How the story commences: you are the lone adventurer, recently returning
from a long trip to your home of Eolis, a small elf town at the base of the
life-giving World Tree. But something is wrong, your town and the entire
world are in trouble. Everything is quite dark and illustrious. It's your task
to save your town from the monsters (dwarves) that are terrorising it. You
start your quest between the safe walls of Eolis. Everyone is worried and
everything has a brown repulsive color. After a short visit to the king, you
are on your way!

Faxanadu is an RPG/action game, in which you collect gold and experience by
killing your enemies. Experience leads to new titles, and each title gives
you a higher starting amount of gold every time you die. This brings me to
the very well thought off save possibility: in each town there is a church
where you can speak to the priest. He gives you the new titles and after
dying you'll be revived in the last church you visited. So dying isn't the
end of the world eh! ;-) Gold can be used to buy keys, food, medical
support, weapons, shields, armor, potions and new magic. The townsfolks give
you all the information you need to succeed in your quest and as the game
procedes the story unfolds.

Faxanadu has a few puzzles, which are incorporated very smoothly: you don't
get the feeling you are working on a stupid puzzle and have to do this to
proceed in the game. Your opponents grow stronger as the game proceeds, and
this just enough to keep the game quite hard and enjoyable. You can fight
the monsters by using your sword and magic power. All the armor and weaponry
makes the game so addictive, you find yourself going back the same screen
(the monsters return as never been killed when you walk back a screen) over
and over untill you've got enough money to buy that new big 3-point sword
you saw in the shop!

I can't go on without saying something (or should I say: a lot?) about the
music. How can I put this; ...uhm... the music is awesome!!! Months after
playing the game, I find myself waking up in the morning whistling a
Faxanadu tune! It's true! It's been a year since I've played it and I
constantly play games and listen to music, but these tracks are burned in my
brain! At work, during a meeting for instance, I somethimes start to hum a
Faxanadu tune. My colleagues are worried! :-) The tracks just fit the game
perfectly. For instance, there is a 'level' where you are surrounded by mist
and darkness. Evil beasts attack you from behind the mist. Well, the music
whilst playing is sooo creepy, I almost shit my pants the first time I
played the game! Even when thinking of the scenery a few days later can give
you shivers! Amazing! Overall, the music makes a lot in this game.

I suppose the well-known formula of 'saving the world by slaying monsters'
and the fact that every screen is set (the monsters start at the same
position and move in the same direction every time in a screen) should make
it easy to say the game has no replay value. But strangely enough I play the
game again every summer (and this for the last 10 years!). So there must be
something that pulls me back into the game every year...

About the graphics. In the time the game was made, the graphics were very
good. Nowadays, of course, it just seems one big soup of pixels with a
strange feeling as if you could see detail in your character and the
monsters around you. But, as proved before by games like Zelda, an RPG
doesn't need great graphics! So even now you can enjoy this game in full!

You could wonder: is there nothing wrong about this game?? of course there
are flaws and such. Your character is nameless and the current used in the
game is called 'golds'. Putting the possibility of buying a high grade
shield and a high grade magic weapon at the beginning of the game, makes you
want to buy it of course, but killing the monsters at that point give you so
little gold you literally have to go back and forth the same screen about a
1000 times to collect enough gold. Frustrating and unpreventable! You just
got to have them! :-) I also found the end boss a bit too easy, but that's
my opinion. Occasionally there are some missing background graphics so it
doesn't match up, but those are rare.

So overall this is quite a game. Not original, but in total you're just
happy you are one of the lucky people who got to play it. ;-)


Notes:
You sure as hell have to buy this game! search for it on eBay or something!

Graphics (out of 10): 8
Sound (out of 10): 10
Gameplay (out of 10): 9
Replay Value (out of 10): 8
Overall (not averaged, out of 10): 9.5

Written By: Brent De Smedt
E-Mail: brent_de_smedt@hotmail.com
Date Submitted: December 22nd, 2004