Xak: The Tower of Gazzel - Gameplay

Gameplay

The player controls Latok, looking onto the game world in bird's-eye view. Latok can swing his sword, optionally firing magical shots from its tip at the expense of magic points, and jump short distances. The player can choose to take along one of a party of four characters on his exploration of the tower. Each of these so-called 'support members' subtly change Latok's statistics, in addition to triggering different events within the game.

The entirety of the Tower is a large labyrinth spanning six floors, each with an elemental theme: darkness for the basement and respectively earth, fire, water, wind and heaven for the first through fifth floors. The game is one large puzzle with the goal of reaching the bottom floor and defeating Zegraya and Gazzel there. Many of the puzzles revolve around the fact the floors are heavily interconnected. On the floor of fire for example, there is a large wall of flames that Latok cannot pass through in any way. On the water floor above, there is a large door that once opened, pours a large amount of water into a hole in the floor, dousing the flames below.

Another part of the puzzles involves the choice of which support member to take along. Support members don't just affect Latok's combat statistics, but some points in the game can only be passed with the right support member tagging along. There are even items in the game that Latok cannot use himself, but the right supportmember can. As an example, Latok finds a magical scroll with a lightning spell inscribed, but doesn't master enough magic to cast them himself. On a certain part of the first floor, there is a seemingly impassable wall of rubble. When Fray is selected as a support member, she will snatch the lightning scroll from Latok and use it to blast a path through the rubble.

The game can only be saved at a fixed point at the entrance to the tower. To prevent the player having to backtrack just to save his game, various items can be found that will teleport Latok and his support member back to the entrance or to a fixed point inside the tower.

Contrary to its predecessors, The Tower of Gazzel does not use an experience point system, nor does currency of any kind appear in the game. Latok starts the game at level 50, as he was at the end of Xak II, and does not advance; this instead occurs in Xak III. New equipment is also unavailable, Latok sticks with the sword, armor and shield he had at Xak II's end throughout this game. This eliminates the need for the player to spend large amounts of time on 'leveling up', collecting enough experience points and/or gold to have the player character grow strong enough or buy new equipment, respectively. In this way, the game's emphasis is more on the puzzle aspect than on the combat. A kind of advancement system is retained in that Latok can find different pairs of gauntlets in the tower, each pair enhancing his combat statistics further.

The game engine is almost identical to Xak II's, preserving the real-time combat aspect. Some music and graphics were even recycled from the previous installment. Compared to Xak II, Xak Gazzel runs much smoother even on a regular MSX2, prompting for much less and shorter loading times.