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Steam sale deep cut alert: this ARPG originally developed for Nokia N-Gage is brilliant on Deck

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Steam sale deep cut alert: this ARPG originally developed for Nokia N-Gage is brilliant on Deck

Xanadu Next is a Diablo-esque JRPG originally developed by Nihon Falcom for Nokia N-Gage. Those bullet points were enough for me to grab it when Steam's algorithm surfaced it for me last week as part of the ongoing Autumn sale. I wasn't expecting it to be good, but I was definitely curious.

Some background: Xanadu Next is actually a belated spin-off to the PC-88 game Xanadu: Dragon Slayer 2, which was released in 1985 and is sometimes credited as one of the first action RPGs. It took until 2005 for Nihon Falcom to follow it up with Xanadu Next, and when it did it was a Japan only affair.

A PC version did release a few months after the N-Gage version, but again, only in Japan. That PC version reportedly played much, much better than the N-Gage version, as I'm sure you can imagine, but the fact that the game's overarching design was conceived to work across both platforms is what piqued my interest. As did the fact that, when I googled Xanadu Next, I found many people claiming the PC version—which is the version available on Steam—is right up there with the best of Nihon Falcom's games (which is to say, up there with instalments of Ys, Trails and The Legend of Heroes).

Now that I've spent around six hours playing the 2016 English re-release, I can kinda understand why: this isometric slash 'n' grind isn't brilliant, but it has a lot of cosy charm and a fun metroidvania structure.


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