Category Archives: Individual Games

Tokyo Xanadu

Tokyo Xanadu eX+: a potent reminder of Falcom’s masterful worldbuilding

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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.

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Tokyo Xanadu

What would “the school RPG” look like from a culture outside of Asia?

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Playing through Tokyo Xanadu eX+ as I am, I find a thought occurring to me which I’ve pondered privately in the past, but never actually written anything about. So I thought I’d indulge those musings now.

The thought is, as it says in the headline, what would a “modern day urban RPG” with a primarily school-based setting look like if it was set in, say, the UK, where I’m from? I suspect it would be very different, and I’m surprised that no-one appears to have tried it up until this point.

Sure, there are western visual novels set in a school setting, but those are often heavily exaggerated or laden with insincerity and irony; there’s nothing delivered with a sense of genuine earnestness like Tokyo Xanadu eX+, the Persona series or Blue Reflection. And I think that’s a pity. So I’d like to talk about that a bit today.

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Tokyo Xanadu

Tokyo Xanadu eX+: Falcom’s forgotten gem

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Falcom make some absolutely fantastic games, but speak to a self-professed “Falcom fan” and they’ll almost certainly only want to talk about the Trails series — or, more likely, “Kiseki”, because as we all know, referring to something with its original Japanese title rather than a widely accepted localised version makes you a Better Fan Of The Thing.

That’s a real pity, because while Trails is an amazing series — and one I’m fully intending to binge at some point, right from Trails in the Sky through to Trails Through Daybreak and beyond — Falcom is far from a one-trick pony. There’s the Ys series, for starters, which we’ve already talked about at length on this here site, and then there’s “everything else”.

Tokyo Xanadu eX+, of course, falls into this latter category. It’s technically part of the Xanadu series, but Falcom’s intentions for this game mean that it might as well be considered as its own self-contained thing, and as such can be enjoyed completely on its own merits. So let’s take a closer look!

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Granblue Fantasy: Relink

Another look at Granblue Fantasy: Relink after finishing its main scenario

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I rolled credits on Granblue Fantasy: Relink after about 20 hours of play. That might sound short for an RPG — and it is, by modern standards — but reaching the end of that main story is also potentially far from the end of your time with the game.

We’ll explore that side of things in more detail another day (mostly because I haven’t really delved into the “endgame” as yet) so today we’re taking a look at the gameplay experience while you’re playing through the main scenario.

Without wishing to spoil things too much, I had a great deal of fun playing through Granblue Fantasy: Relink. So let’s take a closer look at exactly why this game works so well.

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Granblue Fantasy: Relink

A first look at Granblue Fantasy: Relink

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I’ve been looking forward to Granblue Fantasy: Relink for a while, despite its seemingly troubled development cycle.

Ever since I spent some time playing the original mobile version of Granblue Fantasy, I’ve been hungry for the setting and characters to be adapted into a full-scale, not-free-to-play, not-mobile game. Because of all the mobile games I’ve spent some time with over the years, Granblue Fantasy is still one of the best in terms of the effort that has gone into its presentation and setting.

Ultimately, though, it was still a mobile game, and as such its appeal to me waned as the grind — or the temptation to spend money — ramped up. So does Granblue Fantasy: Relink provide what I wanted from a “proper game” adaptation of the franchise? Let’s take a closer look, based on a few hours of play.

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Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation

Date A Live and the comforting familiarity of tropes

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“Tropes” has become a bit of a dirty word over the course of the last decade or so, for a variety of different reasons, but I’m here to present you with the not-terribly hot take that tropes exist for a reason, and that, when handled well, can enhance rather than detract from a creative work.

This particularly came to mind towards the end of last week, when I elected to finally pull down Date A Live: Rio Reincarnation from my shelf and make a start on it as one of my “things I’m playing that are not my current Big Game” titles to enjoy in the week.

As a visual novel, it’s something that can be enjoyed with minimal “effort”, and, as I’ve discussed in a few places before, it’s also ideally suited for things like reading in bed, accompanying mealtime or just generally zoning out in front of.

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Nurse Love Syndrome

Nurse Love Syndrome: Beauty is Skin-Deep

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As we’ve previously explored, some of the core themes that run through Kogado Studio’s visual novel Nurse Love Syndrome include the ideas that people are fallible, that first impressions aren’t always correct — and that becoming overly dependent on someone is usually a bad idea.

The narrative route for Yasuko Yamanouchi explores these concepts from a slightly different angle. Protagonist Kaori Sawai once again finds herself struggling in her early days as a nurse, but this time around the ways she finds herself having to cope — and the things she has to cope with — are a little different from that which we witness if we pursue the route focusing on her senpai Nagisa.

Like much of Nurse Love Syndrome, Yamanouchi’s route is emotionally charged and, at times, a challenging read. Sounds ripe for a bit of deeper reading, no?

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Nurse Love Syndrome

Nurse Love Syndrome: Nearest and Dearest

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Although Kogado Studio’s visual novels Nurse Love Addiction and Nurse Love Syndrome are available as a set (known as Nurse Love Obsession), they’re actually very different experiences.

While Nurse Love Addiction primarily unfolds in a nursing school and deals with the shared traumatic past of a small group of students, Nurse Love Syndrome, at least on a first pass, is a rather more down-to-earth affair that concerns the struggles of a rookie nurse during her first year on the job.

For anyone who has ever experienced work-related stress and the mental health challenges that presents one with, it’s a difficult and emotional but rewarding read. And there’s a lot more to discover beyond that first playthrough, too. Let’s take a first look at the package as a whole, and what one of the routes through the narrative has to offer us.

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Magicami DX

Magicami DX: Candy-Coloured Darkness

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Following on from last week’s look at big-budget free-to-play city pop magical girls eroge Magicami DX, I’ve been spending a bit more time with the game.

At the time of writing, I’m over halfway through the current main story content (on the game’s Normal difficulty), so it’s that side of things I’d like to talk about today — with particular regard to how the 18+ version of the game handles things.

With that in mind, there will likely be mild spoilers ahead, along with NSFW images and graphic descriptions and depictions of sexual violence. You have been warned!

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Magicami DX

Magicami DX: Magical Girls Go Punk

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Critics of popular Asian free-to-play games often joke that those who invest money into their hobbies are “paying money for JPEGs of their favourite characters”.

While obviously a somewhat mean-spirited exaggeration, the truth of the matter is that, barring a few notable exceptions, free-to-play mobile games do tend to eschew flashy technical prowess in favour of a constant barrage of new playable storylines, special events and collaborations with popular franchises. And their players don’t seem to mind this relative lack of “wow factor”; the immensely popular and long-running Granblue Fantasy, for example, is little more than a collection of sluggishly loading HTML pages playing some low bitrate audio in the background, but it shows no sign of slowing down.

With all this in mind, though, wouldn’t it be nice to find a free-to-play game that combined the things people enjoy about this sort of experience with rather higher production values than usual? Well, enter Magicami DX, a game which came out in 2019 back home in Japan, and which has now found itself localised for the browsers and mobile devices of English speakers thanks to adult gaming specialists Nutaku, who you may recall I had a nice chat with a little while back.

Let’s take a first look!

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