I wouldn't call Xanadu Next my favorite Falcom game (that would be Zwei II) but it has a similar place in my heart that Demon's Souls does where it does so many neat little things and has all the elements come together into something that feels unique even if some of the individual elements aren't fantastic on their own merits. It's so unlike a lot of Falcom's other stuff and it pains me that it never got much recognition.
Get out of HEEre, stalker HO! Sorry I just love your name/avatar and had to say something relevant. My mans is absolutely right though, Xanadu Next really could pass as a FromSoft game. It has such a similar design philosophy and does so many different things really well. I'd kill just to see what a Falcom x FromSoft collab would be like in 2022. Like SMT and Falcom in general, it's just yet another absurdly phenomenal game that will be slept on by the normies and philistines.
Falcom's Xanadu series has always been a mystery to me since no one ever talks about it, and I had my eye on this game ever since I read it got an NGage release. I've read JPN developers taking inspiration from classic Wizardry and early roguelikes, but Diablo inspiration is new. (Also, so glad you mentioned Diablo as a real time interpretation of Rogue) Great review, as always.
0K you've sold me on this game. Huge fan of Demon's Souls and lately been on a massive Falcom binge EDIT: I beat the game a week or so ago. It was really good. Some awkward controls considering attacks and movement both depend on LMB and at times rather annoying maze-like dungeons (thankfully there's maps), but overall it was A LOT of fun. Beat it in around 17 hours and I played nothing else during that time. The soundtrack was great and the level/world design as well as lore scattered around definitely gave me Ys/Souls vibes.
I'm currently playing (the amazing )Tokyo Xanadu & I just found out about this one ! Oh man, it looks great ! I definitely need to play it ! thanks for the video !!
So this has been one of your better vids in a while, imo. Not saying the Deception retrospective is bad, I just dont have much to say about something I have no experience with. Highlights include the Dogi gag segueing into the Boss Fights section and the lead up of this ENTIRE review where I was mentally adding "just like Dark Souls" to the end of like 40% of your sentences. And the last bit with the build up, followed by the Demon's Souls swerve and sudden postmortem is fucking FANTASTIC. Really think I should mention that because I could feel tension in the air along the lines of "somewhere, SOME part of him desperately wants to make that damn comparison and he's not and hes trying to not fall into it but I KNOW he wants to." So yes the payoff was phenomenal!
I played this game for the first time maybe 10 years ago when I was a kid. At that time, the game was only in Japanese. So I didn't know anything about the story. But the gameplay, graphic and music are all so good for a game at that time that I played it for so many hours. Then I had to quit it because I did not understand Japanese to solve late game puzzles. But after all those years, I have finally beaten the game in English version. So happy!
One of the starter weapons gives you elemental attacks passive, the reason for that is because if you defeat skeletons with elemental attacks, they just die on first round, no need to wait for them to get up again. Also anyone having problems or glitches with the game you have to check your screen resolution and make sure it matches the game's settings in the settings executable file.
I was going to review that next, but personal things came up and I'm taking a break from the channel until it's resolved. What I played so far, I really liked though.
This review convinced me to give this game a chance, and I'm glad I did. Great experience, a Falcom hidden gem. Your channel has introduced me to a lot of games that got overlooked by most players, a shame also that the view count feels far too low relative to the review quality. Nevertheless, I appreciate the effort.
Really loved this game when I played it its a shame it wasn't more popular, I would've liked to see Falcom continue the series with an isometric/diablo like style.
... I gotta admit when I saw "xanadu" then the gameplay it felt weird after playing the recent one that came out, wonder if falcom's staff wanna do a new ip with that kind of gameplay again, would be interesting, risky on some aspects but interesting. Though I doubt it would be a worthwhile bet to take honestly. It's certainly the kind of messy game I'd easily get behind just for it's well done dungeon crawling, thanks for the video.
Great video! Huge Falcom fan here and I hadn't checked this out yet and this video definitely convinced me. Looking forward to watching the rest of your stuff.
Now this is an interesting take! Not necessarily related to this game in specific, but I feel like generally approaching a game with a mindset that's compatible with its design idiosyncrasies can either make or break your experience with it. From the look of it, I imagine this game's flow could either feel stilted, when approached like an Ys-style ARPG, or really interesting, when seeing it as an alternate take on a top-down ARPG in the vein of Diablo. Thanks for pointing this aspect out, lots of food for thought there.
Well now I want a new Xanadu. And no, Tokyo Xanadu doesn't count. It's good but it's its own other thing. Anyways speaking of Souls I want to shout out the weird spin off Faxanadu as a proto-equivalent Which checks out in my mind. Two of my favorite devs :P
Thanks for the in-depth look. I skipped over the majority of the story segments, but I appreciate your input on the rest of the game. Looks like the type of game I'm in the mood for currently. Got it for 7.50 on the Steam Autumn Sale.
i love the graphic style of the towns. the way they did the 3d environments & menu/inventory stuff. Something i hate though is the TEXT is so damn hard to read with having no dark box behind it. just having the text over the backgrounds is annoying when sometimes there is light/bright stuff behind the text from the environment and i can't see certain words. wish the text were 30% bigger in some places.
The thing is: falcom rocks, and have always been like this. As a kid i would be digging every image of their games i could find but playing only the old ones i could emulate on my shitty pc. Now older and with a good machine, instead of been playing nioh 2 or something like that here i am on my journey to beat all the games i wanted but couldnt on the childhood, and this is one i reccomend! Loved it xD Edit: how rude of me. Epic review man! Im even diggning installing the game again and going for another run.
Lol I'm on a similar situation. I've Nioh 2 and played like 6 hours or so (with all DLC btw) but here I am instead playing older games. That said I haven't played this one. Hearing it's reminiscent of Demon's Souls is very convincing
It might take a while, the PS4 version kinda feels like two Deception games in one, since it has the DLC bundled with it. The DLC being its own fully featured campaign with separate progression and some different mechanics. Played a tiny bit of both and enjoyed it though.
Might have been mentioned several times, but in playing this game for the first time, Ive found that you can kill skeletons on the first kill if you last hit them with elemental attacks, such as a spell or if you have one of the element effect passive on. Works on all the undead that revive for a second time that I've found, including the scythe skeletons you show in that video.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the bone carving knife or the bonus dungeon. Probably for the best with the bone knife though, that thing is a total noob trap.
@@Aboveup If you pick it up near the start of the game when it's first offered the game presents it as a cheaper/less grindy way to get keys. But it slows down progress dramatically since buying cheap keys after selling bones is way faster.
I guess that could be a noob trap. I remember looking at it and just generally seeing how much more common money was than bones and didn't think it would ever make sense to use.
I'm not sure what they were thinking with the bone carving knives. The only practical use I've ever found is if you're out exploring and already have 10 bones and another drops. So you carve one up get a key and there you go. Maybe also like you said about selling a bone to the vendor to reset the key price counter. If a person didn't know about that.
Yes, only 1 hour gameplay i think i already like this game, its amazing and can believe it is an old game. And one tips for new player : The treasure hunter girl will sell you a dagger for only 100gold that can turn bones into keys, after she open a gate for you at the early of the game. The dagger is really convenient for your exploring, you definitely should buy it.
To me who primarily plays western games it looks very Japanese. I have found it interesting how a lot of people who play primarily Japanese games attribute certain games like Demon souls, Dragons Dogma, Xenoblade, Monster hunter, Nier Automata. But when I look at these games, I see influences from classic Japanese action games and can't understand what about them resembles the role playing games from the west I've been playing. Dragons Dogma and Monster hunter for example, feel like an evolution of Capcom's long history of action games. I can't think of a western made role playing game that is uniquely similar to Dragon's Dogma,
This game is really good for a classic retro game. The story's really interesting. The only thing is don't like is the combat. It's annoying to me in an action game when regular enemies do not flinch when hit them. I don't like having to run in and out to hit every single regular enemy. What would make the combat a bit more interesting is if the character could dodge roll, or having ranged weapons in the game...
I've called Ys 3 "Dark Souls before there was Dark Souls." The Oath in Felghana PSP remake port even has it's own version of "git gud" in the manual. And to anyone wondering, yes, the PSP version is both a remake and port. Possibly a remaster as well, given additional changes from the PC version, on top of that PC version being a remake of the older versions. A remastered remake port.
@Aboveup I don't consider games like Diablo or this RPGs. For me a 'western action rpg' would be fallout New Vegas, Vampire the Masquerade bloodlines, Kingdom Come Deliverance, The Witcher, Outer worlds, those sorts of games. This game does resemble western hack'n Slash games a bit more than action rpgs. But I think this game sounds more similar to other Japanese 'dungeon crawler action rpgs'. The level layouts and exploration, leveling up system with attributes based gear requirements, the way grinding works, the spell system, puzzles, the story elements, the character you play as all seem more similar to the Japanese games I was looking at or have played like Dark souls. I was trying to use your review to learn a bit about how this game plays. Recently I've went through a massive list of 'JRPGs' including 'action rpgs' on from between 1990 and 2005 on wiki and other sites (literally hundreds of them.), to look for potential entry points. To see what they might do and which ones if any I might be interested in playing. Ideally I'd prefer games with the elements I like in RPGs (obviously the western ones I play.) or those found in sandbox and simulation games. I actually don't really like Diablo. Some of the ones I've found somewhat interesting were the original Shin megami tensei, Growlanser, Romancing SaGa, Moon remix RPG adventure, Valkyrie profile, Rune factory, energy breaker, Dark law meaning of death, Dark half(kinda), Legend of Mana, Treasure of Rudras, Radiant Historia, Atelier and Star Ocean. None of them feel like exactly what I'm looking for.
Watch other channels then. There is other channels (a lot) that cover mainstream games. I watch this guy because he cover games that are overlook or a niche title that has very little bit dedicated fanbase. Not many channel talk about these games and that what make this channel truly unique.
I also found him because of the niche games he reviews. But I stuck around because of his perspective, attitude, delivery and editing; not the uniqueness of the games he plays. When I found the channel I was blown away by the quality and was surprised his videos didn't have much more views. The stated issues were the only things I could see that were gating him to more viewers, and by virtue of that more money. So while I like the videos he makes now and connect better with the games he reviews then he might otherwise, I'd rather consume his content and see him take in more money for his efforts. To each their own, if he's happier this way then I'll continue watching his videos and wish for him the best of luck.
oh man those block moving sections are giving me Vagrant Story flashbacks
yeah definitely have the same design and decor as vagrant story
Probably my favorite Falcom title outside of Trails and Ys. At least so far, there's still plenty I've yet to play.
15:23 I genuinely love how you keep using that Dogi footage as a reoccurring joke lol
Crisp sfx, addicting gameplay and music is what hooked me into playing this game.
This game is controlled by mouse nicely.
I like the focus on the Ys series and other niche Falcom titles on your channel. Keep it up!
15:25 We will never escape from the primal power that is THE DOGI!!!
I wouldn't call Xanadu Next my favorite Falcom game (that would be Zwei II) but it has a similar place in my heart that Demon's Souls does where it does so many neat little things and has all the elements come together into something that feels unique even if some of the individual elements aren't fantastic on their own merits. It's so unlike a lot of Falcom's other stuff and it pains me that it never got much recognition.
0K, you convinced me to get it. I love Demon's Souls and Falcom
Get out of HEEre, stalker HO!
Sorry I just love your name/avatar and had to say something relevant.
My mans is absolutely right though, Xanadu Next really could pass as a FromSoft game. It has such a similar design philosophy and does so many different things really well. I'd kill just to see what a Falcom x FromSoft collab would be like in 2022.
Like SMT and Falcom in general, it's just yet another absurdly phenomenal game that will be slept on by the normies and philistines.
Falcom's Xanadu series has always been a mystery to me since no one ever talks about it, and I had my eye on this game ever since I read it got an NGage release.
I've read JPN developers taking inspiration from classic Wizardry and early roguelikes, but Diablo inspiration is new.
(Also, so glad you mentioned Diablo as a real time interpretation of Rogue)
Great review, as always.
0K you've sold me on this game. Huge fan of Demon's Souls and lately been on a massive Falcom binge
EDIT: I beat the game a week or so ago. It was really good. Some awkward controls considering attacks and movement both depend on LMB and at times rather annoying maze-like dungeons (thankfully there's maps), but overall it was A LOT of fun. Beat it in around 17 hours and I played nothing else during that time. The soundtrack was great and the level/world design as well as lore scattered around definitely gave me Ys/Souls vibes.
Did you ever play it again?
I'm currently playing (the amazing )Tokyo Xanadu & I just found out about this one ! Oh man, it looks great ! I definitely need to play it ! thanks for the video !!
So this has been one of your better vids in a while, imo. Not saying the Deception retrospective is bad, I just dont have much to say about something I have no experience with.
Highlights include the Dogi gag segueing into the Boss Fights section and the lead up of this ENTIRE review where I was mentally adding "just like Dark Souls" to the end of like 40% of your sentences. And the last bit with the build up, followed by the Demon's Souls swerve and sudden postmortem is fucking FANTASTIC. Really think I should mention that because I could feel tension in the air along the lines of "somewhere, SOME part of him desperately wants to make that damn comparison and he's not and hes trying to not fall into it but I KNOW he wants to." So yes the payoff was phenomenal!
I played this game for the first time maybe 10 years ago when I was a kid. At that time, the game was only in Japanese. So I didn't know anything about the story. But the gameplay, graphic and music are all so good for a game at that time that I played it for so many hours. Then I had to quit it because I did not understand Japanese to solve late game puzzles. But after all those years, I have finally beaten the game in English version. So happy!
Just found your channel, great videos, love hearing the history alongside the games. Liked & subbed
One of the starter weapons gives you elemental attacks passive, the reason for that is because if you defeat skeletons with elemental attacks, they just die on first round, no need to wait for them to get up again.
Also anyone having problems or glitches with the game you have to check your screen resolution and make sure it matches the game's settings in the settings executable file.
You should try Brandish, its another Falcom game that I really like.
I was going to review that next, but personal things came up and I'm taking a break from the channel until it's resolved. What I played so far, I really liked though.
What's the song at 18:30 ?
White Lie in Black
@@Aboveup Thank you! It sounds like something straight out of House in Fata Morgana or Library of Ruina. Awesome
Taking notes 📝
This review convinced me to give this game a chance, and I'm glad I did. Great experience, a Falcom hidden gem. Your channel has introduced me to a lot of games that got overlooked by most players, a shame also that the view count feels far too low relative to the review quality. Nevertheless, I appreciate the effort.
Thanks for covering this game! I'm replaying it now hoping to reach the end. I think I only found out about it thanks to your coverage.
Really loved this game when I played it its a shame it wasn't more popular, I would've liked to see Falcom continue the series with an isometric/diablo like style.
... I gotta admit when I saw "xanadu" then the gameplay it felt weird after playing the recent one that came out, wonder if falcom's staff wanna do a new ip with that kind of gameplay again, would be interesting, risky on some aspects but interesting.
Though I doubt it would be a worthwhile bet to take honestly.
It's certainly the kind of messy game I'd easily get behind just for it's well done dungeon crawling, thanks for the video.
Soothing song at the end.
Is that from the game?
What is it?
White Lie In Black. It is from the game, yeah.
Great video! Huge Falcom fan here and I hadn't checked this out yet and this video definitely convinced me. Looking forward to watching the rest of your stuff.
Now this is an interesting take! Not necessarily related to this game in specific, but I feel like generally approaching a game with a mindset that's compatible with its design idiosyncrasies can either make or break your experience with it.
From the look of it, I imagine this game's flow could either feel stilted, when approached like an Ys-style ARPG, or really interesting, when seeing it as an alternate take on a top-down ARPG in the vein of Diablo.
Thanks for pointing this aspect out, lots of food for thought there.
18:20 This took me by surprise..
Well now I want a new Xanadu. And no, Tokyo Xanadu doesn't count. It's good but it's its own other thing.
Anyways speaking of Souls I want to shout out the weird spin off Faxanadu as a proto-equivalent
Which checks out in my mind. Two of my favorite devs :P
Is the music you used at the end from the game!? got the chills, definitely going to check this game, it seems pretty good.
Yeah, the track's called "White Lie In Black"
thanks for talking about this game
It seems you are the only one that has done a good english review about this game.
Thanks for the in-depth look. I skipped over the majority of the story segments, but I appreciate your input on the rest of the game. Looks like the type of game I'm in the mood for currently. Got it for 7.50 on the Steam Autumn Sale.
i love the graphic style of the towns. the way they did the 3d environments & menu/inventory stuff. Something i hate though is the TEXT is so damn hard to read with having no dark box behind it. just having the text over the backgrounds is annoying when sometimes there is light/bright stuff behind the text from the environment and i can't see certain words. wish the text were 30% bigger in some places.
Is there more games like Xanadu Next? I know about Ys and Trail series .
The thing is: falcom rocks, and have always been like this.
As a kid i would be digging every image of their games i could find but playing only the old ones i could emulate on my shitty pc. Now older and with a good machine, instead of been playing nioh 2 or something like that here i am on my journey to beat all the games i wanted but couldnt on the childhood, and this is one i reccomend! Loved it xD
Edit: how rude of me.
Epic review man! Im even diggning installing the game again and going for another run.
Lol I'm on a similar situation. I've Nioh 2 and played like 6 hours or so (with all DLC btw) but here I am instead playing older games. That said I haven't played this one. Hearing it's reminiscent of Demon's Souls is very convincing
Whoop whoop lets go 2020 AAL for life....
your channel is such a hidden gem
Interesting game. You did a great job with the review.
Please, what's the music at the end ?
Here th-cam.com/video/K6AoJfKBfoI/w-d-xo.html
I love this game!!
Sold, thank you
I love it so much.
Music is good.
Spoilers: Cosmo from Fairly Odd Parents destroyed Xanadu by turning it into Pittsburgh.
Is this from the same special where it turns out Timmy Turner wished for time to be frozen and they don't find out for 50 years?
I loved this video, thanks for making it.
Wonderful video as always! This game looks right up my alley and I'm keen to try it
oh wow, this looks good.
This game is amazing
When are you going to do the last deception?
It might take a while, the PS4 version kinda feels like two Deception games in one, since it has the DLC bundled with it. The DLC being its own fully featured campaign with separate progression and some different mechanics. Played a tiny bit of both and enjoyed it though.
This game plays like the Y's series. I don't blame you for playing on the controller. Is this game still available for purchase?
It's on both GOG and Steam, thanks to Xseed.
@@Aboveup Great video. Thanks for the response. I will have to check this out.
Another exemple that showcase Xseed is great.
it really doesn't play anything like ys!
@@remoteviewer6 It looks a lot like Y's Origins.
5:56 OOOOOH
Idk, Im downloading xanadu next right fucking now
Really want to try this game but only a console gamer :( wish they would bring it over to consoles just as they did with Us Origin.
Might have been mentioned several times, but in playing this game for the first time, Ive found that you can kill skeletons on the first kill if you last hit them with elemental attacks, such as a spell or if you have one of the element effect passive on. Works on all the undead that revive for a second time that I've found, including the scythe skeletons you show in that video.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the bone carving knife or the bonus dungeon. Probably for the best with the bone knife though, that thing is a total noob trap.
How so? I had 80 keys by the time the game gave me that thing. It's entirely useless.
@@Aboveup If you pick it up near the start of the game when it's first offered the game presents it as a cheaper/less grindy way to get keys. But it slows down progress dramatically since buying cheap keys after selling bones is way faster.
I guess that could be a noob trap. I remember looking at it and just generally seeing how much more common money was than bones and didn't think it would ever make sense to use.
I'm not sure what they were thinking with the bone carving knives. The only practical use I've ever found is if you're out exploring and already have 10 bones and another drops. So you carve one up get a key and there you go. Maybe also like you said about selling a bone to the vendor to reset the key price counter. If a person didn't know about that.
looks fun
Yes, only 1 hour gameplay i think i already like this game, its amazing and can believe it is an old game.
And one tips for new player : The treasure hunter girl will sell you a dagger for only 100gold that can turn bones into keys, after she open a gate for you at the early of the game. The dagger is really convenient for your exploring, you definitely should buy it.
Looks very western compared to other Falcom titles
To me who primarily plays western games it looks very Japanese. I have found it interesting how a lot of people who play primarily Japanese games attribute certain games like Demon souls, Dragons Dogma, Xenoblade, Monster hunter, Nier Automata. But when I look at these games, I see influences from classic Japanese action games and can't understand what about them resembles the role playing games from the west I've been playing.
Dragons Dogma and Monster hunter for example, feel like an evolution of Capcom's long history of action games. I can't think of a western made role playing game that is uniquely similar to Dragon's Dogma,
Thanks for your great review! Just want to add that you don't really have to kill the skeleton twice if you imbue the weapon with fire element.
Xanadu Nextを愛する人が欧米にも多くいることを大変うれしく思います。
しかし、最強武器が木刀、最強防具が学生服であることを、欧米の方々はどう思っているのか非常に気になります。
これは日本人でも一定年齢以上の方々にしか響かないのですよね。
If you have a magic weapon passive equipped the skele's die permanently the first time.
This game is really good for a classic retro game. The story's really interesting. The only thing is don't like is the combat. It's annoying to me in an action game when regular enemies do not flinch when hit them. I don't like having to run in and out to hit every single regular enemy. What would make the combat a bit more interesting is if the character could dodge roll, or having ranged weapons in the game...
Aw shit, finally got around to it?
i remember getting mad at people for talking about the boring combat system, because it's the truth lol, but i still play it, alot
What should we call our NEXT installment in XANADU?
Xanadu~~~~~
I've called Ys 3 "Dark Souls before there was Dark Souls." The Oath in Felghana PSP remake port even has it's own version of "git gud" in the manual. And to anyone wondering, yes, the PSP version is both a remake and port. Possibly a remaster as well, given additional changes from the PC version, on top of that PC version being a remake of the older versions. A remastered remake port.
TFW Xanadu Next will never be ported to consoles and I still have to emulate it like I did so many years ago
Feels shit, man. :/
One of the best RPG
@Aboveup I don't consider games like Diablo or this RPGs. For me a 'western action rpg' would be fallout New Vegas, Vampire the Masquerade bloodlines, Kingdom Come Deliverance, The Witcher, Outer worlds, those sorts of games.
This game does resemble western hack'n Slash games a bit more than action rpgs. But I think this game sounds more similar to other Japanese 'dungeon crawler action rpgs'. The level layouts and exploration, leveling up system with attributes based gear requirements, the way grinding works, the spell system, puzzles, the story elements, the character you play as all seem more similar to the Japanese games I was looking at or have played like Dark souls.
I was trying to use your review to learn a bit about how this game plays. Recently I've went through a massive list of 'JRPGs' including 'action rpgs' on from between 1990 and 2005 on wiki and other sites (literally hundreds of them.), to look for potential entry points. To see what they might do and which ones if any I might be interested in playing.
Ideally I'd prefer games with the elements I like in RPGs (obviously the western ones I play.) or those found in sandbox and simulation games. I actually don't really like Diablo.
Some of the ones I've found somewhat interesting were the original Shin megami tensei, Growlanser, Romancing SaGa, Moon remix RPG adventure, Valkyrie profile, Rune factory, energy breaker, Dark law meaning of death, Dark half(kinda), Legend of Mana, Treasure of Rudras, Radiant Historia, Atelier and Star Ocean.
None of them feel like exactly what I'm looking for.
no mouse controls are actually worse in this game since you can't move with wasd
weird arse mechanics were not properly designed for that
This guys:
A. Needs a better mic.
B. Needs to review more mainstream games, I think he could be pretty big.
Watch other channels then. There is other channels (a lot) that cover mainstream games. I watch this guy because he cover games that are overlook or a niche title that has very little bit dedicated fanbase. Not many channel talk about these games and that what make this channel truly unique.
I also found him because of the niche games he reviews. But I stuck around because of his perspective, attitude, delivery and editing; not the uniqueness of the games he plays.
When I found the channel I was blown away by the quality and was surprised his videos didn't have much more views. The stated issues were the only things I could see that were gating him to more viewers, and by virtue of that more money. So while I like the videos he makes now and connect better with the games he reviews then he might otherwise, I'd rather consume his content and see him take in more money for his efforts.
To each their own, if he's happier this way then I'll continue watching his videos and wish for him the best of luck.
It looks like Alundra 2 on ps1
i bet tokyo xanadu is an iseka.