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Tokyo Xanadu eX+ review
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by Mia Blais-Côté

A Dungeon crawler, with hack'n'slash as a fighting system, and a story with the feel of a Persona. Everything to please me and yet, after 23 hours of play and several ragequits, I can't recommend it. The scenario, at first very intriguing, leads nowhere except to clichés. The characters evolve little. The fights quickly become repetitive and tiresome. The dungeons, often copied maps, are far too numerous and they are only there to extend the game's lifespan, especially towards the last chapters. I left the game at the very last. I would have liked to do the final battle, but hitting 4+ dungeons before, no thanks. And that's not counting the Epilogue and After Story, which also have their own dungeons.

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Microsoft from French
A nice game overall. Tokyo Xanadu eX + is quite similar to trails of cold steel and therefore persona 5 (I did not do the others so I do not prefer to say nonsense), but more light. That is to say that it is an RPG with phases of fighting, but especially a lot of interactions with NPCs. The goal is to live the life of our protagonist, a little in the way of an anime slice of life. Overall it's interesting, the characters to meet can be sympathetic, many different characters, some fairly stereotyped, others less, but all have +/-their coherent development. We learn little by little to know them better, what they like/dislike, their relationships with others, their family/past etc. You might as well say that you love reading and talking to everyone all the time. Unlike the trails of/in, we are never caught off guard, we are clearly shown when the plot will evolve if we talk to a particular character, which allows to make his purchases, side quests and talk to people without being afraid that one triggers a trigger with no possibility of return. Regarding combat it takes a little time to adapt, personal in this kind of jrpg I often struggle to take personal that I do not like too much, here one is a little obliged because the game is based not badly on a system of elemental shifumi. Without being revolutionary the fights are pretty nice and dynamic with Dodge system, special attacks, group combo etc. That said, the big problem of the game for me.... is that he is getting the same worries as other Falcom games, including trails in the sky and cold steel. That is to say a big problem of rhythm with segments that sometimes chain fights and endless dialogues not always interesting. Also, in the end just like these two other series, the game drags too much lengthwise, with repetitive dungeons and +/-labyrinthine or long as you type 3-4 times with bosses and pompous speeches well shounen-esque. It is all the more annoying that here the feeling of weariness is tripled by the fact that there is a first end like this, which is directly on a secondary end with this same problem. Followed by a third end bonus still having this same DJ problem to do 3-4 times, with the same ridiculous speeches and totally too much used clichés (and that we already see in their other series). In general I would say that one is in a very simple jrpg, in the image of many Studio jrpg of indie or medium, so technically little evolved but largely playable, graphically clean but not very detailed, with artworks rather pretty and mastered, but not of DA which clearly stands out from other productions of the genre. On the other hand to finish on a small negative point, I would say that the system of fast advance of the dialogues is badly screwed. In the trails by releasing the trigger this stops, here it will not stop until the end of the dialogue. It happened to me more than once to rest my controller for drinking or other, and that the trigger accidentally snaps me in the air all the text... To summarize: + good enough life (at the ladle 30 to 70h depending on your level and willingness to talk all the time to everyone, + if you want to complete it all) + lots of interesting characters to get to know + a lot of content, mini games , secondary quests etc, even if it remains simple + graphically simple but clean (lack can be personality)-some phases poorly rhythmic because too long fights + endless dialogues little interesting-runs in circles and drags in length on the 3 successive endings (on one run): repetitive DJ X3 or 4 for each end + same long and repeated speeches of the power of friendship (or almost)-many stereotyped situations, and therefore predictable-fast forward system badly screwed up a good game but that is not worth this rtainement not its €55, to be taken at a discount. To advise those who especially love the dialogues, because there are many, and it is the principle of the game to talk all the time to everyone, in order to develop relationships. So keep in mind that it is above all a "social" RPG, the interactions being more important than the Dungeon cleanup, whose gameplay remains simple but basic and therefore fairly fast repetitive.
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