Is Tokyo Xanadu good? Not really.

Is it compelling? Yes but not for the reasons the designers wanted you to think it is.

Tokyo Xanadu was a budget PS Vita title that they keep bolting more and more shit onto when they re-released it for the PS4 and later PC. It came out in that time when Persona 5 was in development hell so you were getting a real rash of modern-focused RPGs trying to get that market share, your Caligula Effects, your Mind Zeroes, that sort of thing.

Let me be blunt. Tokyo Xanadu has no fucking clue what game it wants to be.

It's ostensibly the fourth game in the Xanadu series, which are games with so little connective tissue it almost feels like god's cruel joke that they want to call it a series.

It plays like Ys that really wants you to think it's a Trails game.

Speaking of Trails it has no fucking idea what its relationship to that franchise is other than it is desperately, nakedly trying to sell you Cold Steel 1 and 2 at all times, by having advertisements in-game for it.

Our hero can find standees of the cast and artbooks and soundtracks for sale in the game of literally the ToCS2 cast with the branding.

And he can go to what is definitely not Club Sega Akihabara and play arcade games that treat the Trails characters as stars of their own magical girl spin-off anime.

And one of his teachers is a winking pastiche of like three of the badboy sexy dudes from Trails games and they even kind of joke about that.

And then another teacher is literally Towa. Like she has a different surname but it's her CS2 character model and her voice actress and the character is named Towa and people say she seems way too young to be a school teacher.

This is the scattershot that Tokyo Xanadu is.

What's its relationship to its sibling canon? Yes.

Oh I forgot to mention it's ostensibly the normal world (except with weird hidden supernatural effects) but orbal technology exists and is wide-spread showing up recently.

How has that changed things?

Fuck you nobody has time for that.

I am not kidding when I say a lot of the worldbuilding boils down to "okay what sounds cool right now?"

And also because it is has been rereleased enough it gets ridiculous when you consider all the extra added stuff to the game.

I am not suggesting you run out and pick up this game.

I am pointing out that it is wild because as best as I can tell the whole plot had to have been written by everyone just throwing out ideas as they went until they felt like they had enough game to ship.

So it's probably worth a bored weekend and like deep steam or e-shop sale.

I should stream it

it might make for fun frog commentary

I've always been curious about this game… but after hearing you talk about it, and compare it to Mind/Zero of all things?

im dying squirtle

Also, it's the only time you'll see a game character say "fukkleducks."