I had never heard of this game before, until recently, and I'm pretty surprised given how much I enjoyed it! Xanadu Next is a top down isometric dungeon crawler that can be played in it's entirety with just your mouse (this is huge.) I'm a big fan of any game that can be played one handed with the mouse, so I can slump over like a corpse in my chair while I play.
The combat is nothing to write home about, its your standard stuff. Left click near an enemy to attack, right click from a distance to cast magic. There is a fun 'back stab' mechanic where you deal more damage if you attack an enemy from behind, even bosses! This encourages you to think more about your positioning around enemies attacks and/or how to kite them around so you can whale on their backside.
Something else I enjoyed about the game was the key economy. Every dungeon interior you explore is going to require many many keys to make your way through. You can buy keys from the shop keeper, however every time you purchase one they go up in price. Another way to acquire keys is by crafting them from bones which will rarely drop when defeating monsters. While crafting keys can help when your in a pinch knee deep into a dungeon. You can sell your bones to the shop keep to dramatically lower the price of keys he sells. The game explains this mechanic at the very start of the game. Unfortunately, like a gamer, I skipped the tutorial. Not knowing this mechanic, I was buying keys at upwards of 200 coins at one point (not good!) This felt super frustrating at the time. Then randomly an NPC I talked to explained the key economy to me and I realized I was playing the game wrong for 4 hours. This doesn't affect my rating of the game at all since this was my own fault, I just thought it was funny to share. The key economy system is fun though.
Something that's fairly common with all video games ever, Xanadu Next begins to lose steam around the half way point and drags real hard. Near the beginning of the game you have to do a fair amount of grinding to keep up with the level of enemies. Foolishly I thought the amount of grinding would stay consistent throughout the entire game. I was wrong! A LOT of grinding is necessary if you intend to keep up with some of the late game boss encounters. This would be a bigger issue if it weren't for the fact that the game is so easy to pick up and play. If I've got a spare few minutes I can easily open the game and grind for a little bit, save, and pick it back up later. If it wasn't for this fact I probably would have dropped the game 3/4s of the way through.
XP is earned at an incredibly slow pace and sometimes it feels so disheartening to see that level bar move so. SO slow. If you defeat an enemy around the same level as you you earn around 20-ish XP, and if you're using the fully leveled Guardian of Flugel (which grants more XP) you'll typically get an average of 25 XP per monster kill. Some of the late game level ups requires thousands of XP. It can feel rough. Luckily the game will offer up some rooms that feel specifically designed to farm XP. Doesn't make it fun, but it makes it less frustrating.
I didn't care much for the story and opted to skip most of it. There is a lot to sink your teeth into here if you're feeling so inclined... If not, it's still a fun game you can turn your brain off to and watch those funny numbers go up.
The combat is nothing to write home about, its your standard stuff. Left click near an enemy to attack, right click from a distance to cast magic. There is a fun 'back stab' mechanic where you deal more damage if you attack an enemy from behind, even bosses! This encourages you to think more about your positioning around enemies attacks and/or how to kite them around so you can whale on their backside.
Something else I enjoyed about the game was the key economy. Every dungeon interior you explore is going to require many many keys to make your way through. You can buy keys from the shop keeper, however every time you purchase one they go up in price. Another way to acquire keys is by crafting them from bones which will rarely drop when defeating monsters. While crafting keys can help when your in a pinch knee deep into a dungeon. You can sell your bones to the shop keep to dramatically lower the price of keys he sells. The game explains this mechanic at the very start of the game. Unfortunately, like a gamer, I skipped the tutorial. Not knowing this mechanic, I was buying keys at upwards of 200 coins at one point (not good!) This felt super frustrating at the time. Then randomly an NPC I talked to explained the key economy to me and I realized I was playing the game wrong for 4 hours. This doesn't affect my rating of the game at all since this was my own fault, I just thought it was funny to share. The key economy system is fun though.
Something that's fairly common with all video games ever, Xanadu Next begins to lose steam around the half way point and drags real hard. Near the beginning of the game you have to do a fair amount of grinding to keep up with the level of enemies. Foolishly I thought the amount of grinding would stay consistent throughout the entire game. I was wrong! A LOT of grinding is necessary if you intend to keep up with some of the late game boss encounters. This would be a bigger issue if it weren't for the fact that the game is so easy to pick up and play. If I've got a spare few minutes I can easily open the game and grind for a little bit, save, and pick it back up later. If it wasn't for this fact I probably would have dropped the game 3/4s of the way through.
XP is earned at an incredibly slow pace and sometimes it feels so disheartening to see that level bar move so. SO slow. If you defeat an enemy around the same level as you you earn around 20-ish XP, and if you're using the fully leveled Guardian of Flugel (which grants more XP) you'll typically get an average of 25 XP per monster kill. Some of the late game level ups requires thousands of XP. It can feel rough. Luckily the game will offer up some rooms that feel specifically designed to farm XP. Doesn't make it fun, but it makes it less frustrating.
I didn't care much for the story and opted to skip most of it. There is a lot to sink your teeth into here if you're feeling so inclined... If not, it's still a fun game you can turn your brain off to and watch those funny numbers go up.