Castle Xenon

It's one of those games you wish you had a ''neutral'' option instead of just a thumbs up or down... It's a good game but i thought it had way too many design choices that made it feel like a chore instead of fun. -A lot of grinding ! -Encounter rate is too high so it discourages exploration. -For most of the game your attacks miss nearly 25% of the time. -Many towns don't even have Inns forcing you to spend your money on healing items at the shop instead. -Level-ups are barely noticeable : At level 8 my hero was barely able to one-shot a starting area slime. -No save points during dungeons (rare exceptions) so you lose hours of play time if you party wipe (bosses). -In many places the dash button is inexplicably disabled so you move really slowly. Etc. I like old-school RPGs like FF1 or DQ1 so i'm not against some XP grinding or a certain difficulty/no hand-holding... but i thought this game was on a whole other level.

I'm glad I waited until the very end to review this game, because my opinion constantly shifted as I played through it. I thought hard about whether to recommend this or not, and the final dungeon was the deciding factor (more on that later). A lot of care and effort went into this game, but unfortunately, I cannot recommend it to anyone but the MOST die-hard JRPG fans - not because it's difficult, but because its deliberate emphasis on reproducing old-school frustration and grind will probably exceed most peoples' patience. With better tuning of the mid to late game, this could have been great, but I ultimately just found it exhausting. First, the pros, which honestly count for a lot: + The rough-edged early 16-bit presentation is unique and appealing, and sets it clearly apart from the default RPG Maker look (though I recognized some stock assets) or the soft-shaded late SquareSoft style that is popular with indies. + Very stiff challenge. Honestly, this is the main selling point. Character advancement is very slow, but tangible, and clearing dungeons and killing bosses feels satisfying. I kept playing more than anything else because I craved overcoming the next challenge…

First off, the game does more or less do what it says it does: its a retro styled difficulty rpg that tends to imitate the classics. If you think that's good or bad depends on if you really remember the classics and can compare (and this is probably going to be the main thing that determines if you are interested in completing the game or not, so I'm going to be pretty thorough, I did play the game for nearly a hundred hours after all trying a bunch of stuff) So, gameplay. First off, if you go to the forests right away you will get killed by hard encounters: Check. Then, you have to worry about a relatively high encounter rate: Check. And then you get dangerous encounters that can often wipe your party if you get unlucky right out the gate. Check. However, you also get the ability to save in the overworld anywhere, and you get a few items that can reduce the encounter rate (or a few rarer ones, at least till endgame, that turn off encounters completely for awhile), so you can actually route your way around. So, while the encounter rate is high and some random encounters are deadly, you can manage your way around with either a little bit of grinding or routing, so theres at le…

I am going to recommend this: but barely...and only to select type of RPGers. So read this review closely. Did you grow up playing Final Fantasy and Dragonquest? And I mean the originals on NES. Were those games easy to you? Did you play the Wonderswan of Final Fantasy as well? Were you ok with it? If so..this might be perfect for you. This game is not an easy RPG. At the beginning you will pretty much fight once, then go to rest, save, fight again, rest, save...over and over. You will die a lot at the beginning too. Also make sure to adventure to acquire your party. They are not far away, but I didn't have the last until my main guys were level 5 from insane grinding at the start. Remember, according to achievements, only a little over 20% of players have managed to get all 4 in the party. After that comes the brutal first puzzle/quest: getting a torch. I won't spoil it, but chances are you will be cursing at the screen based off the clue it gives you, and wonder why you can't find the shop that sells it. So after all that, I have to say the game plays very good. The sprint is a little weird, because you can only do it on city and dungeon maps, but not inside houses. Gaining…

Really hard but rewarding RPG if you like old school games. Brings a lot of nostalgia in the best way possibe.

Castle Xenon is a classic style JRPG that feels like a cross mash up of Dragon Quest, Phantasy star, Final fantasy 3. Its a wonderful through back with simple concepts revived. The game itself is no harder than any other JRPG. As long as you pay attention and read there really should not be much a problem and some hints are in the digital manual. I am up in the air with this game. Do I recommend it? Yes. It is a decently well made JRPG with good 8bit style sprite work. (At times) The art and the entire game is incredibly inconsistent. The sprites are great and the face art at shops and scenes is a step above right there with Classic phantasy star. Then you have your main characters menu art and it looks like a child drew it. The gameplay is also this way. The game does a great job with explaining where to go, then randomly doesnt, explain sh*t or gives you poor directions. Like saying something is South in to seperate locations when its East to one and South-East to the other. Sometimes they explain puzzles or when you finished something, sometimes they dont. The story follows this as well, the game doesn't know what it wants to be. Has a very serious concept being tackled by a…