Posted by Devin de Gruyl on Jan 2nd, 2010
As much as I like this game – and I do – it has some pretty major issues in several fundamental departments, including play control and level design. Let’s start with the former.
I do not like the jumping mechanic. I do not like it, Sam I Am. While most video game characters jump in a clearly-defined arc, the hero of Faxanadu tends to jump straight up, hover in midair for a moment, then drop like a stone. This makes precision jumping a frustrating task… and yes, you will be called upon to make precision jumps quite often, especially in later levels. Worse yet, jumping reminds me entirely too much of Action 52; you have to press the D-pad in the direction you want to jump, then press the jump button… but you can’t do it simultaneously, or you’ll just jump in place. The timing has to be just right, and will require much practice before you get it down.
It’s not just jumping that’ll frustrate you, either. To use an item in your inventory, such as a potion, you have to press Down and B. That sounds simple enough, right? Not really… you have to press them in that order for it to work (that is, hold Down, then press B). If you do it the other way around, or press them both simultaneously, nothing will happen. It’s almost as if the program doesn’t recognize more than one button press at a time. Your hero also has the curious inability to duck, which would be useful for avoiding some of the flying enemies that dot many screens, or for dealing with the crawling spiky blobs you encounter from the start. They can only be killed by magic, or by acquiring a better sword than the one you start with (and even then, you have to be almost touching the thing to hit it). It’s not a game-breaking omission, but it does cause a few raised eyebrows over here at the Retro-Active Bunker.
No, that term is reserved for the almost sadistic way the screens are laid out. While it’s not like they’re crawling with enemies or anything like that, the ones that are there seem to be placed in just the right locations to royally screw you up. Either they charge right towards you as soon as the screen flips to them, or they hang out by a ladder you need to climb (thus forcing you to take a hit), or they flutter and fly around the screen in an erratic pattern that you can almost memorize, at least until they slow down and/or change their angle at the drop of a pin. Worse yet, all enemies in this game, including Bosses, will revive if you return to their screen later on, no matter how many you killed when you were there before…. and there are times when you’ll have to return to a Boss room after retrieving the item in the room just beyond, meaning you have to fight it all over again. What fun. When you combine this with a rather large kickback when you take a hit, this leads to some really hair-pulling situations; I’ve had several instances where I moved to a new screen, only to get blown back by a Dwarf who started off about 23mm from where I entered that screen, and I ended up being “juggled” between those two screens. There’s no excuse for this kind of shoddy level design – it’s not like this was programmed by Acclaim or LJN or even Ponycanyon, one of the really inept NES development houses. This is Hudson Soft, the company that gave us such enduring classics as the Adventure Island, Bonk, and Bomberman series.
However, as maddening as that can be, such situations are still the exception, not the rule. It’s not enough to ruin the game, but it is something you should be aware of.
For all that it does wrong, I would still recommend giving Faxanadu a look should the opportunity arise. It’s definitely one of the more underrated NES adventures out there, and if you can live with the little frustrations the game throws your way you’ll derive many hours of enjoyment out of a trip through the World Tree. You’re probably not going to find a game on this platform with better visuals, and the game does have that addictive, “just one more try” quality that all great titles should have.
Recommended, but you may want to have a bottle of aspirin handy. Just in case.
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Related posts:
- Retro-Active: NES “First Sequel” Syndrome
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- Retro-Active: The Goonies II
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