Falcom are extraordinarily good at what they do. While the relatively limited budget of their projects mean that they’ll never be considered as part of the “triple-A” sphere, there’s a strong argument to be made that they are the absolute masters of their craft in one specific area: worldbuilding.
The most common example cited to back this claim up is their sprawling Trails series, which unfolds across a huge number of games, all of which are connected in one way or another. But those who, quite understandably, find the prospect of jumping into such a massive series daunting can take heart; Falcom’s “one-shot” games are just as well-crafted as their lengthy series.
And that’s where Tokyo Xanadu eX+ comes in. So today we’re going to take a closer look at exactly how this game exemplifies Falcom’s incredible approach to worldbuilding.
Before we go any further, I should perhaps clarify that when I talk about “worldbuilding”, I’m primarily speaking from a narrative perspective: the feeling that you are being immersed in the game’s world through the people and places that comprise it, not the technical proficiency of how the world is visually rendered. Because although a well-crafted “photorealistic” world can be immersive in its own way to a certain extent, it needs populating in order to be truly compelling, otherwise you just have a nice-looking diorama.
A textbook example of what I’m talking about here is Bethesda games. Titles like the games in the Elder Scrolls and latter-day Fallout titles have huge worlds that are interesting to explore from a technical perspective, but to me they feel “dead”. I don’t feel any sense of attachment to them, I don’t care about them (or what happens to them) and I don’t think I could name more than two characters from each series. And the reason for this is that they don’t take as much care with the narrative worldbuilding as they do with creating that nice-looking diorama.
Tokyo Xanadu eX+, meanwhile, is one of those games that unfolds across a deliberately limited geographical area. In this instance, it’s the fictional district of Morimiya; despite the game’s title, it’s an area outside the main, instantly recognisable parts of Tokyo such as Shibuya and Akihabara, and as such it allows Falcom a certain degree of creative license. It certainly looks and feels like Tokyo — specifically, it’s based on the real-life locale of Tachikawa, which is on the western outskirts of Tokyo proper — but it’s fictionalised in order to better fit the world in which the story unfolds.
As you progress through Tokyo Xanadu eX+, you’ll visit several different areas of Morimiya numerous times. There’s the high school that the main characters attend; the western-style Brick Alley, which features posh shops, cafés and art galleries; the traditional Japanese-style shopping street, with an open-air grocery store, traditional toy and snack store and even a blacksmith; the gigantic Acros Tower, which dominates the city’s skyline and incorporates offices, shops and a theatre; a large park, complete with boating lake, skateboard course and pleasant outdoor café; a small indoor mall featuring specialist shops; and the entertainment district, which, of course, hides plenty of dark and sleazy secrets beneath its glitzy surface.
Each of these areas are fairly small but well-crafted, with the game’s visuals adopting the same clean but detailed aesthetic as seen in the later Trails games. No-one’s going to mistake Tokyo Xanadu eX+‘s environments for being “photorealistic”, but given the overall “anime” aesthetic of the whole thing, it was never trying for that. The important thing is that it’s believable. And a crucial part of that is how the environmental design is backed up by the people who inhabit those areas.
Each area in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ has a number of non-player character inhabitants. Some of them wander around, others are always in the same place. Many of them have names, even though they’re not directly relevant to the main story, and it’s these characters that form the backbone of Falcom’s excellent worldbuilding.
Protagonist Kou Tokisaka is introduced to us as someone who “can’t help helping out”, and as such he has gotten to know a wide variety of people from all over the city through the part-time work organised for him by antique shop owner Yukino. This explains why we, as the player, are able to immediately know the names of seemingly unimportant characters; we can quite reasonably assume that Kou has had some off-screen contact with them in the past before we joined the story, either through working with them or simply getting to know them as a result of his time in various areas.
But these NPCs aren’t there just to hang out and give you game tips as in some games. In fact, the only one who does give you explicitly game-related information is the aforementioned Yukino, who has her own reasons for knowing a little more than one might expect at first glance. Elsewhere, the NPCs are there purely to give life to the world, and they achieve this by each having their own little story arcs that unfold over the course of Tokyo Xanadu eX+‘s entirety.
In other words, there are very few NPCs in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ that are a “once and done” sort of affair; there are occasional unnamed bystanders who show up for individual scenes, but for the most part, the named characters all have their own little stories to tell. And while it’s possible to run through the entire game and completely ignore these, to do so is to miss out on one of the great joys of Tokyo Xanadu eX+.
These little incidental stories vary quite a bit, and to run down all of them would be well beyond the scope of a single article, but I will highlight a few particular favourites from my complete run of the game.
One of the most heartwarming involves three kids — two boys and a girl — that you see hanging out in Morimiya’s park. When you first encounter them, the two boys clearly have a pre-existing friendship, and one of them has introduced the girl, because she seemed lonely and didn’t appear to have any friends her own age. The other boy is initially resistant to her presence, but as the game progresses, you see the relationship between the three of them blossom into a wonderfully close friendship.
Elsewhere in the game, you meet the parents of all of the kids, each of whom have their own role to play, and the fact that they are the parents of the kids in the park isn’t immediately pointed out to you. You can, however, connect the dots in your head if you’re paying attention, and by a point later in the game where we do see the kids together with their parents, you’ll feel like you have a decent understanding of how they all relate to one another.
The high school is also, as you might expect, full of interesting characters, and there are plenty of fun tales to watch unfold, such as the rivalry between two swim team members, an initially nervous volleyball player being encouraged by her senior, a boy and his girlfriend who diligently study together but who are clearly terrible at communicating with one another, and the first-year girl who has clearly had a bad experience with men at some point in her life and has thus developed a complete infatuation with the (female) student council president Mitsuki, who becomes one of your party members.
One of the nicest relationships to watch unfold is the one between Mai, the captain of the school’s karate club, and Fuuka, a sickly young girl who is often seen resting in the school’s infirmary. Mai is introduced to us early on as a supportive, thoroughly lovely young woman who is upset at the interpersonal problems and toxic rivalry between club members Chiaki and Sora — an issue which you help resolve early in the game — and it’s always a pleasure to see her.
As you speak with Fuuka on various visits to the infirmary — none of which are necessary to beat the game — you come to understand that she and Mai have a very close relationship with one another. Things are left somewhat ambiguous as to whether it is “just” friendship or something more between the pair of them, but it’s clear that there is genuine affection at play. Fuuka likes to knit and often makes things for Mai, while Mai often comes to visit Fuuka while she is bed-ridden.
Fuuka is by no means confined to that bed for the whole game, however; at various points you’ll find her up and about, and it’s hard not to crack a smile at this, particularly when you see her trying her best to help out with various situations despite her overall weakness.
Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is absolutely full of little stories like this. There’s the girl in the library who likes reading, then tries her hand at writing a novel, then becomes involved with the Film Club, who recognise her writing talent, and finally discovers that despite her shyness, she actually enjoys reading stories to children. There’s the artist in Brick Alley who is clearly a welcome sight to the residents and business owners in the area, who eventually manages to achieve some degree of official recognition for her work. There’s the street musician, who develops a love for the town of Morimiya, eventually ending up being part of an improvised backing band for the local idol group SPiKA. And many more besides.
And this isn’t even getting into the stories that the main cast members have to tell; these are, lest we forget, all completely incidental background NPCs. You can go through the entire game without speaking to any of these characters, but doing so will cause you to miss out on some thoroughly lovely little side stories.
Tokyo Xanadu eX+ does gently encourage you to explore these characters, however. Early in the game, you get the social media app “NiAR” on your in-game phone, and part of the app’s feature set is a “friends list” that keeps track of the people you’ve met. As you chat with the various characters around the game world, this friends list will populate with notes about them, their lives and their little stories, making for a fun collectible quasi-sidequest. You don’t really get anything out of pursuing a complete set of profiles, but if you play anything like I do, you’ll enjoy the start of a new chapter in the game as an opportunity to catch up with everyone as much as it moves the story along.
To complement these NPC side stories, various “Free Time” segments of the game allow you to expend “Affinity Shards” on “Friendship Episodes” with characters from your playable party and a few important NPCs, such as Kou’s cousin Towa, who is also his homeroom teacher. While these don’t unfold into lengthy independent arcs like the Social Link/Confidant system in the later Persona games, they do give you the opportunity to spend a bit of one-on-one time with your favourite characters — and, inevitably, there aren’t enough Affinity Shards available in a single playthrough for you to be able to hang out with everyone.
Towards the end of the game, if you’ve developed your relationship with various characters to a sufficient degree, you’ll receive a “message card” from them, which means that just prior to the game’s finale sequence, you’ll have the opportunity for a special scene with them. Interestingly (and quite refreshingly), Tokyo Xanadu eX+ completely eschews romance between Kou and the other cast members; it’s clear that, canonically speaking, Kou and his childhood friend Shiori are “supposed” to be together, and thus the closest we get to a romantic entanglement is Kou receiving a heartfelt letter from Shiori — and even then, things are left a little ambiguous as to whether Shiori “loves” Kou like a brother, or romantically.
That actually works really well, because it means that the conclusion of Tokyo Xanadu eX+ leaves things feeling like life in Morimiya will continue even after your time with the game; these feel like characters who have their own lives to live, and whose relationships will continue to develop even without you actively watching over them.
This isn’t to say the game leaves things feeling “unfinished” by any means — on the contrary, the game has three major “finale” sequences: one regular one, one “true” one and one “After Story” that was added for the “eX+” version — but rather it provides the sense that once you have dealt with all the supernatural shenanigans going on as part of the main narrative, you will have “freed” the central characters to be able to have a relatively normal life… or as normal as can be expected under the circumstances, anyway.
But I think it’s testament to the strength of Tokyo Xanadu eX+‘s worldbuilding that we haven’t mentioned that main narrative at all in this piece, and yet there’s still so much to say about the game as a whole. The main narrative is definitely important, and builds to an extremely dramatic climax in its latter hours, but part of the reason that climax has such an impact is because the game has taken such great pains to make you care about the world in which unfolds and the characters who populate that world.
Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is very much one of those games where I know I am going to miss the characters now that I’ve finished the story, and my life feels just a little bit richer for having spent that time with them. And, I have to say, it has given me a voracious hunger for more Falcom. Now, the question is whether I indulge that with another “one-off” game, or if I finally bite the bullet and jump into Trails properly…
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