Kyoto Xanadu Review – Falcom’s best action yet

Title (JP): 亰都ザナドゥ -桜花幻舞-
Title (EN): KYOTO XANADU -the Blooming Phantom
Genre: ARPG
Platform: PS5, Switch 2, PC
Developer: Nihon Falcom
Publisher: Nihon Falcom
Release date: 16 Jul 2026
Official website: https://www.falcom.co.jp/kyoxana/

Kyoto Xanadu is Falcom’s long-awaited follow-up to Tokyo Xanadu, reimagining the series as a side-scrolling action RPG with Metroidvania-style exploration and revamped systems.

Almost eleven years after the original release of Tokyo Xanadu, Nihon Falcom has finally returned to the concept of the modern-day action RPG with Kyoto Xanadu. While Falcom has spent most of the past two decades almost exclusively alternating between its two flagship franchises, Trails and Ys, Tokyo Xanadu remained something of an oddity in its catalogue – a one-off title combining school life with action RPG combat that developed a dedicated cult following despite never receiving a direct follow-up.

Kyoto Xanadu is just that follow-up – but perhaps not in the way many expected. Rather than continuing the story of Tokyo Xanadu, Kyoto Xanadu shifts to an entirely new setting and also almost completely reinvents the formula. Although it shares the same world, terminology and supernatural concepts, the shift to a new city – Kyoto – accompanied by an almost entirely new cast and a sweeping overhaul of the gameplay, distances Kyoto Xanadu enough that it feels less like a sequel and more like a reboot. This is mostly a good thing, as new players do not need to know anything about Tokyo Xanadu to jump in, but it might be a minor disappointment for fans of the first game (this reviewer included).

The premise of Kyoto Xanadu is simple enough: Protagonist Kamiya Rei one day discovers the hidden layer of occult monsters and the people fighting them beneath the surface of everyday life. He is subsequently made to enroll in Hirasaka Academy, a school built atop a massive, seemingly bottomless labyrinth filled with monsters, where every student has the powers necessary to fight them. As a new transfer student entering a community built around this hidden aspect of the world, Rei learns about the occult, the labyrinth, and the various forces seeking to exploit it.

The biggest improvement over Tokyo Xanadu is not the graphics or presentation – Kyoto Xanadu is still using character animations first introduced in 2013’s Trails of Cold Steel – rather, it’s in how almost every single gameplay system has been redesigned from the ground up.

Where Tokyo Xanadu’s gameplay was essentially that of Trails of Cold Steel jury-rigged into only having action combat on the field, Kyoto Xanadu instead feels like an entirely new game built around very different philosophies.

The school-life aspect has been expanded considerably and now plays a much more central role in progression. Rather than serving primarily as downtime between dungeon expeditions, lessons and exams feed directly into character growth. Lessons and exams involve a card game – where the cards are obtained from activities or hanging out with various characters – where the player has to balance spending points on cards to hit the requirements for different lessons (or exams).

This system is tied into character growth, which extends beyond just gaining levels. In addition to traditional RPG levelling, players also develop three personality attributes through everyday activities such as working part-time or visiting locations around Kyoto, but the largest increases are awarded for performing well during lessons and exams. Each personality level translates into the ability to unlock a node on a skill tree, resulting in a constant sense of progression as players regularly earn multiple upgrades over the course of a single in-game day. And as Kyoto Xanadu is an action RPG, equipment can also naturally be bought, found or crafted, while each playable character can also equip an elemental guardian spirit that grants additional abilities while using Soul Accel (covered below) and changes their element accordingly.

The biggest gameplay change, however, is in the way the action is handled. Rather than the fully 3D dungeons of Tokyo Xanadu, Kyoto Xanadu instead adopts a side-scrolling Metroidvania structure. Exploration gradually expands as players unlock new traversal abilities such as an air dodge (which doubles as an air dash), wall kick, and double (and triple) jump, allowing them to reach previously inaccessible areas. The wall kick in particular feels excellent, and combined with the double jump allows players to climb walls like Mega Man X.

The Metroidvania structure is unfortunately also somewhat of a missed opportunity, however. While new abilities do occasionally encourage players to revisit older areas or access previously unreachable sections, these moments are extremely rare. Even major upgrades such as the double jump never truly produce the dramatic shift in exploration that defines the genre’s best examples, instead primarily serving to open the path forward through the current area. Once an area has been completed, there is generally little reason to ever return outside of frustrating “check box” style side quests.

That said, once the full movement toolkit has been assembled, simply traversing the world becomes immensely satisfying. Chaining together dashes, wall kicks, dodges to zip past enemies, and double and triple jumps just feels really good, and in terms of movement alone, Kyoto Xanadu stands comfortably alongside the best entries in the genre.

And despite the polish in the sidescrolling sequences, boss battles and select combat encounters shift back into fully 3D arenas. Rather than introducing a separate battle system, these encounters seamlessly carry over the same moveset used throughout the side-scrolling sections, making the transition feel natural. These fights are a considerable improvement over Tokyo Xanadu’s 3D combat and even the 3D combat seen in modern Ys releases, and the boss battles against human-sized enemies are some of the biggest highlights in the game, particularly when the player goes one-on-one against them; their small size and easier-to-understand moves showcase the battle system’s strengths, especially regarding dodges and parries, far better than, for example, a giant octopus flailing its tentacles around in all directions and filling the screen with visual noise. It is thus a bit disappointing when the game forces the player to use the entire party in such fights, where you constantly have three other party members ganging up on the one boss at the same time.

Like movement, the combat system also steadily expands as the game progresses. The unlockable simple, intuitive combos – light-heavy, light-light-heavy, and light-light-light-heavy (square-square-square-triangle on PlayStation) – should immediately feel familiar to anyone who’s played video games to a degree, and there are also other features such as ranged attacks which can be shot during almost every single other action, even during combos, thus functioning like Vergil’s Summoned Swords in Devil May Cry.

There is also Soul Accel, a temporary power-up mode that grants multiple benefits during battle. It is not quite an equivalent of “activate and delete the encounter” abilities in contemporaries, as the effects are less dramatic and the duration is short, but in exchange the meter builds up extremely quickly, meaning it ends up being used repeatedly over the course of a single boss fight rather than being saved for emergencies. This gives combat a much more active rhythm and adds another layer to how battles are managed.

The player also of course has defensive options: A dodge that can be canceled into from most moves that also lets the player go through enemies (and thus do things like phase through an enemy holding up a shield to attack them from behind), and a block that also functions as a parry when timed to block certain strong attacks (where an enemy flashes red before attacking).

The parry is especially satisfying, as it allows the player to unleash a counter that deals massive damage in a wide AOE, that even gets a cinematic cut-in each time it’s done the first time against a major boss. Unfortunately, while the parry is immensely satisfying when it works, and the timing window is itself relatively forgiving (with Soul Accel making the window even more forgiving), the implementation is not perfect: With the amount of projectiles, numbers, text, and effects flooding the screen, this reviewer more often than not would miss the red flash cue.

Furthermore, while most attacks can cancel into a dodge, the same cannot be said for the block and thus parry: This reviewer would often wind up for a big attack and only then see the red flash, midway through the attack, with no way to respond with a parry, fully committed to an attack animation that started before the enemy responded with a parryable attack. Allowing players to cancel into a block would have made the mechanic far more satisfying. There is also the matter of how some enemies, especially later in the game, just have far less parryable attacks, which seems to be a balance decision as it does make them stronger (as the parry is extremely strong and might trivialize an enemy if such attacks were common), but again this just does not feel very satisfying, as it is not even a matter of skill or attention when enemies just plain refuse to use attacks that can be parried.

It should be noted that these are entirely issues with the game’s feel, and not with the difficulty: On the default, second-hardest difficulty (of four), the game is still very easy, on par with, if not easier than Tokyo Xanadu.

Despite the issues, however, overall, Kyoto Xanadu’s gameplay is excellent. While not every new idea is fully realized, the sheer extent of the redesign is impressive, and almost every major gameplay system represents massive potential.

The story is similarly enjoyable, though it may leave long-time Falcom fans wanting more. It has plenty of twists and turns and is competently written throughout, but players familiar with Falcom’s storytelling habits will likely see many of its major reveals coming well in advance. That is not necessarily a negative – the execution is solid and the journey remains engaging – but none of the twists have the sort of impact seen in many of the Trails series’ plot twists. New players will certainly get more mileage out of the twists than long-time fans will.

The cast, meanwhile, is one of the game’s greatest strengths. By keeping the party relatively small, Kyoto Xanadu avoids one of Tokyo Xanadu’s (and Ys IX’s) biggest issues, where several characters joined so late that players barely had any opportunity to use them. Here, every playable character is introduced early, given time to establish both their personality and gameplay style, making the cast feel consistently likeable and well-defined, even if the game ends with their threads unresolved. A number of NPCs are also similarly handled relatively well.

But even with a fairly completionist playthrough, Kyoto Xanadu can comfortably be finished in around forty hours, and while the ending is not a cliffhanger, and most of the main story has a degree of resolution, the narrative feels very incomplete. Numerous characters and organisations are introduced with obvious long-term importance but play only minor roles.

While this is understandable if one sees Kyoto Xanadu as the start of something bigger, it is extremely disappointing that the final boss feels, in terms of narrative, framing, escalation, and gameplay, less like the climactic conclusion of a full RPG, and more like, to use an analogy that Falcom fans would understand, the midpoint of a Trails game. It is like watching a show up to the episode right before the one with the big twist that truly defines the series. The lack of scale and escalation, especially, mark Kyoto Xanadu’s climax as particularly weak compared to most other Falcom games.

That shorter length also means not every member of the cast receives equal attention. Rei is a strong protagonist, and the Nakiri siblings receive satisfying development, but others clearly feel as though their stories are only just beginning. Fuuka, despite ostensibly being the main heroine, reaches the credits with much still unresolved, while Ruluy remains little more than an adorable yet mysterious mascot whose true role remains a complete mystery. These threads reinforce the impression that Kyoto Xanadu is laying the foundation for a much larger story yet to come.

Another issue, though relatively minor for players who are not completionists, is the sidequests. These are all simplistic with no story content at all, consisting of collecting certain types of materials or defeating certain types of enemies, or finding an NPC in the dungeon, all of which are only spawned after the quest is accepted. Frustratingly, many of these sidequests only show up after certain points, and for this reviewer this was often after the latest area in the dungeon had been fully scoured to 100%. This means meaningless, pointless backtracking, with frustrating searches through areas cleared hours ago, over and over again. The player is of course free to completely ignore these sidequests, but a completionist aiming to do everything will find them to be the dullest, most miserable part of the game.

Perhaps the game’s biggest disappointment, however, is ironically Kyoto itself. One of Tokyo Xanadu’s greatest strengths was Morimiya, based on Tachikawa in Tokyo (where Falcom itself is located) with many identifiable landmarks, which gradually became familiar over the course of the game to the point where the city felt like another member of the cast. Kyoto in Kyoto Xanadu, despite being one of Japan’s most famous cities (and even being the capital in this fictional setting), and having its name in the game’s title, never manages to achieve the same effect.

Many of the city’s most iconic landmarks barely appear at all. Kyoto Tower is never visited and is only seen on the town map, Kiyomizu-dera is entirely absent, the inside of Kyoto Station is glimpsed for a few minutes in a single cutscene (the exterior and the famous ceiling especially known to fans of the Heisei Gamera movies are never seen at all), and although players do visit Fushimi Inari Taisha, it extends little further than the entrance, never allowing players to actually explore the mountain and its famous torii gates. The decision to present the city entirely through side-scrolling maps further diminishes any immersion or sense of actually exploring Kyoto, making it feel more like a collection of disconnected stages than a living city.

Kyoto Xanadu is ultimately a very unusual game, and is hard to judge. In most respects it is a substantial improvement over Tokyo Xanadu, rebuilding almost every aspect of the gameplay into something far more enjoyable and mechanically ambitious, and judged on its own merits it stands very well on its own. At the same time, it rarely feels like it fully capitalizes on those ideas: The story ends just as it feels ready to truly begin, Kyoto itself is surprisingly underutilized, and one cannot help but feel that several of its strongest mechanics never reach their full potential.

Viewed in isolation, a forty-hour action RPG of this quality would be an easy recommendation. Judged by Falcom’s own standards, however, Kyoto Xanadu feels like roughly sixty to seventy percent of peak output – not as a judgment of quality, but as a matter of volume and unfulfilled potential. But what is here is more than enough to leave this reviewer looking forward to wherever the series goes next.

The Good: Falcom’s best action gameplay yet, featuring excellent Metroidvania traversal, satisfying combat, and a likeable cast.

The Bad: Though not technically incomplete, with a proper ending and around forty hours of gameplay, the game nevertheless does not feel fully satisfying. Many of the strongest ideas never reach their full potential, and the scope of the narrative is underwhelming.

Conclusion: Kyoto Xanadu is an excellent action RPG with outstanding gameplay that is unfortunately let down by a sense of unrealized potential. While it stands well on its own, it ultimately feels more like the start of something bigger than a complete work in itself.

86/100

This review was written based on the Japanese release of the game, and may not reflect changes made to versions released in other regions.

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