YMMV / Tokyo Xanadu

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Oddly enough, Jun, once it is revealed that he is in fact White Shroud, the Seal Knight working for the church. Is his sweet and playful demeanor his actual personality or is it simply a mask he wears to throw people off that he is a Seal Knight? Either point is arguable really as it is revealed he is to avoid attachments to anyone, but a player pursuing friendship episodes with him will open him up to forgoing that order and using it as motivation to fight, meaning he would have no reason to hide anymore, and he maintains his friendly disposition after said reveal.
• Best Level Ever: Witch's Briar Castle; the final Eclipse labyrinth in Chapter 5. It is by far the most complex dungeon in the entire game, being divided into three segments and featuring a wide variety of obstacles and hazards, which makes it a step-up from other dungeons both before and after it. The dungeon starts off with rooms being covered in thick fog, reducing your visibility and making you adapt to the new changes while you search out for torches that can remove the fog. Not only does this provide a unique challenge when you're going up against enemies, but the Ominous Fog present also sets up the tone that you're about to face a threat far greater than anything you've fought before. And as you progress deeper into the dungeon, you outrun spiked walls, platform over lava pits, and dodge swinging axes while platforming over lava pits. And all of this is accompanied by an intense atmosphere and incredible music, making it the most memorable dungeon in the game despite housing That One Boss at the end.
• Broken Base: The localization being handled by Aksys and how the Play Station Vita version turned out to be a case of Bad Export for You. Some are glad that the game was localized at all, while others are displeased by the quality and hope that eX+ will turn out better (which it did, substantially).
• Cult Classic: Even among Falcom fans, Tokyo Xanadu is a rather obscure title that not many are familiar with. Even so, it has a loyal fanbase with many hoping for a sequel, a wish that was granted when Falcom teased a new project with the IP.
• Demonic Spider: The Elemental Greeds may have become Degraded Bosses after Chapter 7, but they still keep their high speed and laser attacks, making them difficult regular enemies. Oh, and they're backup for the After Story Final Boss.
• Ending Fatigue: Beating the Final Boss in the Final Chapter only nets you the normal ending, but should you raise Kou's three attributes past a certain threshold, the Final Chapter is then followed up with an Epilogue, which extends the story even further towards the true ending. The eX+ version then takes it up to eleven by having an additional After Story after the Epilogue, making the story's ending drag on much longer than it should.
• Game-Breaker:
  • White Shroud (aka Jun) in eX+. Once he becomes fully available as a playable party member in the After Story, he is ridiculously overpowered even in late-game dungeons. His exclusive element Light is super effective against all elements except Shadow, which mostly takes away the incentive and strategy of switching to other party members to capitalize on enemy weaknesses. His X-Drive passive, Shine Blade, is a stronger version of Shadow Force and the two effects can stack for a 40% damage boost. Combined with his excellent combat range, damage output, and the ability to heal from landing consecutive hits on enemies, he is an absolute monster on the battlefield when mastered, which can even make getting S-ranks in dungeons entirely trivial.
  • Unlike other EX Skills, Asuka and Rion's EX Skills cause a guaranteed stagger as long as they hit the enemy, making them useful for bypassing any boss attack pattern that's difficult to dodge. They also have several multi-hit ranged attacks that allows for building very high combo meters at range, which helps you get a lot of S-ranks before you get White Shroud again.
  • The Mirage element and its upgraded version, Chaos Mirage, extend the i-frames from dodging, allowing the player more room for error in dealing with difficult enemy attack patterns.
  • Yuuki has a minor one with his ranged attack. Unlike everyone else, he doesn't have to stand and face enemies when using it. His floating drone targets independently, allowing him to dodge and return fire at the same time. This is as useful as it sounds.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Given the character's popularity in her home series, it's no surprise people were drawn to the game because it features an alternate version of Towa.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: In true Falcom fashion, Kou has bonding events with every major character. It ends up building the impression that all the girls, at the very least, develop a thing for him. And that's not even going into some of the story events.
• Nightmare Fuel: Lots of things having to do with Greeds and the Eclipse, but the After Story really ramps it up. In the initial sections, Kou gets happy voicemails from his friends. And then one unexpectedly comes in with the subject line: "HelLo" and contains a warbling, disturbing question: "WhaT shOulD we pLay ToDay?" Kou dismisses it as spam, not realizing that the voicemail came from the Twilight Apostle responsible for the disaster ten years ago... and he now wants to hunt Kou.
• One True Threesome: Kou/Asuka/Shiori due to how Kou's relationships with both Asuka and Shiori being major driving points in the game. Additionally, one of the endings seem to add some canonical potential to this with one of 'After Story' endings having Kou spend time with both of them along with Asuka and Shiori apparently discussing something that they plan on talking to Kou about in the future.
• Shocking Moments: The end of Chapter 7. Kou and company have beaten the root of the Hollow Quakes and the assumed root of all the recent Eclipse appearances, only for a much bigger Hollow Quake to follow. It's then shown that it's done by none other than Shiori, who reveals herself to be a Greed at Acros Tower, and the Eclipse swallows all Morimiya.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: It takes a bit of a while in the beginning for combat to even be introduced, since it sets up Kou, some other main characters, and the setting with a lot of dialogue.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The first few seconds of "Raging Rush" are very similar to part of the Ghostbusters theme.
• Tear Jerker: The end of the Final Chapter. Despite his claim that he's willing to face the truth, and his attempts to save her, Kou has to watch Shiori die and disappear right in his arms, and he can't do anything about it. When you see him a few weeks later, it's clear that he still is utterly grief-stricken and broken-hearted.
• That One Boss:
  • The Mist Witch, the final boss of Chapter 5. Every single boss up to this point has been beatable entirely by getting up close and using melee attacks. This boss, however, spends pretty much the entire fight keeping its distance while throwing one ranged attack after the other at you. During the few moments where you can get close, it'll be surrounded by a spinning wheel which makes standing next to it impossible without taking damage, which pretty much forces you to use ranged attacks only. At some point during the fight it'll start creating up to 2 copies of itself, which all use exactly the same attacks. Playing on Calamity difficulty? It'll create the copies pretty much at the start of the fight. Thankfully she has the decency to die screaming!
  • eX+ has the final boss of the after story. You must use all the characters in your party, split up into four different groups, with each group fighting a different phase. If you haven't mastered dodging by the time you get to the third and fourth phases, you're in for a very rough ride. Oh, and if you die during any of the phases? All the way back to the first one.
• That One Level:
  • The Pillar of Darkness in the Final Chapter. For starters, almost all of the dungeon is covered in ice, making combat more cumbersome now that ice physics are involved. This is accompanied by the fact that you start the dungeon with only Kou and Asuka in your party, so you're unable to use the third support slot to heal your party members should they take a lot of damage. And half-way through the dungeon, you face a Dual Boss battle against both the Glare Phantom (the final boss of Chapter 2) and the Astral Widow (the final boss of Chapter 3) at the same time. If you haven't been saving up your Limit Breaks up to this point, then be prepared for a large Difficulty Spike as both bosses attack you all at once with no coordinated pattern. While things do get a little better once Sora and Yuuki rejoin your party, the second half of the dungeon has an egregious platforming section where the ice physics can affect your momentum while jumping, causing you to either overshoot or undershoot the platforms.
  • The Rebirth Pathway in Pandora. It's extremely large, and parts of the map can be accessed only by jumping onto floating platforms, so if you fall off, you have to deal with the enemies on the bottom half of the level and get back up, which can take a while, especially if you keep flying past the platforms you want to land on.
• The Un-Twist: Falcom made no attempt to hide the fact that black soldier figure that worked with White Shroud is really Gorou. When the soldier first appears at the end of Chapter 5, he was wearing the same kinds of shoes and pants that Gorou is usually seen wearing. When he met up with White Shroud in Side Story 5.5, you can also see he was sporting same kind of sport watch that Gorou usually wears. Furthermore, White Shroud addresses him as "Sensei", which is also a hint to the former's own identity. Therefore, while The Reveal in Chapter 7 is a big surprise to the in-game characters, it's not really a surprise to the player.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Nemesis is set up to be in opposition to Zodiac (though not fully; they do help each other many times), which is why there's some tension between Asuka and Mitsuki in the beginning. But once Asuka and Mitsuki start working together, the whole complicated relationship essentially becomes forgotten, and Nemesis sits in the background for the rest of the plot.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Eclipse dungeons are beautiful to look at and do a pretty good job in feeling mysterious and intriguing, especially in contrast to the modern city environment in the normal world.

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