Customer Reviews

Xenogears PERFECT WORKS: the Real thing

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
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You need not be an avid fan of Xenogears nor a fan of video games to enjoy this book. It has much to offer, and is not only limited to a basic video game manual or walkthrough. Perfect Works gives the reader a good sense of what this game is about and at the same time endulges ones need for that of excellent japanese anime. This book has a great overall explaination to a emensly complex story, and a gallery of pictures that are adorn to the game. It offers all that a fan and reader alike could ever need to fufill there desire for a good story, game help, or even japanese art. The book is composed of sections that give the reader a deep explaination to the game. It has sections that a fan could find greatly usefull. Some sections may inculde that of the history, gallery or even story section. Perfect Works also has great sections that a reader could find interesting, the story could prove to be fun and good reading material while the gallery could prove to be a section that other inspiring artists or views may love. But besideds that now Squaresoft's, Xenogears Perfect Works is a book that all readers could easily find enjoyable.

I remember the days, when this artbook was one of the most sought after RPG items, but thankfully, due to a recent reprint, it can now be found by everyone.

This artbook is divided into ten chapters that cover almost every aspect of the game. There are full descriptions and timelines of each character (Even of those who only had a brief appearance in the game) as well as beautiful pencil drawings that show the gradual developement that the producers went through during the creation stage.

And with the upcoming release of XenoSaga, I'm sure that everyone will want to grab this artbook just for the information of Episodes 1 - 5 in the series.

My personal favorite section though, was the two page spread of 'What If' photographs. While only three images appeared, they were ones that touched fairly close to any fans heart. (One being a cute wedding scene between Barth and Margie)

The Japanese illiterate might have some trouble reading this, but the abundance of images which can only be found in this booklet, make up for the cost completely.

All in all, I can't rate this artbook any less then five starts, due to the time and effort which must have gone into it. I reccommend this to everybody.

This is quite possibly the most INCREDIBLE Japanese artbook that I own. (And that is saying something; I own QUITE a few)

First off, if you love Xenogears, this book is an absolute MUST-HAVE. Every inch, every *millimeter* of the game is covered in this book. Take note that even though it IS in Japanese text, it is also a very beautiful thick artbook with EVERY official Xenogears artwork ever released between it's covers. All of the origins of everything about Xenogears is in this book, including explanations of the connections between all of the characters, the history and structure of different creatures, places, etc. Even if you know absolutely NO Japanese, buy this book. You won't be disappointed.

Oh yeah, there ARE some translations available online of various parts of the book. :)

This book contains anything and everything you'd ever want to know about Xenogears - from early character sketches to social structure to science to history to geography to thorough and complete background on the characters - ALL of them, meaning, everyone with a portrait.

Xenogears, despite being phenomenally complex for its medium, is a MASSIVE story squashed into a single rpg, and if you know the -true- complexity of the plot and their world, that becomes all the more apparent. So much about the characters and world/universal history were left out. For example, the game never mentioned how Yui and Citan met (which may sound frivolous, but it certainly is not), never told of Citan's brothers and parents, never got past stating one or two facts about Sigurd's past, did not go into Krelian's life before the war at all (did you know that he was originally supposed to assassinate Sophia back in their homeland of Nimrod, but seeing that she was then just a child, he took pity on her and didn't do it?)...really, I could go on for a while, and not just about the individuals we all know and love. PERFECT WORKS contains all this information and more. The text is completely in Japanese - but if you cannot read the language, translations are not too difficult to find online.

The single downside of such a treasure is that the spine is incredibly weak for a book of its size. A page out of mine is loose already, and I barely look at it as it is, in order to preserve it. Do not scan images out of it unless you have another copy, because you will certainly ruin it. You may want to invest in two so that you can have one to continuously look at and one to display.

PERFECT WORKS may become irrelevant in terms of content with the release of Xenosaga, as the new rpg is the starting point of a retelling of the Xenogears tale. However, that makes this book no less valuable, both for sentimentality and as an original. This is something no Xenogears admirer should be without.

if you can read Japanese... or even if you cant. If you have played the game through then you must get this book. When I got this book i wanted to read its contents so badly that i took up Japanese and have eventualy been able to decifer the whole thing. So on top of reading the best book ever I have learned a new language to boot. And I will be the first to say that it was well worth it.

if you can read Japanese... or even if you cant. If you have played the game through then you must get this book. When I got this book i wanted to read its contents so badly that i took up Japanese and have eventualy been able to decifer the whole thing. So on top of reading the best book ever I have learned a new language to boot. And I will be the first to say that it was well worth it.

This book is awesome. There is over 300 pages with everything you want to know about the world of Xenogears. Every fan of Xenogears must have a copy of this book. It contains enemy lists and designs and some unknowned types, important descriptions of great places in the game like Shevat and Solaris, the timeline where you know every date of every episode's plot of "The Xeno Saga" and characters and Mechs skecthes and there's more. As you can see, this book got a great variety of various informations about the game that you'd surely loved. It's a must have book, a great collection item because it's now out of print, so go get your copy right now before it's too late.

I don't know much Japanese at all, but this book is crammed full of never seen before pictures. It's wonderful! Use it for art refrences, costume references (this is my main thing), or just to feed your Xenogears obsession ^_~

When Square titles this book "Perfect Works," they had no idea how right they would be. This book goes every little detail of the fantastically detailed world of Xenogears. The text should be easy enough for a student of Japanese to translate, but anyone with less the 3-4 years of experience will have a tough time...

This is a great book. It has lots of pictures for those who can't read Japanese, and is chock full of Xenogears goodness. But keep in mind that its in Japanese.