It's very differant than FF7, most noticably is the battle system. Magic is used but is hardly the best way to go about smashing up stuff. Your main form of attack is combos and deathblows. At the begining of each round of combat (the battle is real time, but I can't explain it better than this) you start out with a set number of ability points, you can use 3 types of attack if you got enough ability point to execute them: Weak attack = 1, Mid attack = 2, Strong attack = 3. If you use these attack in a sectain order you'll unlease a deathblow, which does some nice damage. All of this so far uses no magic nor does it drain anything, you can use the same combo and deathblows over and over again, however if you always use the same ones, you'll never get new ones. Now if you don't use up all your ability point in one attack they will be saved up and you can use them to unlease a bunch of deathblows all at once.
Now that's all fun a good, but what do you do when you come across an ememy the size a house? You jump into your Gears. A Gear is a giant robot used for combat, they don't nessarly have to look humanoid, but for the most part they do. While combating in a Gear you have the same chooce of attack as before, weak, mid, and strong. the differance lies in the fact that the use fuel to attack and you have to level up your attack to use more powerful deathblows. To level up, simply use weak attacks without deathblows. You can go up to 3 levels normally. What attacks you learn outside your gear will translate to the attacks you can use while in a Gear. Ignore training on foot and you'll be just as weak in a Gear. You can also charge while in a gear which restores fuel, or you can boost, which drains your fuel but makes you faster and stronger. The one down side is you can't use item while in a Gear, and healing Gears costs alot of fuel.
Later in the game you can get Omnigears, which are pretty much super-Gears. long with being faster and strong, they have a real nice bonus. If you charge your Omnigear to level three and not attack, there's a chance you can go to level infinate. This lasts 3 turns and you get, at most, 3 attacks which don't cost much fuel and do massive damage to your enemy.
That pretty much sums up the battle system of Xenogears. Guess I got carried away. A demo of Xenogears comes with "Parasite Eve" another great game from Square, if you can find it.
Teenage Male Geek + Female Remotly Intersted in Common Geek Activities = Teenage Male Jackass
