Now Aksys Games has brought the long out-of-print Tokyo Xanadu eX+ to the Switch seven years later to introduce the game to new audiences and (spoiler alert) it’s aged quite well. Tokyo Xanadu was always a title that was designed to be portable and taking advantage of the more powerful Switch hardware and larger screen has allowed for an excellent port of a neo-classic Falcom title to entertain a whole new generation of gamers!
While Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is a stand-alone game rather than a member of any previous Falcom franchise, longtime fans will enjoy a number of subtle asides to both the Ys series and the Trails series. Most notably, references to orbal technology (a staple of the Trails series) and hints of Adol Christin’s story both surface occasionally within the meat of the dialogue in Tokyo Xanadu. There are other references too, some subtle, some very blunt (combat orbments!) and it’s all in good fun. None of it is enough to disrupt the plot in any way, but there’s definitely some solid fan service here and it deserves a nod.
In the game you play Kou Tokisaka, a high school student swept into events beyond his expectations when he accidentally discovers that there’s a dimension adjacent to ours called the Otherworld which is full of demons and monsters trying to break into his own world. Luckily, there are people already fighting against the monsters there who are known as ‘The Greed’ and Kou becomes entangled in a complex web of events that test the limits of his character. Over the eight progressively longer chapters of the game you’ll get to know Kou and his friends, his classmates, and the forces fighting the Greed tooth and nail to stop its infiltration into our world.
As plots go, this is a solid storyline that slowly builds effectively, creating a bond with the characters who you will definitely care about by the time things wrap up. Tokyo Xanadu eX+ adds a significant amount of content to the original game too, with Side Story chapters after every main chapter of the game which delve deeper into the motivations and activities of key characters throughout the game. While you’re ostensibly playing Kou, the side stories cover everyone and often put Kou on the back burner to focus on wider plot development, even including playable sections with the White Shroud, a character that is of key importance later on but quite mysterious to start and unplayable in the main game and the original version of Tokyo Xanadu.
There are two distinct areas to the game, Otherworld dungeons and Tokyo itself. We’ll start with Tokyo because that’s where the bulk of the plot takes place. Playing through Tokyo Xanadu eX+, you’ll move from location to location around the city. As a student at Morimiya High School, the game revolves around your classmates and social interactions in the fictional Tokyo district. From that jumping off point, you’ll be interacting with fellow students, business owners within the area, and assorted people you encounter living in the area. This is a somewhat traditional supernatural high school adventure story but the character development is surprisingly deep.
During the real world portions of the game, you’ll run errands for people and decide which of your friends and acquaintances to spend free time with. You generally have 1-2 free time interaction points called affinity shards you can choose to use each chapter but different choices end up having impacts on the subtleties of the storyline as things progress. That limited freedom over the nuances of the story has a distinctive Persona vibe to it but Tokyo Xanadu is quite clearly its own beast. You can earn additional affinity shards by completing free dungeons in the Otherworld during free time, but we’ll get into that later.
At the end of each free time sequence, Kou goes to work at one of his many part time jobs and the main story moves on, shifting towards inevitable encounters with the Otherworld and the action portions of Tokyo Xanadu eX+. This is a series that trends much more towards the style of the Ys games than it does the Trails series and there are some distinct parallels between the Ys series’ gameplay and Tokyo Xanadu. Each Otherworld encounter starts you off at the beginning of a dungeon which seems as much an alien world as anything else. The dungeons are full of monsters called Greed which have various elemental affinities. Fortunately for you, you also have elemental affinities and once your party starts to fill out, you’re able to mix and match up to three playable characters at a time to maximize the balance of elemental strengths in your party to subdue the Greed more effectively.
Otherworld combat sequences use up to three characters to explore a variety of labyrinth-style dungeons. Each dungeon looks somewhat different but the general structure is the same and the enemies are different each time, though you may see some repetition from time to time in the form of palette swaps and such. Each character has a different elemental affinity and with six playable characters, you’ll have to decide which affinities will benefit you most. You can’t easily change characters in a dungeon so once you’re locked in, you’re stuck with your choice until just before the boss fight.
Much like the Ys games, each character has different attacks and you’ll need to switch on the fly regularly to maximize your combat efficiency. Characters have a standard attack, a power attack, a ranged attack, and an aerial attack, as well as more powerful attacks. The game walks you through the use of each technique as they become available, slowly building up your combat knowledge over several chapters rather than just handing you the keys to the kingdom right away though. It’s a good design because there are multiple uses for buttons based on what you want to accomplish and the controller layout can lead to a bit of flailing if you panic in combat. There are also EX attacks which you build up power for and do massive damage with and X-Drive attacks which incorporate your teammates in the dungeon if you use them before the charge bar dissipates.
Dodging is key in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ as well and you’ll find that timing your attacks is useful in halting enemies or choosing the right tactical moments to interrupt their attack patterns. Keeping that rhythm is important too because the dungeon areas tabulate how many consecutive hits you get, what type of kills you manage, and how frequently you use elemental affinities to defeat enemies, resulting in a letter grade from F to S rank for each dungeon. Better performance means more points and can impact Kou’s courage stats as well. It seems more important than it actually is and there’s an achievement for getting all the S Ranks, but it’s still fun to start chaining attacks and get that ranking up!
Each dungeon also has a boss, typically an Elder Greed. This is a much stronger enemy than anything you’ll face in the early parts of the dungeon and brings us to an important point, High Speed Mode. Those of you that have played Falcom games before may be aware that newer ones have a built in fast forward mode that lets everything in the game move faster in order to speed up dialogue and the like. Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is no exception here and high speed mode is activated by depressing the left thumbstick on the Switch. Unfortunately, unlike other Falcom games, it is almost impossible to effectively pull off certain moves in Tokyo Xanadu with high speed mode active in the Otherworld and nearly impossible to switch characters fast enough to use elemental kills effectively. Starting out with High Speed Mode on means that you’ll be lucky to A Rank a dungeon, much less S Rank it and your combat is going to be a lot tougher.
That goes double for bosses like the Elder Greeds who have somewhat predictable patterns and specific elemental weaknesses. Turn on high speed mode and blam, you can be toast in seconds. That’s pretty frustrating when the rest of a dungeon is a cakewalk. It’s doubly irritating because when you’re fighting any difficult enemies in Tokyo Xanadu eX+, it’s ridiculously easy to depress the left thumbstick on default controls…you know…the one that controls your movement. Elder Greeds tend to do a lot of damage if you’re not in sync with their attacks and this can screw you up fast. Also like other Falcom games, you can choose to weaken bosses and then retry them if you die, but in regular mode, the bosses aren’t outrageously hard as long as you’ve been grinding a little.
During free time mode you can hop back into dungeons and level up your characters, gather supplies, and refine your gameplay. Each chapter has a “free” dungeon you can go back to and a hidden one you can find and unlock to gain an extra interaction point, adding to character depth. You’ll also want to go back in here and there to get some extra money because money goes awfully fast in Tokyo Xanadu. Fortunately, the dungeons are short and the Elder Greeds stay dead once you’ve taken them out once so things aren’t all that frustrating.
Between combat in the Otherworld and the main story there’s a lot going on but that’s not all there is to the game. Tokyo Xanadu also features a number of side missions and requests that you can complete for additional experience, money, and items. Every character has a Xiphone, which is essentially a specialized smartphone and the NiAR system is the Xiphone’s OS, allowing you to manage chapter side quests, practice your cooking skills, and an array of other functions. Cooking is incredibly useful, providing a wide range of powered-up healing items at cheaper prices than the stores if you buy the recipes. It also pays to shop as there are plenty of interesting items to give to characters and decorate Kou’s room with. There are even arcade games to play if you want to spend the cash on the tokens to play them and a skate park to test your reflexes on, though it isn’t all that hard.
Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is a game that was originally designed for the Vita so it doesn’t have some of the flash of current Falcom releases. Even with the upgrades to HD, it’s still clearly a previous generation game and yet for all that it looks remarkably good. You’ll notice a lack of fine detail in play on a docked Switch but undocked in portable mode, the game absolutely shines. Naturally character artwork is excellent, top tier stuff as you’d expect from Falcom. The menu systems are also slick, responsive, and intuitive, especially for a previous generation title and it’s easy to fast travel almost anywhere quite rapidly. Load times are nearly non-existent, even for the Switch and that’s somewhat of a rarity for this style of game on that system. Visuals always stay clean and clear no matter what too, making this an excellent transfer to the Switch.
Audio is similarly good and the Tokyo Xanadu eX+ soundtrack is downright awesome. This is one of those soundtracks you’re going to actually want to listen to with some killer tracks and a hard rock main theme that will have your toes tapping. Audio work is solid as well and the subtle background music blends effectively with the gameplay to produce a fantastic experience. Voice acting is also quite good, staying quite serious overall, though there is no English and only Japanese options available for audio. Some games make you want to turn off the voice work but not Tokyo Xanadu. Everything about the audio simply nails it.
In terms of flaws, the biggest problems with the game aren’t what you’d expect. Instead, they mostly stem from button mapping. Accidentally tapping L during a story sequence will immediately drop the text to a super-accelerated mode much faster than even high speed mode, forcing you to reload an earlier save or read back in the text log. This can be incredibly irritating, especially when you’re deep in the story or happen to set your controller down and accidentally trigger it. There’s no option to change it in the controller settings either, even though most every other button is re-mappable. The high-speed mode issue on the left stick is easily remapped if you’d like but the default is still not the best selection, especially for an easily pushed L3 button like the Switch has. Aside from struggling to find the right balance of controls though, there are essentially no issues with Tokyo Xanadu eX+ and it’s a very balanced game that’s fun across the board!
There are a few more things left to be mentioned including some extra settings in the menu like unlocking boss fights as you beat them on each difficulty, a character viewer where you can try out new looks, and New Game+ once you beat the main game. Depending on how hardcore you are, that could take a lot of time with the five difficulty modes available as well. Tokyo Xanadu eX+ also features all the DLC that was originally available for the game including a huge number of costumes, accessories, additional supplies, and more. It’s a wealth of extras that will take you a bit of time to go through and it’s neat to have it all included rather than listed on the eShop as a bunch of microtransactions.
At $50 for the digital version of the game, you’re getting an excellent experience and a solid 40+ hour playtime for your cash. That’s about exactly how long you’d want the game to last without wearing out its welcome and you’ll be satisfied with almost every aspect of the story, especially if you’re thorough. There’s no question that this is a great release that’s snuck under many players’ radar and it’s well worth picking up. There’s a physical edition too if that’s your thing and chances are it’ll be a sought after game eventually. Regardless of your preference, the Switch is the ideal way to play Tokyo Xanadu eX+ and you’re not going to regret picking this gem of a game up!
This review is based on a digital copy of Tokyo Xanadu eX+ provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is also available for PS4 and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.