Xanadu Next Review

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Xanadu is a realm of immense, extrapolated beauty through the poles of heroism, mysticism, reincarnation, wholesome living, and quality friendships, relationships; wherein, home life and the homeland is achieved through reaching a collective conscious. Everyone in Xanadu for the most part, of their lives, live in peace. Created by one of the most highly acclaimed and legendary role-playing teams, Nihon Falcom, comes Xanadu Next, a role-playing game that exercises only top-notch quality and quantity. In this new installment harking back to the golden age of dungeon crawlers and good role-playing games, is a re-make on the take off June 20, 2005, hit Xanadu Next originally developed by ScriptArts for the N-Gage and published by Nokia in the United States; Nihon Falcom in Japan. Cast into a lake of dreary dread comes the natural elements of fog and the mysterious disappearance of the castle Strangerock. Can our travelers, Lady Wells and the unnamed knight discover the hidden truths and deep history in the history of Kublai Khan? Will we find all the answers? Find out in this new episode of Xanadu!

Xanadu Next, to say the least, is an interesting game with gameplay and mechanics of great fervor and highly extolled ambition. I prefer the keyboard, mouse layout because I find it easier and more responsive to use. Other players have reported difficulties in the utilization of the D-pad, along with the frustration that comes with equipping skills through the quick-slot menu, as a result, similar to the characteristics, core mechanics of majority action-based role-playing games, fighting enemies are much easier through the use of well-timed mouse clicks and camera angles. The initial control layout for the mouse and keyboard setup is standard, x to confirm and attack, z to cancel and show skills, space for the menu, the tab for zooming in-and-out and hotkeys ( F1-F4; 1-4) for the item and quick-slot selection. When approaching enemies, there will be a circle icon attached to them. This icon tells us that one or more enemies are in range.

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Movement is controlled by placing the cursor in the direction you want to go by right-clicking anywhere on the map. The mechanics are rather simplified for a dungeon crawler combined with Japenese role-playing. The combat produced in real-time; placement is non-essential because the gameplay fully depends on the strengths of all of your attributes combined. There is an experience point system which you can track through a menu overlay, the drop-down screen on the right-hand side of the display. All of these things are essential. However, there is no separate menu in which you have the option of viewing your full party. Instead, you have to physically walk forward towards your party member ( i.e. Lady Wells) to see all of her attributes, stats, and also, she can keep ahold of your inventory for safe-keeping preceding your voyage in the outer realms.

Xanadu Next does everything right in its presentation. The variety of resolutions in which you can run the game in is the best of our current generation in the personal computer market. There are smaller based resolutions, but I will provide only an example of the resolution standard of today, starting at 1080p ( 1920×1080). There is a frame buffering option that can increase this resolution to 2k, 4k, and 8k resolution with high-definition based graphics. The sounds are adhesive connecting and latching on to its fantastical score in its cinematic opening with high quality comparable to Requiem for a Dream, The Lord of the Rings and crescendo’s typically found in Gospel choirs and orchestras. The graphics put in mind, Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life. The dialogue is a combination of complex-complex sentence structure and simple-complex. Examples of this are “ Either way, if ye’re here long enough, ye’ll get to see it again. Lotsa times, too, I bet.” “ And no talk of Strangerock’s complete without bringin’ up the legend of the sword, Tu Long Jian__Dragon Slayer.” Lady Wells salutation “ I certainly will! Thank you so much for all you’ve done, kind sir. May your return be swift.”

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Replayability is seen as relatively rare for a game such as this because of its story. I could foresee many players only playing it through once since the only benefit a second time, is either for pleasure or to collect the remaining ‘ Guardians.’ The Guardians are used in the religious ceremonies in the game, an infusion of talents and gifts employed in the reincarnation, incantations of spells throughout the soul. The game is perfect for all ages because it promotes positive aspects of friendships, relationships and has an actual purpose to its story and history. Many role-playing games today now promote more witchcraft, sorcery, and mythological elements rather than good wholesome living with real-life characteristics, character backgrounds, and a plot that seems realistic without a prominence of suspension of disbelief including in the plotline.

Overall, Xanadu Next is perfect for all ages including the best writers through Xseed. The story starts off in high, intense cinematic prose with cutscenes that produce Dolby quality theater based audio. It is far more interesting than the Legend of Heroes series, while also, taking some themes out of Japenese role-playing, adding the sugar, spices, bells and whistles to make the game an unmissable educational and wholesome experience to be had in life. If perfection is possible, then this game would be in the hall of fame behind The Legend of Zelda and Ys in notable aptitude.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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