40 years of Dragon Slayer: Tokyo Xanadu

An attempt to weave together multiple Falcom threads into something new, and finally done right in its latest form.

September marks 40 years of Nihon Falcom’s Dragon Slayer series, which had its original run ended with creator Yoshio Kiya’s exit from the company, but continues to exist to this day through subseries and spin-offs. Throughout the month, I’ll be covering Dragon Slayer games, the growth of the series, officially and unofficially, on a worldwide scale, and the legacy of Falcom’s contribution to role-playing games. Previous entries in the series can be found through this link.

Despite the fact that Xanadu: Dragon Slayer II was the game that made Nihon Falcom into an RPG powerhouse, the studio hasn’t returned to it all that often over the last nearly four decades. There were remakes in the mid-90s, the first coinciding with the 10-year anniversary of Xanadu, and then Xanadu Next, a dungeon crawler spin-off, was released in 2005. Another decade later, and Falcom released Tokyo Xanadu for the Playstation Vita; calling it a spin-off isn’t quite explanation enough.

Tokyo Xanadu almost feels more like a crossover than a spin-off, even if it isn’t actually crossing over with anything else in Falcom’s catalog. The reason for that is in its design decisions: Tokyo Xanadu uses the basic framework (and engine) of a different Dragon Slayer spin-off, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, to inform half of its gameplay. The other half is more Ys-like than anything else, though, it’s also not quite that, since the fully 3D, larger character models version of Ys that we’ve seen since Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana wouldn’t actually exist for another two years. Tokyo Xanadu is, in many ways, based more on a different Dragon Slayer offshoot than the one it shares a name with, and is something of a tweener for how Falcom would handle its action RPGs going forward vs. how it had handled them, which makes it something of a weirdo in their catalog. Especially since it released on the Vita in Japan in 2015, but wouldn’t hit North America until 2017 — the expanded Playstation 4 edition of Tokyo Xanadu, which had an eX+ appended to it, would actually end up releasing after the localized version of Ys VIII, and even its Vita cousin landed just a couple of months before.

This is similar in some ways to how The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless trails is a 2012 Falcom action RPG with platforming elements, akin to its Ys contemporaries of the day (as well as other, less-celebrated Falcom series’ like Zwei) that wouldn’t see an international release until 2023. Nayuta is considered a bit of an oddball for the Falcom of today to be releasing, but that’s only because the last decade of Falcom has been almost exclusively Trails games and the modern version of Ys. Nayuta fit in perfectly with the Falcom of the decade before that one, the one that had multiple Zwei releases and Gurumin and a trio of Ys titles in a similar style. Tokyo Xanadu released, initially, during the transition period from that version of Falcom to the current one, and while it slid in pretty normally in Japan as part of that transition, the wait and prioritization of localizing other games likely hurt its reception a bit elsewhere. As did the fact that the initial localization was kind of stale. This isn’t just an opinion, either: one of the major selling points for the 2024 edition of the game that Aksys published on the Switch is that it has a completely revamped localization that does a better job of livening up the game, while allowing individual characters to shine instead of everything having sort of a muted, same-y voice to it.

Image credit: GOG

Part of the issue is also being able to identify just what Tokyo Xanadu even is. When you aren’t fighting monsters, it plays an awful lot like Trails of Cold Steel II, in that you walk around a school and a town speaking with NPCs, completing missions, chatting up your friends to see scenes and build relationships. Since there’s a bit of a day/night cycle in terms of when you’re doing what, it also has a bit of a Persona feel to it, since you enter into another dimension and can use special weapons there that aren’t available in the real world, and oh yeah, you’re in high school.

The action itself is fairly Ys, though, it’s not fast-paced action to that degree: it’s more that it’s based on building out a three-person team and taking advantage of elemental weaknesses to make combat go its smoothest, with you constantly switching between one active party member to do so. You charge up multiple gauges for different kinds of special attacks, and you do some light platforming and puzzle solving to help you progress through the labyrinths. Ys- flavored is probably the best way to describe it, but it’s not fully a Ys clone, either. Like with Nayuta, it’s still doing its own thing here.

So, when Tokyo Xanadu is a little of all of those things, what is it, exactly? In Japan, it was just the latest from Falcom, which can be enough to motivate checking it out, especially with the Xanadu name attached — it did top the sales charts in its first week of release there, even — but that’s not something that carries a ton of weight here. More so now, seven years after its initial North American release, sure, but that’s part of why Aksys re-released it with an improved localization, as well. It was time to take advantage of all the Falcom sickos who have emerged in the intervening years, and let them have a shot at a game they probably ignored the first couple of times it released.

What I can tell you is that Tokyo Xanadu, especially in its latest eX+ edition for the Switch, is a good game. It’s just not much of a Xanadu game, despite the title. To be fair, with so few Xanadu titles out there, everything with that name attached to it is very much a Xanadu game. But compare this to Xanadu Next, which was circling back to genres its predecessor helped influence and bring into being in the first place, while holding tight to and expanding the very world and lore of Xanadu, building it all out into something both new and familiar, all while feeling very much like a modern take on the dungeon-crawling, labyrinth-exploring heart of the original. Tokyo Xanadu lacks any of that: its name is its biggest association with Xanadu. They’re both action RPGs, they both involve labyrinths and multiple systems for leveling and powering up to consider, but it’s far more disconnected from its origins than Xanadu Next was.

[Leo pointing meme]

None of this is a criticism, or, at least, not a major one. I might be personally disappointed that this doesn’t feel more like a Xanadu game, but as far as the actual quality of the title goes, it’s still there and easy to find. It’s more just something to be aware of, that the name alone isn’t an indicator of what you’re getting into, hence this lengthy preamble. And really, being connected at most by a name, with everything else being a bit tenuous, and having the entire gameplay systems revamped from previous entries? Tokyo Xanadu might actually be the most Dragon Slayer thing Falcom has produced since series’ originator Yoshio Kiya left the company.

Rather than taking place in a fantasy kingdom or setting, Tokyo Xanadu takes place in, well, Tokyo. In a fictional part of that city known as Morimiya, where people keep mysteriously disappearing 10 years after a major earthquake that claimed thousands upon thousands of lives. You are right to assume that this is basically Chekhov’s Earthquake here: it’ll play a significant role in the narrative.

You play as Kou, who seems like a pretty normal high school boy albeit with a selfless streak that sees him wanting to help others when they’re in a jam, even if it puts him in some danger. That’s how he first finds his way into a labyrinth through a dimensional doorway, as he was trying to keep one of his new classmates, a young woman named Asuka, from being harmed by some gang members. It turns out Asuka works for a secret organization that not only knows about these dimensional doorways but seeks them out to defeat the demons inside and close them up, and oh, Kou happens to be a “wielder” of a weapon that only manifests itself in these labyrinths, as well. If you’re wondering if there’s more than one secret organization dedicated to this dimension, and that there’s no agreement on what’s to be done about its existence and expansion into the world, the answer is yes.

You’ll find a whole bunch of other wielders throughout the game, until you’ve got a party big enough to split into two in later dungeons. The revamped localization makes it a lot easier to actually invest yourself in these party members a bit, since their personalities better shine through, and the addition of side stories — introduced in the initial eX+ release of the game for the Playstation 4 — not only nearly doubles the number of dungeons you can go through, but adds a ton of additional background and characterization for your party members and some key NPCs, as well.

Each of these wielders will have a base element associated with them: wind, steel, spirit, fire, and shadow. Fire is effective against wind, wind against steel, steel against spirit, spirit against fire, and shadow is best used against fellow shadow. Kou’s weapon has a fire core; Asuka’s has spirit. (As you get deeper into the game, you can change Kou’s core to any element, and everyone else gets one other type they can be switched to.) So, you’ll want to switch between the two early on, when they’re your only two characters, depending on whether the enemy you’re facing off against is weak against fire or spirit. You can either memorize this information, or target a foe, and see what they’re weak against right there next to their bodies by way of a symbol. Before you even enter into a labyrinth, you’ll also see a breakdown of how many enemies weak to what elements are inside: this allows you to build out your party of three in a way that’ll make you as effective and efficient as possible — Ys has a similar system in games like Memories of Celceta, but uses weapon damage type, instead, and as it’s more rock-paper-scissor in nature and not mission-based, you just have to wing it and learn yourself over time. Now, in Tokyo Xanadu, you are limited to three members in that party, but there can be more than three element types within a labyrinth, which means decisions do need to be made about which you’ll prioritize defeating with ease.

Defeating enemies with the element type they’re weak to does more than just make your life easier in-level, too. After each labyrinth, you’re scored on a number of factors, such as how long it took you to complete, what percentage of enemies were defeated with the element they’re weak to, how much damage you took, the number of breakable objects you smashed and treasures you opened. All of this is fed into the calculation of your grade, which goes all the way up to S: the higher your rank, the better your rewards, as you receive more “Courage” points this way. More on that later. Bosses sometimes, but do not always, have elemental weaknesses. And enemies who are not weak to your elements can still be made to be weak to them: there’s a special combo gauge that you fill up over time, the X-Drive, that lets you and your other active party member attack at the same time until the gauge runs out again. During this period of time, all kills are elemental kills, so using this at the right times can boost your percentage of elemental kills in dungeons where you wouldn’t be able to pull that off otherwise.

Learning all the different kinds of attacks is vital to completing Tokyo Xanadu. You have three different “standard” attacks in addition to your basic slash, stab, smash, depending on the weapon in question: ranged, aerial, and power. Ranged attacks, obviously, let you hit a bit from a distance — even characters wielding swords and the like have a ranged attack, as they fire off some kind of projectile a short distance. This has a secondary use for hitting far off objects and switches. Aerial attacks require you jumping and holding the attack button briefly, in order to fly in a straight line at a high speed, weapon held out in front of you. This can also be used for traveling over larger gaps that double jumping isn’t enough for. And power attacks have you holding the attack button down to charge up, before unleashing a strong attack that can even destroy some obstacles in your way.

All of these attacks are powered by a gauge which runs out if you just keep spamming them, and you’ll have to wait for it to refill before you can use them again. Using regular attacks causes the gauge to refill faster than if you just ran around avoiding enemies until it’s back, so it’s in your best interests to balance these special “standard” attacks with the truly standard ones.

The reason why I keep referring to these as variations on standard attacks is because you do actually have a couple of different special attacks, in addition to the X-Drive gauge, which is more just like flipping a switch to be briefly overpowered but still utilizing regular attacks. You have EX Skills, which allow a character to perform a very powerful series of attacks, unique to them, during which time they’re also impervious to damage. These charge up the more damage you deal out/receive, and you can upgrade over the course of the game to be able to store up to three filled EX Skill gauges at once. The thing you have to worry about here is that you can absolutely waste an EX Skill use: you want to be lined up with an enemy or near one, as this is an attack that’s dependent on your and their location in order to work. Then there’s the Cross Strike, which… this one doesn’t matter where you or the enemy is. It’s got a big animation sequence and delivers a powerful attack once triggered, which you can do whenever the hexagonal gauge on your screen fills up, and that’ll happen by successfully performing all your other kinds of attacks. Later on, as relationships deepen between characters from fighting alongside each other and interacting outside of battle — this is a “Soul Level” — you’ll also get to choose which ally aids you in these Cross Strikes to cause even more damage.

This is a lot, yes, but the game introduces it all to you one at a time so as to not overwhelm you. And while it might sound like all of this makes you super overpowered, that’s kind of the point of Tokyo Xanadu: it’s a game that rewards you for getting through a labyrinth as quickly as possible while not just taking minimal damage, but also no damage at all. At its base it can be easy enough to just kind of cheese through, but if you want to have mastered it, you have to not even need the healing items you can find all over the place.

While you can have up to three party members at a time, only two are active, while the third is support. There are two reasons for the distinction: for one, whichever character is in the support role will slowly recover hit points, and second, the other active character is the one that you’ll pair up with when you launch a combo attack. In practice, there’s no difference between your active partner and your support partner, other than that you switch your support in as the controllable character with ZL, and the active in with ZR. You’ll get used to who is where in a hurry.

Tokyo Xanadu’s dungeons start out pretty simple so you can focus more of your attention on the roughly 400 different ways you can attack enemies, but they grow in complexity and became far more elaborate, and larger, the further into the game that you get. There will be more types of monsters with different elemental weaknesses, as well, forcing you into some tougher battles if for no other reason than you need a strategy besides “weak to my element,” which is where figuring out the best time to deploy the various special attacks and skills you have comes in.

You want to be thorough in your exploration of the dungeons, so as to find as many breakable objects and treasures and monsters as possible, but you also don’t want to take too long, lest you go over par for the highest possible grades for speed. While battle isn’t that complicated, and the dungeons only so challenging, a lot of what ends up driving you forward is this desire to do it right as fast as you can. That there’s a combo system which increases your damage output the higher it goes and earns you rewards post-level, as well, and which counts smashing breakable objects as a hit in the chain, also keeps you constantly on the go looking for something to stick a sword into. It’s a system that works, since even the longest dungeon segments tend to be around 10-12 minutes long, with many of them much shorter than that. And the grading occurs separate from the boss fight in dungeons, as well, which means that if you managed to somehow get to the boss without taking damage, don’t worry. You succeeded in that goal as far as rank and bonuses are concerned.

Back to “Courage” points. There are also Wisdom and Virtue points, and maxing these personality traits out will help you in-game — unlocking abilities, for instance — as well as in seeing the game’s true ending. Kou needs a personality score of eight stars or more calculated from these three categories, where each star represents a level. You don’t need to crush all three to get there — there are 15 possible stars in the game, and you begin on level one for each category — but you do need to at least try. So, clearing dungeons more efficiently and effectively will boost that Courage rank. Reading books and answering questions correctly during the game’s story and exploration portions will drive up your Wisdom. And Virtue goes up by completing side quests, since those are almost always request-based and designed to have Kou interact with and assist the fellow citizens of Morimiya.

In its eX+ form, with all of those side missions, Tokyo Xanadu takes about 40 hours to complete, plus some extra time to get through the second version of the ending, which has additional battles to fight. It’s a much heftier game than when it originally released, but still doesn’t feel bloated: the side missions add some parts that feel almost necessary in hindsight, to keep certain characters and motivations from just sort of appearing out of nowhere, and they help flesh out just the regular personalities of these people more and more — something that’s important for what ends up being a sizable cast where you have to decide who, with limited opportunities during each “free time” session, you want to hang out with to deeper your bonds with.

This Switch release — which arrived in July 2024 — is the definitive version of the game, thanks to including all of the additional content created for the Playstation 4 release, plus the various DLC as part of the base game, and, far more importantly than that, the revamped localization that improves not just the characters but your desire to bother spending all this time with them in the first place. It’s not one of Falcom’s greatest hits, no, but it’s an underrated game at this point that fans of action RPGs should give a second thought to, as they might discover there’s something here that keeps them going, whether it’s mastering the combat and trying to S-rank everything, or exploring Morimiya and its people, or even just being able to play an RPG that takes place in a more modern, “realistic” setting, albeit with alternate dimensions and a heavy dose of Japan’s nature and animistic-focused religious history at the core of the whole thing.

Tokyo Xanadu was initially a one-off, but a sequel has been announced, and will be worked on, per Falcom itself, by some of their newer, younger, less experienced developers, while the crew that’s already been in place focuses on wrapping up Trails and creating new Ys titles. Tokyo Xanadu was something of a transition point for Falcom, and seems like it’ll be that way again in the future — maybe it’s a series that’ll step up more as Falcom walks away from Trails, or it’ll simply serve as something of a training ground for new ideas once per decade, not bound to preexisting concepts or gameplay, outside of maybe remaining an action RPG series. Which, again. You can’t do much better for an ode to Dragon Slayer than that.

This newsletter is free for anyone to read, but if you’d like to support my ability to continue writing, you can become a Patreon supporter, or donate to my Ko-fi to fund future game coverage at Retro XP.