Do you love JRPGs? Do you really, really love them? If so, you'll find a mountain of fun in Cross Edge, a cross-over game published in the US by Nippon Ichi but containing characters from Gust, Idea Factory, Compile Heart, and Capcom franchises as well. Nippon Ichi put in two Disgaea characters, Capcom brings some Darkstalkers characters, Gust brings in Mana Khemia 2 and Ar Tonelico characters, Idea Factory brought in some Spectral Souls and Generations of Chaos characters, and Compile Heart put them all together with their original creations. The result? A story no better than fan-fiction composed on a napkin in a local Japanese eatery, a horrifically convoluted and almost punishing menu system, and one of the best damn battle systems (read: complex) a JRPG has seen in a while.
But a warning... this game is HARD. Very hard.
Ai-Phuong and Haven are back in 2013 with a stack of RPG goodness to discuss. Trinity Universe, Cross Edge, Hyperdimension Neptunia are just some of titles mentioned on this show.
- Trinity Universe
- Cross Edge
- Hyperdimension Neptunia
- Pokemon
- Final Fantasy
- Reckoning
- Skyrim
- …and more!
BT: "We’ve all been there. You’re playing a game, having a great time, and then all of a sudden you’re hit with that one thing that will absolutely kill your enthusiasm. You think to yourself, this particular quirk of the game won’t show up too often, and when it does, you’ll be able to power through it. But no! It turns out that particular quirk is one of the main gameplay mechanics!
I have so many games sitting on my shelf that I haven’t finished. Games that I was just unable to get through because there was something about the gameplay, some annoying hitch in the game’s design that just completely killed my will to go on and made me shelf the game. Of course, there is a scale to such annoyances and some of us are willing to endure one more than others. Even though tolerances may differ, I think most of us can agree there are some common threads that run through these games.
There won’t be any special rules for this list, but instead I’m going to include a brief list of some common offenders of the things that I list. Bear in mind, this does not mean these are bad games. Even the best games sometimes suffer from something that really causes your enthusiasm to take a hit. So let’s take a look at what we all love to hate!"
“Save the Princess” Syndrome, is in almost every game. It can be saving the world or a person.
I just hate things that don't fit. The planet scanning in Mass Effect 2 for example.
i don't understand how there can be bad AI in any game these days. surely, unlike graphics, it should have matured but instead seems to just be rewritten for every new game from the ground up. is there not a couple of AI middleware players out there waiting to clean up?
how can a game today have the same AI problems as a 10 year old game?
good article BTW
Devil May Cry's camera makes navigation more interesting...and not a chore like many other games. I love DMC!
TGT: Girls that look like Melissa Fahn never gave me the time of day in high school. They discovered I watched anime, played video games and practiced my own amateurish voice acting in my spare time and immediately turned their noses up at me. Nerd. Geek. Dweeb. Freak.
So to come across such a stone cold stunner sharing my exact interests and providing the voices behind some of my favorite anime and video game characters, I’m a little taken aback. Beautiful, funny, smart, nerdy. It’s a geekified grandslam. But sorry, Melissa. I’m married, you’re married. We’d be doomed to failure. It would never work out between us.
Someone submitted this before I could =D
And yeah, first off, 6.5 is a decent score. The game is great, but as I said in the review, it's not for the Madden-buying, Final Fantasy mainstream crowd.
It's niche; very niche. If you're into the franchises the game characters come from, you'll enjoy it. If you like a challenge, you'll enjoy it. If you like really learning a complex battle system with gauges and numbers and acronyms everywhere on screen at all times, you'll enjoy it. I love all those things. So, I enjoyed it.
I'd say it was a pretty fair review especially with the pros and cons, of course I may have my own little gripes with the score; but who doesn't these days. Anyway seeing this review makes me want to play the game, if I hadn't been on ad-hoc party these past few days trying to level up and get some more material before Monster Hunter Freedom united comes out.
Though it does make me wonder, every time I see a review of this game I have to ask, what level are the reviewers playing on?