Merry Christmas everyone! It’s a blessing to be able to make it to another Christmas. I’m not taking anything for granted any more these days. Any year I make it through safe and sound and with all my body parts intact is a good year! I spent today pigging out with family like I always do. It’s actually a bit hard to balance my laptop on my lap with my stomach sticking out like this |))))) but I’ll do my best!

So, early thoughts on Tokyo Xanadu eX+. Really early thoughts, because I’ve only played 5 hours. Finished the first 2 chapters and about to start the second side story. Before I started, I heard the game described as “Persona meets Ys.” I thought it was just a particularly unimaginative reviewer grasping for words, but it turns out to be a really accurate description. It plays like Persona 3 or 4 but with action RPG combat instead. During the day you go to class and make various choices to build social links strengthen bonds and improve your Wisdom, Courage and Virtue, then later in the day you go dungeon crawling with your buddies. Visual novel by day, action battler by night. I haven’t seriously played any of the Ys games, but Tokyo Xanadu plays like what I think Ys should play like when it’s not doing that unplayable bump thingy from Ys DS.

But actually the similarities are mainly limited to the concept and general premise. Instead of looking for stuff to compare the game to (speaking of which, the chapter system reminds me of Tokyo Majin Gakuen) I’m trying and mostly succeeding to appreciate it for its own merits. Such as they are. It’s a bit hard right now because the visual novel sequences are so long and the dungeons are so short that I’m not getting the ARPG fix I was expecting.

And the VN parts are CHEESY. “I want to discover true strength together with you!” “I want to use these powers to defend the people I care about!” I mean yeah, I understand what they’re saying and yeah, they’re all honorable and good thoughts to have, but when you verbalize them like that, it’s just criiiiiingy. And this is just after 2 chapters. By the time we get to the inevitable “Mankind needs no gods!” conclusion I think my eyes will be permanently rolled back in my head ^^;; Just hope there’s a proper explanation for why people around Kousaka are turning out to be Wielders left and right.

(And of course, when developers do make a game with a hero who seriously doesn’t care a.k.a Luminous Arc Infinity, people like me complain anyway so they just can’t win.)

But I like all the characters so far so I don’t mind too much. And they’re all just so nice and forgiving. In the most recent chapter, a character named Aizawa was mean and said some very cruel things to her junior Sora, but by the end it was all swept under the bridge because of the power of friendship. Man, I must have gone to the wrong high school. Back in my day, the Karate club would have broken into the Aizawa faction (“Who does that Sora ***** think she is”) and the Sora faction (“Who does that Aizawa ***** think she is”) and the rift would have continued till graduation. This is where fiction comes in handy, eh?

The combat, what little there is of it, is pretty easy because you can pull up the menu and heal at any time. That said, it took me a long time to get a hang of the controls. In fact I couldn’t play it at all with the keyboard. I had to hook up a controller and remap the controls to stuff I could remember. And even then I still forgot the command to trigger EX skills in the most recent battle and had to beat the boss normally. What was it again…? There’s just so much stuff to remember. X-Drive, EX Skill, Power skill, etc etc. I forget all the commands as soon as I stop play and then I have to relearn them in the next session.

Can’t tell what’s going on? Neither can I.

Right now my parties have low HP and really weak defence, so my go-to strategy is to hang back and hit the enemy with Ranged Attacks. For regular mooks you can just smash through normally but for bosses it’s easiest to learn their attack patterns and dodge and fight from a distance. If the boss throws up a Guard (because the developers are totally on to me) then I have to close in and smash the guard, healing as necessary. Then it’s business as usual.

Easy stuff, and the dungeon gimmicks aren’t too annoying yet so it’s all good. I actually really liked the look and atmosphere of the most recent dungeon, Moonlight Garden. Just wish the dungeons were longer and there were many many many more enemies to defeat, but that will probably improve as the game goes along. If it doesn’t, I’ll have to downgrade the game from “action RPG with VN elements” to “Majin-like harem RPG” and nobody wants that.

I’ll be back to report if anything exciting happens either in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ or Luminous Arc Infinity. Otherwise I’m sneezing a lot today and feeling suspiciously headachy so I’m going to try and rest as much as I can for the rest of the week. Merry Christmas again!

Related posts:

Games I quit early, 2016 edition Dropped Chaos Rings III and continued Tokyo Xanadu eX+ Merry Christmas everyone! One Hour Retry: Tokyo Xanadu eX+ (minor spoilers)