Xanadu Next

I bought this game while trying to find Japanese dungeon crawlers or ARPGs. Delighted that it scratched my itch! This is a JRPG light on story that jumps almost straight into dungeon crawling and powering up your character. Pros: * Quite neatly designed in that it's linear but you always have a few things to do like save up for the next armor, discover rare item drops, or find secret rooms. Really good light RPG fun. * Looks and sounds great, for a game with a PS2 aesthetic. Cons: * Doesn't have full controller support so you'll need to reach for the mouse on occasions. Sometimes the controller feels a little buggy, and some platforming challenges are just a lot easier with mouse. * Overall maybe a little too easy. Only times I die are going into a boss fight unprepared, and that feels unfair as there's no breathing room to re-equip mid-fight. Even if the game was more challenging, it has a respawn mechanic where the only penalty is losing half your money. * I think a little more depth to the levelling and skills would have gone a long way. It's a simple level-up system, with the only twist being the ability to intentionally level down to re-spec your stat points. * A minor gripe is that the game has lots of key items that grant abilities e.g. be able to push blocks, but you can only equip 4 at one time. And other items like health potions or town portal items also use those 4 slots. Fully exploring dungeons requires swapping items via the inventory (and you can't use the controller for that...)

This game suited my taste in games perfectly. I'm a big of games such as Ys and Landstalker and Xanadu next really hit the spot for me. The game mechanic has elements of Diablo in terms of point and click, hack and slash, which worked well, and came as a blessing to me at this point in time as I only have a keyboard and mouse. I've now finished the game and can say that it was immensly enjoyable, mainly because it was filled with puzzels and treasure hunts which take you on a journey over a diverse range of settings. You will need to revisit areas at times, however I didn't find this mototonous. Rather, it helped with the weaving of the story over time as the game progressed; I much prefer this than finishing sections in a linear fashion that are never revisited. I enjoyed the story, it has lots of surprises and plot twists. I just wish I was paying a bit more attention to the plot, but it probably doesn't help to play when tired an in sporadic bursts. I really liked the Guardian card concept and levelling system. The graphics are great for the era and still hold well to this day, and the soundtrackis brilliant. It's unique and adds a lot of charm to the game. Works great on an 2010 MB Pro running Windows.

Xanadu Next is really fun and engaging, even though the combat is somewhat simple. You have backstabs - which is really kinda the most reasonable way to go about things - different weapons, spells and skills. You get those skills from weapons. Each has an associated skill, and the more you use a weapon, the more Proficiency you gain. At 100% Proficiency (it goes up to 200%) you get to keep the associated skill and use it with any weapon. As you gain Proficiency, you also do more damage with that weapon, quite satisfying. There isn't a whole lot of variety in weapons and armour. You'll always be a melee warrior, and you'll have to increase all of your stats in order to use the next best armour and weapon. Environments are nice to look at and fairly diverse, as are enemies - some of the latter are incredibly annoying to fight though if you don't use magic (ranged) attacks, by which I mean flying enemies because, well, they fly. They just hover. Annoyingly. You either stab them before they can start their incessant fluttering, or you shoot them down with a fireball or magic bolt or some other ranged attack of your choosing. So you have your armour, weapon and shield, four slots for skills - you have to equip even the passive ones to get their effect, which makes sense because otherwise you'd be way too OP, but it's something I wasn't quite aware of at first - and four quick slots. These slots are for potions as well as items you find throughout the game which grant you a variety of abilities you need to progress (e.g. a glove that just lets you punch boulders) or access secrets and side areas. There are also Guardians which grant you bonuses like more XP or faster Proficiency gain; you can only equip one at a time but switch whenever you want. Combat can feel a bit repetitive and the story isn't anything too special, but Xanadu Next is very fun for what it is, plus it's quite pretty and the music is great.

The game was published in 2005. The graphics is not great but the feel still good and music is awesome. The best is the story. The story is not told directly. You can't realize the whole story without reading the material (boards / books) carefully. As you pay time to know more about the past (of the story), you will be drenched in the sadness.

Cut some grass and got key/bones..... 10/10 It has an interesting story that isn't so big because it centers on the very fun dungeon crawling The dungeons really give you surprises if you are not prepared for anything, you have toreally immerse in a RPG world planning ahead, checking potions, MP, items, checking out for traps, changing the environment to make things easier, SO MANY INTERESTING THINGS IN THIS SIMPLE FALCOM GAME! but if you want a grandiose story, then you have to look at the optional ancient tablets and memoirs that have a lore as rich as Lord of the Rings, just WOW