Xanadu Next

But a nice little gem in the rough. Char has a problem, and that problem is you. Your life recently took a turn for the worse and well frankly you're being quite a sourpuss about it. Surely a nice little adventure (and archaeological dig) should lighten your spirits and fix that problem. In so doing you end up mixed with the remains of ancient Xanadu, a mythical country from ages past. Dive in dungeons, uncover mysteries, upgrade your stuff, enjoy. I do enjoy the scenario quite a bit. Our character is an established character with a backstory, but he is very much a stranger to these lands, it's not a personal story. Our character's backstory informs us on his outlook in life, what haunts him, what drives him, and why he ends up in the middle of this mess, but the focus is on Xanadu and the Black Bride. Almost like a D&D character. It's not about finding the bandits who burned down your village, it's about who you are when the plot kicks into gear. Gameplay-wise you can see a lot of influence from Ys, and maybe a bit from Vagrant Story, but the gameplay is a lot less complex here. One button to hit when you're close to something you can hit, one to use skills/magic, one for items, and one to open the inventory. No rhythm-based combos, we're keeping it simple. You can have 4 skills in your skill bar, each has its own pool of uses and you can switch them up anytime. So setups with 4 active skills or 1 active and 3 passive skills both make sense. Even quite far into the game, I still got pleasantly surprised by some Guardian abilities or items sold by Agnes. There was a lot of inspiration poured into this game when making it, and it shows. Very little feels phoned in. So yeah, no it's not Vagrant Story, it's probably slightly worse than one of the better Ys games, but it's a simple, nice, effective game with a good story. Heartily recommended.

Faxanadu was the very first game I had ever beat. I must have been 7 at the time and it holds a special place in my cold freezer burned heart. Xanadu Next, a gaming artifact in its own right, would be the next game in this series I would play nearly 100 years later. I was surprised in how well it kept with the spirit of its paleolithic ancestor. The puzzling and dungeon crawling have much improved. The difficulty is middle of the road making for a competent and enjoyable hack and slash to unwind with. There are a few puzzles that require a diagonal movement that is not mentioned in-game which can lead to much frustration to the uninformed. I was not the biggest fan of the controller lay out and how the shield use was entirely passive. The sound track is surprisingly good, it is a mix of ambience, gothic chanting, romantic instrumentals. The story is uncovered through lore which is buried in text. There is only one town in the game and there are very few NPC's. The majority of the NPC's are detached from the lore and the surrounding environment so have little to offer in advancing the plot of the game or bringing any depth to the lore presented to you. It makes the game feel empty and somewhat disjointed. Xanadu is alright if only just to turn your mind off and crush a dungeon or two before hitting the sack. 6/10

GOG told me to review the game. Preliminary 3h50min: I like it a lot, playing with the maouse was weird at first, but became very confortable. I'm intrigued by the story, even though I don't find it gripping. It feels very comfy, and being able to freely relocate my stats is so cool, destroyed a boss like it was nothing! Just remember to use the points or the monsters will seem indistructible.

Xanadu Next is essentially a dungeon crawler with very bare bones combat. A button masher with some nifty special attacks thrown in, but you run out of special moves rather quickly and the only way to refill your MP is to return to town or rest at one of the sparse save statues. Fighting certain enemies can be aggravating if you lack the DEX you will simply miss them. Attacking from behind deals massive damage but getting behind an enemy is a challenge thanks to the imprecise controls. You can allocate your stat points willynilly, but weapons & armor are restricted by your stats. You can't f.e. equip a better sword if you lack the STR to wield it. It makes stat allocation pretty pointless when you're beholden to your equipment anyway. Xanadu also has the dubious honor of having one of the dumbest key mechanics.... You can buy keys at the shop, but the more you buy the more expensive they get. And you need a LOT of keys, there are doors in almost every room. When you run out of keys you have to return to town to buy more, or cut boxes an grass hoping they will randomly drop.... It's an utter waste of time that adds nothing to the game. There were also a couple of visual glitches, sometimes NPCs would spaz out. Nothing game breaking though. What is almost game breaking is the button assignment on controller, it's completely backwards, X is confirm and A is cancel... and no way to change that in-game. It will confuse you all through-out the game when you keep accidentally cancelling out of conversations, or mistaking the attack button for the potion button.... There is a story but it is just as bare bones as the combat. Nothing that will make you hold your breath to see its conclusion. If you got a weekend to waste and set your expectations low, maybe take a gander at Xanadu. It's solid enough to not be infuriating just very bland and forgettable.

Even though the game is technically fairly old, we didn't have access to it until many years later. They did a good job of updating the graphics for modern platforms even though the character models have a blocky look to them. Having said that, the soundtrack is really good especially in regards to the final boss battle. The combat system is unique, but not in a negative way. Just different. I used a controller to play the game and swapping between that and the mouse for inventory management took some getting used to, but overall it worked well. The game itself isn't really long, but if you want to get all of the achievements, you'll probably need a couple of playthroughs to do so. If you like other Falcom games like Ys, you should enjoy this one as well.