Faxanadu - A Tree Worth Climbing

[StewShearerOld]

Faxanadu - A Tree Worth Climbing

A gem from the NES era, Faxanadu has its flaws but overcomes them with a solid sidescrolling core and platforming fun that makes it well worth its occasional agitations.

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[StriderShinryu]

While I never owned Faxanadu, I rented it a whole bunch of times.. and promptly got almost no where in it. I remember it being one of those games that I wanted to see more of but just couldn't topple due to the lack of meaningful time I had with it. It's no Zelda 2 but it's absolutely another solid side scrolling action RPG in the NES library.

 

[tehroc]

Lords of The Realm, I can't wait. A friend and I played the shit out of that game in the 90s.

 

[dWhisper]

I was in the same boat... this was a frequent rental title for me, as it was one of the better, deeper, RPG/platformers of the platform era. A few other gems from the same system would be The Battle of Olympus, or the top-down Crystalis, which I keep wanting to make a game in the spirit of for mobile...

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I was in the same boat... this was a frequent rental title for me, as it was one of the better, deeper, RPG/platformers of the platform era. A few other gems from the same system would be The Battle of Olympus, or the top-down Crystalis, which I keep wanting to make a game in the spirit of for mobile...

Oh Crystalis, one of my favorite games... I keep seeing these from time to time and it reminds me just how many fun and interesting games came out for the NES, many of which are lurking in forgotten corners of memory.

 

[erbkaiser]

This was for some reason one of the first NES games I owned. I must've played hundreds of hours of this back in the day.

Flawed, but very good game. I agree with this review fully.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Whew, feel ya on the movement controls. It definitely isn't helped by the stabbing animation making it very hard to time attacks on an enemy as you poke them to death with your sword. Despite all this, it's always been one of my favorite action-RPG platformers. The world they presented was just amazing at the time. Building up your character with new magic and armor was exciting. It was quite the adventure, and I always loved how they disguised the password system as a mantra. A clever if a bit flawed game, and one that will always bring back fond memories.

 

[-Dragmire-]

I found the controls less awkward than Ironsword and had a bunch of fun despite the difficulty.

Music stands out as some of the better stuff on the nes too

Spoiler

Favorite Nes game goes to The Guardian Legend.

If you try it... good luck. It's cryptic and probably meshes too many genres for it's own good but, what can I say, I love it!

 

[Gorrath]

I'm one of those people who loved The Adventure of Link and so I found Faxandu to be a wonderfully fun game. It was crushingly hard at times, but I never got bored of it. Zelda 2, Faxandu and The Battle of Olympus are three of my fave platformers on the NES. I agree with the reviewer wholeheartedly.

I found the controls less awkward than Ironsword and had a bunch of fun despite the difficulty.

Ironsword was fun as hell but CRUSHINGLY difficult, especially that damned cloud level!

 

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

Oh man, my brother found a copy of this at a Salvation Army a few years back and brought it home. Blew my futzin mind.

 

[sirjeffofshort]

Weird thing is, I just recently bought a Retron 5, and one of the first games I decided to pick up and play was Faxanadu, so I'm currently climbing the world tree myself haha.

When I was a kid I made an attempt at this game and couldn't get anywhere, now that I've given it another shot with an older mindset I have no idea what was wrong with me. It isn't nearly as hard as I remember. I think I just had a hard time getting past the fact that there wasn't something for me to immediately shoot stomp or otherwise destroy. I had no patience for 'talking' to the people in the first town and therefore couldn't figure out a darn thing haha.

 

[Norithics]

This game benefits from a wave of positive nostalgia. Going through it again, there's an entire area (the Tower of Suffer, fittingly) that's asinine, full of unavoidable hits from enemies, and at the very end there's a power-up that's supposed to raise your damage... but the programmer was an idiot and so it actually lowers your damage. That's right, the game nerfs your entire character halfway through, forever. You have to glitch past this area with the wing boots or just forever do less damage.

Some games can be forgiven for being rough around the edges, but too many rough edges and you're looking at a circular saw. :T

 

[NoeL]

This game benefits from a wave of positive nostalgia. Going through it again, there's an entire area (the Tower of Suffer, fittingly) that's asinine, full of unavoidable hits from enemies, and at the very end there's a power-up that's supposed to raise your damage... but the programmer was an idiot and so it actually lowers your damage. That's right, the game nerfs your entire character halfway through, forever. You have to glitch past this area with the wing boots or just forever do less damage.

That fucking Black Onyx...

I used to borrow this off my neighbour all the time as a kid but never got anywhere. It wasn't until I discovered emulators later on that I got around to finishing it. Never found the patience to go through it again, but I always play it for a bit every now and then.

Also, I'm sick of people acting like the "I am Error" line is a mistake or something. It's an uninspired line, the name is translated in a confusing way (maybe it was supposed to be Errol?), but that's all it is: the guy is telling you his name. Later on in the game you're asked to deliver something to him, so you needed to know his name was Error.