Another
aspect of Tokyo Xanadu that I think makes it work is an element I
wish I’d see in more RPG’s—a clear navigation system through
the quests of the game. It seems simple, and some games do it, but
with RPG’s, I think it is especially important that quest progress
and objectives are clearly available to the player at all times. Some
of the RPG’s I stopped playing had no quest guide, so when I’d
pick them up to play again a few days or weeks later, I might have
forgotten what I should be doing. I’d spend the next hour searching
around, wasting time, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go
and what I was supposed to do. If developers could track where people
give up on their games (and this technology is now beginning to be
used by some), they’d quickly see that the absence of a quest
tracker/prompter is what loses a lot of players.
As I’ve said
before in past posts, the PS Vita is my gaming system of choice for
RPG’s because I can suspend play by pushing the standby button at
any time, and pick up right where I left off without having to worry
about finding a save point. But that works only so well if the next
time I power up to play, I can see what I was working on and where I
need to go. Tokyo Xanadu keeps track of the main quest and the side
quests, with prompts in your map showing you were the main quest will
take you next and updates to all quests about your progress and what
remains to be done. Even better, if you want to mess around in the
open world some more, it will always give you the option to do so if
you’re on a main story quest, saying, “Are you sure you want to
continue with the main story right now? You won’t be able to return
to this point after it advances.”
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