Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu



Several years before the dawn of the cult hit Ys series, Nihon Falcom created what some continue to consider their signature spotlight title: Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu. Alongside with being a best seller back in 1985, this Action RPG managed to set the foundation for Falcom's future titles, up to including the aforementioned Ys series.

You play as a nameless protagonist, who after speaking with the king and visiting seven stat trainers, must explore an underground complex filled with monsters, treasures, and puzzles, with each level getting more challenging as you go along.

Despite being a sequel to the first Dragon Slayer game, it spawned a series of its own, including the well-known NES Spin-Off Faxanadu.

Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu provides examples of the following:

 * Action RPG
 * Actually Four Mooks: Subverted in that some enemy encounters actually consist of one enemy.
 * Armor Is Useless: Brutally inverted
 * Elemental Embodiment: Several, but most of them are fire-based
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: With your magic, since some of it is of elemental nature.
 * Enemy Scan: With the Spectacles
 * Expansion Pack: Xanadu Scenario II
 * Evolving Attack: Which has the courtesy to include on-hand consumables.
 * Faceless Eye: Beholders, Ascomoids, among others
 * Healing Potion
 * Intangible Man: With the Mantle, which allows you to pass through solid walls.
 * Invisibility: Granted by the Demon's Ring
 * Karma Meter: "Karma" in this game is a bad thing -- killing "good" enemies accumulates Karma, and accumulating too much Karma means temples will refuse to level-up the player any further.
 * Kill It with Fire: Fire and Deg-Fire
 * Kill It with Water: Deluge and Deg-Deluge
 * Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Kind of averted, since the game encourages you to level in both, but your wizardly half will definitely be the more powerful for much of the game.
 * Magic Knight: It's possible to become this if you equally train in both weapons and magic.
 * Poison Mushroom: The black potion, which takes half of your health away. The flip-side to the whole deal is that it reduces your Karma stat.
 * Preexisting Encounters
 * Rare Candy
 * Saintly Church: The only way to level up is by visiting one of these, providing you have enough experience points and don't have any Karma points at all.
 * Status Buff: The Ruby, Br. Potion, Mirror, and Bottle
 * We Buy Anything: Averted. you can only sell weapons at weapon shops, spells at spell shops, you get the idea.
 * Wizard Needs Food Badly