been playing xanadu since the eggconsole release (whenever that was...like a month ago?). this game feels really hostile at first and i spent a few hours on it trying to understand the first layer of the game before going on to check out some other things (including the hydlide release, which i haven't beaten mostly because it didn't grab my attention the same way, though it's fairly fun as well). and i haven't been riding the bus to work lately so progress got very slow, but i eventually started to get an idea of how to break through those early parts in a way that didn't feel too harsh or random. i ended up playing a bunch more the past few nights though. i'm on my fourth start and i'm starting to see what might be cracks in my conception of how to approach the game again, but i'm getting a lot closer...i think.
this game is from 1985 and in a sense the way the game's action elements work kind of reminds me of an arcade game. especially because there's also the elixirs, which are quite a bit like "lives". at the same time it's also a very obviously systems-wonk type of computer rpg, with the food, the leveling systems, the fact that you literally make your character's "build" at the start...it's a little hard for me to parse the appeal of this game for me even now, because honestly i've never played anything quite like this. of course, even searching up the guy primarily responsible for the game, i found a shmuplations interview, which is something i'm always excited about. he basically remarks that when designing the game he first studied how much disk space he would have to work with and basically used that to determine how many monsters and items he could put in the game, the size of the map data, and things like that. then he basically drew up the entire "outline" of the game in terms of those things he wanted to implement. it's really funny that he goes on to describe showing this to other people and their bafflement, not knowing the process behind this, only to remark that the game ended up very easy to make from that point on. it makes sense to me, since writing can really go the same way.
and while the game's presentation is sparse and some elements don't have a ton of complexity (i.e. battles only ever have one type of monster, whether it's two or nine of them) it doesn't really feel like that kind of functional design detracts from the experience as a whole, nor does it seem particularly naively designed...my current ideas are based on the fact that you can get the cheapest AOE spell very early and bring it up to a pretty decent level of damage and screenclear enemies to make progress on experience and money without taking damage in most cases, but doing so has its own disadvantages too...especially once you start encountering monsters who aren't vulnerable to the spell.
currently i think if this run kind of falls apart it'll probably be because haven't really balanced my short term approaches...i used deg-needle to save up money and blew them on keys (which basically cost [base cost (modified by charisma)] * [current level]) before leveling up to go to level 2. then i spammed the spell through level 2 to buy a fairly high level armor and a shield, then leveled up to go to 3 and hoarded for one of the best weapons in the shop. now i'm relying a lot on the weapon till i can afford some more spells...but i'd probably have stronger defensive stats to go with it if i was using weapons more earlier. i'm getting kinda washed in level 4 by running at guys, but it takes so long to wear them down with spells first at the moment. i dunno
it's cool. i'll probably manage to beat the game with the savestates. though to be honest i don't think it's that much harder to do without them...though certainly somewhat longer and riskier. i've already gone pretty long times (and had to repeat parts as a result) without saving though...