Tokyo Xanadu EX+ (PS4) Review

The Vita version of Tokyo Xanadu was a pleasant surprise earlier this year, and I was looking forward to trying out Tokyo Xanadu EX+ on the PS4.  Newly added content should be the icing on the top of this cake.

The core of the game is largely the same.  Kou and his friends get caught up in the mysterious world of Eclipses, doorways to another realm, and Greeds, the monsters that live in the Eclipse and feed off people's negative emotions.  There will be story scenes as Kou goes through school, which leads to finding a new Eclipse, where you enter to save someone, and fight a boss.  The story is pretty good and the characters are enjoyable.  Each chapter has "free time", where you can hang out with various characters to deepen your relationship with them.  This costs a finite resource (now correctly known only as affinity shards), so you can't be really good friends with everyone in one playthrough.

When in an Eclipse dungeon, you will run around, fight monsters, dodge their attacks, and hit switches.  The controls are pretty responsive, but a bit unusual for me.  Attack is the X Button, Jump is Circle, and ranged attack is set to Square.  I would usually prefer them shifted one button clockwise, and set them that way in the options.  I still would mess them up, so I just set them back.  Maybe it was because I played the Vita one a lot?  New to this version are the EX moves that each character gets.  You build up the meter for them, same as the other special attacks, and unleash them with the R2 button.  These are cool and really powerful, plus you are invincible during them.  I don't know if they were needed, but I do like them.

While the difficulty of the original release felt just right, it now seems higher and also less consistent in EX+.  In the first dungeon, enemies and the boss both did a lot of damage.  It seems like that should be the most balanced portion of the game, since you know the player's level and equipment at that point.  The dungeon in the first bonus chapter was also more difficult than I think it should have been.  It was a little better in the second dungeon, but the difficulty changes were still noticeable.  The bosses seem to have more HP, which makes fighting them more of a slog than it was, and many enemies are just stronger.  I decided to bump it down from the "normal" setting to "easy", which made a difference.  However, there were still portions where enemies did too much damage with their attacks, and sections where I could just blow through them.  I suppose I have to grind now, even though it was very well balanced in the initial release.  It's not enough to make me dislike the game, but it is a disappointing change.

So what else have they added to make people double dip (assuming they are one of the small handful of people who own a Vita)?  Well, for starters the localization seems to be much better, as I haven't noticed the issues I had with the Vita release.  You can also travel to Kou's room, and put up decorations.  Certain decorations will have a cut scene with another character that raises your max HP.  While I would not be sold on just being able to decorate a room as a great new feature to highlight, the stat boost is always welcome.

The biggest and best new additions are the side stories available at the end of each chapter.  These focus on other characters in the story and helps flesh them out as characters.  The first one is especially good, since it gives you a preview for later in the game.  You play as new playable character White Shroud, and the new element: Light.  Light is strong against all the non-shadow elements, while shadow is strong against light and...the other elements.  Hmmm, that doesn't seem thought out, does it?  Anyway, White Shroud is fun to play as, and I really enjoyed the side story additions.

Despite the difficulty issues, I enjoyed playing Tokyo Xanadu EX+.  If you played the original, there is enough new content that I'd recommend playing it again (too bad the save file doesn't transfer).  If you didn't play the original, but like good action RPGs, then I'd also recommend the game.


The Good:
Added content make this good game worth revisiting.

The Bad:
Higher and inconsistent difficulty.

The SaHD:
Now that the original version has been out for a bit, I found a guide that specifies the hidden quests.

(Review code for Tokyo Xanadu EX+ was provided by the publisher)

Tokyo Xanadu (PS Vita) Review

A few days before I started playing Tokyo Xanadu, I finally cracked open my copy of Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel.  Why is this relevant?  Well, they are both made by the same company (Nihon Falcom), and had a few similarities, which I found kind of funny.

You play as Kou, a high school student who accidentally stumbles upon the hidden world of Eclipses.  These are doorways to another dimension brought about by strong emotions.  He quickly meets Asuka, a person who goes around fighting monsters to close the Eclipses, and decides to try and help her out.  As such, the game goes through a period of several months as new doors open, and Kou and his friends use their new powers to make sure the Eclipses get shut down.

Combat is very action-driven.  You have a normal attack, a jump, a projectile attack, and a dodge.  You can also hold down the projectile button for a powerful charge attack.  Both that and the projectile take SP, which fills over time, or from normal attacks.  Attacking is fun, but the SP can feel limiting when you are attacking enemies that are resistant to your physical attacks and need to be hit by your projectiles.  Plus, the dodge doesn't seem very good.  It's not an animation skip, so you can't cover for attack vulnerabilities, and it theoretically has invincibility frames.  I don't think I've ever hit them.  Considering how easy it is to get hit (there are a lot of cheap attacks), I would have liked a block, too, or at least a slightly better dodge.

A second meter you have in battle is for your X-Drive.  Using this will temporarily make all your attacks strike the enemy's elemental weakness, and give you infinite SP.  There's also a bonus effect depending on the element of your partner.  If that weren't enough, there is a third meter to fill, this time for your X-Strike.  These are basically super moves, which of course I save for boss fights.  they aren't quite as strong as I'd like, but they are useful.

Each Eclipse is a different dungeon.  They don't usually take that long to navigate, which is good because you are ranked on their completion.  Speed isn't the most important factor, though.  They also rate you on how many things you smash, enemies killed, and if you took advantage of an enemy's elemental weakness.  Sadly, it isn't always possible to get 100% for that, since you can only have three people with you at a time.  Switching to your partner is pretty easy, but switching to the "support" (third character) feels cumbersome.  You can always return to any completed Eclipse to grind or increase your rank.

Each character has an orbment soul device that represents their weapon.  There are several slots where you can equip crystals.  These crystals can give stat points, or even passive abilities like a percent chance to inflict a status ailment.  There are also spots that give extra combo damage and a couple of other effects once unlocked.  Monster parts randomly gained from loot drops are used to open and upgrade these slots.  There is also standard equipment, too.  Characters can equip an outfit (armor) and shoes, along with two accessories.

When you are not in a dungeon, you will run around and talk to people, advance the story, and maybe do some side quests.  Like Trails of Cold Steel, many of the people you talk to are tracked in your phone, and there are several pieces of information to learn about them as the story progresses.  You can also get side quests from an app.  Unfortunately, some are not shown in this way.  As a completionist, this bugs me.

The more important characters also have character episodes, where you can hang out with them, or help them out, and become closer friends.  As the game goes on, more people are added, and there are only a limited number of times you can spend with people per chapter.  If there is a free Eclipse, you will get an extra shard, but it's still nowhere near enough to spend time with everybody.  You are also at the mercy of who is available, so it's hard to focus on one or two special people.  I will give the game big props for being very clear about when the story is going to proceed, so it's hard to do so before you are ready.

My only real gripe with the game is that the localization feels a bit rushed, as there were several instances of typos.  The most glaring one was the shards used for the character episodes.  They are referred to as both affinity and infinity shards.  One time it's even called a Friendship shard.  Affinity makes more sense, but at the very least there shouldn't be two different names for the same thing.  Well, unless the character has a real name, but is always referred to as "mid-boss".

Tokyo Xanadu is a really fun action RPG that I enjoyed playing.  The difficulty felt about right (although it was a little too easy to get hit), and the length was good.  It is likely overshadowed by the enhanced version coming to PS4 later this year, but the Vita version is worth playing.


The Good:
I don't know if I could point to anything specific, but the game was just really fun.

The Bad:
Hidden side quests, and of course the typos.

The SaHD:
Wow, character models don't wear shoes in some indoor areas...nice touch!

(Review code for Tokyo Xanadu was provided by the publisher)