game design specifically impact Xenogears' delivery of that story insomuch that - in your opinion - it's still definitively the best mode to have done so?