Sōkaigi

Soukaigi is an action role-playing game set in a fantastical version of Japan in 1998. The game is divided between gameplay segments and cutscenes used to communicate the narrative. In December 1998, explosions across Japan centered around Mount Fuji kill a significant portion of Japan's population. The explosion sites house magical pillars known as the "Gallan", and ghostly demigods known as "Yorigami" have claimed the now-ruined country. The gods choose five people, each attuned to the elements tied to the Gallan, to save Japan from their influence.

Players take on the role of five different characters as they fight against powerful monsters controlling regions of the land; the main objective in each level is to destroy crystals of concentrated Suiki (negative energy) and gather Ouki (positive energy), the latter acting as experience points to raise a character's statistics (stats). Players control each character in third-person, starting with a pre-determined character and later expanding the available roster. The camera locked behind the player, but can be rotated with the character to explore the environment. Each character has a different innate ability in addition to basic attacks, a jump, a mid-air dash and items which can briefly increase attack power or perform special magical attacks. Enemies in levels are monsters, which manifesting around crystallised Suiki and attack the player after appearing.

During the late 1990s, Square launched an initiative to foster talent within the company; small teams of younger developers would work with a smaller budget to create experimental titles for the PlayStation; one of these titles was Soukaigi. Soukaigi was developed by Yuke's, a company best known for their sports titles. Among the production cooperators was Solid, a subsidiary of Square dedicated to working with third-party developers. According to different sources, Yuke's was approached by Square, who were impressed at the technical prowess demonstrated by their wrestling game Power Move Pro Wrestling; or Yuke's approached Square with an ambitious gaming project which required funding and a publisher. The game was produced by Square's Yusuke Hirata, and directed and written by Nobuhiko Amakawa of Yuke's.

Amakawa created the story concept of a fantasy set in modern-day Japan. While games based on Japanese folklore had seen little success at the time, Square allowed Yuke's total creative freedom and Amakawa decided to go ahead with the concept. The characters were designed by artist Natsuki Sumeragi. Enemy designs were handled by Takeshi Tanaka.

Japanese magazine Famitsu was generally positive about the story, characters and music. One reviewer felt that the graphics looked "rough" for the PlayStation title. Western magazine Gamers' Republic was fairly negative about the game, with the reviewer finding that it was only the boss battles and music that kept him playing. GameSpot reviewer James Mielke said the game "fails to live up to its expectations", praising the music and stable frame rate, but finding most other aspects either low-quality or poorly designed. He summarized that the game could not stand up against other similar 3D titles such as Panzer Dragoon Saga.

In a separate feature titled "Games You'll Never Play", GameSpot called Soukaigi "a great idea but a cruddy game", citing a lack of polish and a greater scale than the PlayStation could handle. IGN, in a preview of a nearly-finished version of the game, were scathing about the gameplay, though gave praise to the environment and enemy designs. Japanese websites Inside Games and Dengeki Online both posted retrospectives for the game's 20th anniversary; they each praised the narrative, soundtrack and technical performance, but faulted the gameplay segments and overall graphical quality.