Tokyo Xanadu

Gameplay

It is an action role-playing game, like the Xanadu series, along with elements from the Persona series of Japanese role-playing games. It has a party-based real-time battle system with dungeon exploration.

Characters

Setting

With Tokyo Xanadu, Falcom set out to create a game with a different feel than their other flagship video game series, the Ys and The Legend of Heroes/Trails in the Sky series. While the other series have a fantasy setting, the events of Tokyo Xanadu occur against the background of a fictional suburb of modern-day Tokyo called Morimiya City, and contain modern elements like smartphones and social media. Morimiya was based on actual locations in Tachikawa City where Nihon Falcom has its head office: for example, the Morimiya Station Plaza, with its red arch monument and the "Yumine" Department Store, closely resembles the north exit of Tachikawa Station, which has a similar-looking blue arch monument and a branch of the Lumine Department Store. Falcom held promotional activities at various real-world locations in Tachikawa City which resembled in-game locations, including a Tokyo Xanadu-themed menu at the cafe in Books Orion, an actual Japanese bookstore chain also based in Tachikawa City which appears in-game with permission under its own name.

Development

Falcom first announced the game's title on December 17, 2014. The company referred to the game as a "urban myth action rpg". They also emphasized that they wanted to create a game with a different feel than their other flagship video game series, the Ys and The Legend of Heroes/Trails in the Sky series. The game is the latest iteration of the Xanadu games, including the 1985 video game Xanadu and the 2005 video game Xanadu Next, though the game is modelled to be rather different than its predecessors.

The game was released in Japan on September 30, 2015. An English version of the game was not announced for almost a year after its initial Japanese release, leaving the game's fate in the West uncertain at the time. Journalists had considered it as a likely candidate for game localization by Xseed Games, due to their close relationship with Falcom from translating entries in their Trails and Ys titles. Other journalists mistook the Xanadu related trademark leaked in January 2015 as a sign of it being translated by XSeed, though this was actually in reference to Xanadu Next. USGamer described the game's chances of being localized as "extremely strong". In February 2016, Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo, when asked if third party companies were interested in releasing the title in the English in the West, responded that it was "something that we definitely want to make a reality and are currently working towards. Please wait just a bit longer."

In June 2016, Falcom announced an enhanced version of the game, Tokyo Xanadu eX+, for the PlayStation 4. The PS4 version contains improved HD graphics and frame rate, and additional story content in the form of extra side stories and post-game content. This version was released in Japan on September 8, 2016. In July 2016, Aksys Games announced that they would be translating the Vita version of the game and publishing it sometime in 2017. Additionally, they would be creating and releasing a PC port of the game, though they, at the time, had no plans of releasing the enhanced PS4 version. In January 2017, they announced they would be translating the PS4 version as well, and that the PC port would be of eX+.

Reception

Famitsu gave the game a review score of 32/40. The game sold a total of 88,879 physical retail copies within its first week of release in Japan, topping the software sales charts for that particular week, and 112,041 copies had been sold as of October 2015.