Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is a Falcom game that exists in the space between good and bad. When measured up against other excellent Falcom games, there's no real way to say that this game is a good game. It is just merely a mediocre game or a poor Falcom game that makes for a decent discount title if you have nothing better to play. In this write-up of mine, I tried to keep it as spoiler free as possible but there is the possibility of potentially inferring something from my what I've written. I've also edited any images to try and be as discrete as possible. Just a fair warning.
The story for Tokyo Xanadu has some great lore, backstory and world building. Unfortunately that's really all that is great about it. Eventually you come across a point in the story where you're supposed to 'discover' the main characters motivations for doing what he is doing. It is honestly probably the worst contrived piece of shit presentation that I could think of for his motivation. While his motivation is absolute trash, the presentation can sometimes help salvage is from being particularly bad. In this case, they go full retard and it makes you, as the player, audibly ask, "What the
were they thinking?". Outside of that I felt the the story for the more part was alright. However towards the latter part of the game (Final Chapter/Epilogue/After Story), they pull an absolutely stupid deus ex machina that almost completely killed my motivation for finishing the game. I was actually perfectly fine with the ending and didn't hate it at all. Then they pull an epilogue out of their ass in the base game that felt so horribly contrived that I have to question what the hell the writers were thinking and why nobody stopped them. It was so bad and full of massive plot holes that they released the eX+ version to try and fix the plot holes with the After Story. Not to mention the After Story felt like they wanted to give more screen time to a certain character that was mostly non-existent during the story, which felt very forced. Thanks to all that it was easily the worst Falcom story I have ever experienced without question.
Characters on the other hand I felt were alright. To me they felt a bit more personable/alive than many Persona characters. Unfortunately though they don't really build them out the way they have in other games such as the Trails series. Thanks to that, most of the characters feel fairly one dimensional or not too far from being a one dimensional character. So while they can be decently likable, they don't have the proper depth to them. On the other hand, Falcom NPCs are back. If you've played the Trails series and spoken with NPCs frequently, you're familiar with how they are. Later Ys games also do this to a lesser extent as well, which is a bit noticeable in Ys VIII but the series lacks macro interaction that the Trails series does and thus they never go as far. For the most part, I really liked the NPCs. The only issue I had with them would be that too many of them were stagnant on where you could encounter them throughout the game. Examples being the Volleyball members always in the cafeteria in the same seats, penny pinching mother and son moves between two spots in the pharmacy and quite a few more like that. Thanks to that they feel a little less alive than what you'd be used to with say, a Trails game where NPCs move all over the damned place.
The translation... is also not really good. When I started playing it I thought it wasn't bad and was wondering what the problems people had were. Then as I continued playing they started to become
more and
more noticeably inconsistent. You'd literally have three different parts of the game referring back to the same thing but each describing it differently. Whoever also translated or edited it really seems to have some
fascination with Cthulhu that felt really out of place. You even have some very
glaring issues that should have been noticed during basic Q&A. Even the
ending screens have some glaring grammar issues too. It's just a mess in the second half of the game that damn near devolves into a train wreck by the time you fully finish the game. The work is pretty embarrassing to be honest.
The gameplay takes bits from Ys and Cold Steel. With how the games equipment system works, you'll notice it nearly identical to Cold Steel. However the game doesn't really give you nearly the variety that the Trails series gives with regards to orbs and accessories. I felt it basically boiled down to making sure that you're able to resist status effects while giving yourself more HP or damage. You have maybe one or two other useful accessory types, but they aren't really all that useful either. The equipment just felt pretty bland and didn't give me much in the way of proper customization.
Similarly with the battle gameplay, it feels a little bit like the natural evolution of say, Zwei II, however that game was developed almost ten years ago. It feels more like Zwei in terms of movement. You're given a little bit to work with, but it mostly devolves into attacking and dodging or using characters with fast cast ranged attacks while running around. The dodge ability to negate damage with a 'perfect dodge' is extremely forgiving when compared to Ys and there is no block ability at all like in somewhat recent Ys games. Like the more recent Ys games (VII & VIII), you also have a rock/paper/scissors system for elements. It doesn't really do much outside of deal more or take less damage against specific enemies and their elements. It's very easy to work with so long as you pick opposing elements when you first enter the dungeon before you start it.
At the end of each dungeon, you're graded on your ability. I never once did not make S Rank, even if I felt like I was performing like shit. Only once did I actually hit the line for S Rank, which was 2,000 points. There's not really a whole lot to say about it as there's not a whole lot of depth to it. Challenge for the most part was fairly non-existent outside of what I felt were just a couple bosses. Playing on a higher difficulty will let you take less hits and require you to deal out more hits as per the usual difficulty swings.
So basically I can't really recommend it at full price or even a slight discount. For me, I'd say it's not bad at a heavy discount if you're interested. I did enjoy myself for the most part but it just got worse as I passed the halfway mark on the story. The world and lore are still there for another game, which is great. I'd like to see a new Tokyo Xanadu game, but fix the battle system to be a little more like Ys with regards to having swappable abilities, being a little less forgiving on perfect dodges and actually having a block. Plus I'd like to see some better variety in the equipment system so I can actually customize my character instead of everybody feeling the exact same.
