Gameplay has each character navigating levels, fighting monsters and completing required tasks to advance the story.

The explosion sites house magical pillars known as the "Gallan", and ghostly demigods known as "Yorigami" have claimed the now-ruined country.

[2] 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).

[3] Stages range from countryside locations to towns, which allows for platforming areas where players jump between rooftops.

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.

[10] The various level areas were based on the Japanese regions in which they were set, although they were made more fantastic due to the game's premise.

[12] Similar to his work on the Super Famicom Mana games, Kikuta wanted to push the hardware capacities of the PlayStation's sound card when creating his score.

Kikuta was able to reserve multiple studios for recording because of the high budget, with his aim being to transform the live performances through computers when transferring them into the game.

[19] Conversely, this high studio usage and its toll on the overall budget severely restricted the number of tracks he could create.

[20] A remembered incident during recording that impressed Kikuta was guitar soloist Tomohito Aoki performing his part in the track "Fire Wire" with a severe hangover.

[26] Chris Greening of RPGFan was similarly positive, ranking the album as a must-buy alongside the soundtracks of Xenogears and Parasite Eve due to its strong live elements and different tone from other Square games.

[33] Soukaigi received a manga adaptation, written by Ayuki Kirishima and released by Kadokawa Shoten in three tankōbon between May 1998 and January 1999 as part of the publisher's Asuka Comics line.

[37][38] Hatano Taka collaborated closely with Amakawa to ensure the novelization did not stray too far from the original game's plot and themes.

New story segments, such as an epilogue, were added to explain the more confusing aspects, but these ended up creating unwanted contradictions that had to be smoothed out between Hatano and Amakawa.

[40] 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.

[42] 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.

[43] 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.