It is AMAZING... just not better than Grandia.

Both sequels (for Xenogears and Grandia) didn't live to the originals.

Ironically the game's wow factor was the story not the visuals Xenogears came out at a time when SquareSoft many games in the works or recently published...I mean the had fighting and racing games at one point....anyway..it would not have been super impresive at the time...except when there are Gear vs Gear boss battles in which you canot leave your gear..the game's framerate drops contantly but it was pushing the playstation so much...

Hmm I was never a big Grandia fan....I may have to give the disc another spin to see if my feelings have changed.

Played it, finished it, went back to it multiple times, finished it multiple times.  It's worth playing. 

Combat is Legend of Legaia light.  It uses a similar method of inputting attacks, but don't expect any deep custom combos where you can do multiple combos together each turn as it doesn't work that way without stocking your AP.  In Xenogears you'll be using your most powerful attack every turn so there's really no reason to use anything less than your most powerful attack unless you're using the 7AP attacks that are elemental and the enemy absorbs the element.

Story is great, but second disc is several hours worth of storyline with little gameplay in between that and when you can finish the game.  Dungeons and towns are designed with platforming in mind which is a really nice quality.  While the game is reading random battles though, if you are on the ground, you can't jump, so can cause a problem on systems you can't hear the disc read.  If you want to hear the disc read and know when random battles are about to start, play it on the PSX.  Despite what people may falsely inform you, if you're already mid air, you cannot get into a battle unless you land on a spot that is a battle regardless, so no you're not going to get in a battle then drop straight down after battle.

Great music.  Also has a few fun mini games.  A fighting game.  Also a card game where you have four hands with one face up card on each, the opponent as well, two hands in the middle and you can put the next card higher or lower and your objective is to get rid of all of your cards. 

Decent amount of end game content.  An area where enemies give you quite a bit of money and equip with some of the best armor and weapon drops in the game.  Also a lighthouse with a little bit of extra story with the most powerful gear equipment in the game and items which permanently increase stat values for characters.

XenoSaga was done by a different company right?

Grandia II was good though. Extreme was a disaster and III was boring.

@TS

Xenogears is a great JRPG, its a classic. You won't go wrong in playing it.

If you're speaking of Xenogears, then no.  It's the same developer, they were a no name developer under Squaresoft, breaking away from Squaresoft and formed MonolithSoft.

I take it that you've played Xtreme or are you just going with what the general consensus is? 

Grandia Xtreme has a garbage storyline and poor characters compared to the rest of the series, or most video games in general.  Graphically it's really weak in and out of battle.  However it it's gameplay was better than 2 and 3 and that's the reason it's still good to play through.  Your characters could equip multiple eggs, magic oriented characters could equip more eggs, eggs could be found and fused into different eggs, you could equip passive skills to characters as well, the amount equipable determined by the character. 

After you finish the game it unlocks a bonus dungeon which is pretty much a continuation of the story.  Much harder and the battle music that plays during that dungeon is from Grandia 2.  I thought that was awesome as it's one of my favorite battle themes.  Here's a video with the music playing in Grandia Xtreme in the extra dungeon(the win music is also the same as Grandia 2's as well.)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=mKthhDEw9NY#t=36s

Honestly.  I know only fans would like the game, but if they made a Grandia game similar to the Tales of the World games so that every Grandia character from every game were all in the same town and you could create your own party.  So have a party of Ryudo, Justin, Feena, and Guido for example.  Have Grandia 1 style skill system, attacking with swords levels up swords, attacking with fire levels up fire, etc.  Include double and triple combo attacks, throw in some weapon creation, item sythnthesis, etc.  Then go through random dungeons collecting items and killing bosses.  Would be an amazing game for fans.

Nanco? I don't know.

I just think Xenogers better than Xenosaga.

Edit -  @kupomogli explained... different publishers... same developer.

Both games were created by Tetsuya Takahashi. who left Square Soft (Xenogears) to become a founder of Monolith Soft (Xenosaga, Xenoblade)

I know Xenosage have relation with Xenogers... but Xenoblade too? I mean... storyline.