Rating: 4.5/5
Falcom has pretty much established themselves as one of the finest RPG makers in the business, and Xanadu II - an offshoot of the Legend of Heroes series shows exactly why. The sequel to the first popular Xanadu game, Xanadu II is also an action RPG. This game retains the simple Ys inspired walk-into-the-enemy attack style which works very well and also the side-on action scenes used for boss battles. Being untranslated, the story is a little hard to plot out, but you play Arios and start out aboard a ship in search of your friend, whose own ship (as shown in the intro) was attacked by dragon riders. Eventually you get blown overboard in a vicious storm and end up on a beach near the city of Razan... Your attack/defense capabilities are dependent on your weapons and armor - sword, shield and armor each have their own 'level' and as you attack or take damage, these stats slowly increase until they hit their max. New weaponry can be found in chests or bought in shops along the way. This method of leveling up is interesting as sometimes you actually need to get hit and lose energy so you can improve your armor stats. As you kill the various monsters, they drop money which you or your party (which can be set to auto attack and auto pick up) can collect. When you reach a boss, you get the option of going it alone, or choosing a companion to help you. The choice can be important as some bosses are far easier with arrows than with sword. June-3-1995
You also need an emulator to run this game. To grab one quickly, please check out our PCECD emulators section.