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 respawn at the exact same spot every time you walk into 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

-Brent DS