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| The ultimate experience. |
Our protagonist is the blue-haired player, Lea, who logs into a popular MMO game called "CrossWorlds". Having no memories of her past life and how she got here, she must play the game in an effort to restore fragments of her past but making things worse is her inability to speak, which further adds insult to injury. Fortunately, with a little help she manages to come through and eventually get mixed up in a dark conspiracy. The story was engaging with its clever writing and on numerous occasions funny jokes and pop-culture references that had me chuckling throughout the journey. The many characters Lea will meet are likable and charming in their own way and I had a lot of fun interacting with them. Granted, it can be confusing following both the main story and CrossWorlds' but luckily, there is a handy encyclopedia, which I frequently used, to get myself up to speed on the lore and characters.
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CrossCode packs an interesting story
with fun characters.
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Don't let the MMO aesthetic fool you, CrossCode is an action-RPG at heart. You control Lea as she must regain her memory by following CrossWorlds' own story that has you entering dungeons and obtaining power-ups. Lea can slash through hordes of enemies using both melee and ranged attacks. Some enemies have shields that upon being broken, will leave them vulnerable enough for you to briefly pummel them down. CrossCode has many platforming segments where you go out of your to explore the environment. I had some difficulties in distinguishing the heights of platforms that you're supposed to jump on in the game's environments and dungeons as some might seem shorter than they appear and when I'd jump, I end up losing a chunk of health instead. A minor issue, but one that I felt needed pointing out. Combat may seem brainless at first, but you'll soon come to notice the importance of blocking and dashing since enemies can easily one-shot you on numerous occasions when you're not paying attention. Furthermore, bosses can get absolutely brutal as I often came without putting much care into my gear and properly leveling up. If you're having a hard time, you can change the difficulty by adjusting the damage output from the settings, though I personally felt that the game was well-balanced overall.
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| Hack and slash to your heart's content. |
If you're an avid RPG player, then CrossCode features the standard RPG fare. Enemies drop experience and you'll be able to level up, increasing health, defense, and so on. NPCs give you quests where you can also gain experience and money, there's shops that sell you gear and items in settlements, hidden secrets in the form of bosses and treasure chests hidden the game's world, and so on. Additionally, you get access to an expansive skill tree known as "Circuits" where you can unlock new skills and perks for Lea based on the power-ups she obtains. Probably the most enjoyable aspect of the skill tree is that it encourages you to constantly experiment with all kinds of builds. Additionally, Lea's not alone as she can form a party by meeting various characters throughout the story from the likes of the green-haired veteran, Apollo, to the brash and upbeat, Emilie, who also provides some entertaining commentary throughout the game.
You better love puzzles because you'll be solving lots of them in the game's Zelda-inspired dungeons. They start simple enough by having you aim and try to hit out-of-reach switches to later dealing with blocks, propellers, and lighting rods, all of which take a good while to figure out. At worst, they're often long-winded and some puzzles will require precise timing, which I always struggled with. I felt that the dungeons and their puzzles were tedious and felt like a chore to finish. What irritated the most was trying to wrestle with the aiming reticle at times in order to get a clear shot. Nonetheless, the power-ups you receive and challenging boss fights makes it all the more worth it in the end.
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| The amount of care and effort that went into designing the puzzles is fascinating. |
By clearing dungeons, you unlock elemental abilities that Lea can use in combat. These include a fire "state" where she takes less fire damage and dish out various fire attacks on enemies, inflicting burn effects as a result. You can also upgrade each elemental ability using the aforementioned skill tree to unlock more special moves and attacks. Keep in mind that Lea will overload and revert back to normal so you'll have to use them moderately. There's an element of strategy here as some enemies are only weak to a specific element and regular attacks won't do much in the way of damage so you'll have to figure out what they're weak against. At times enemies will use such states, forcing you to stay on your heels.
Towns are packed with shops and NPCs, most of which will trade items with you, give current insight to the world, or even task you with side quests. As mentioned prior, there's an abundancy of side quests that range from simple fetch quests to full on fighting optional bosses. You might be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of them and the difficulty spikes initially, but much of the rewards will easily make up for it. I wished that more shops would sell additional kinds of equipment instead of trading with merchants as towards the late-game, you would have accumulated way more money than needed. As a result, it makes earning money feel less-rewarding and slightly redundant.
One thing's for sure about CrossCode, it's among the finest-looking retro games I've played. Thanks to its rich color palette, backgrounds look detailed and some areas such as Gaia's Garden and Sapphire Ridge look absolutely stunning as a result. It's also worth noting that many of the character and monster sprites were well-animated as well and the game ran without much hiccups overall as the high frame-rate complements the action smoothly, even in the most demanding of times. There's no voice work in the game, which is okay, but it's irritating at times since you have to pay attention to the text boxes while in battles. Thankfully, the fantastic soundtrack compensates with catchy, upbeat tracks that I've been jamming to on many instances. I also loved that most dungeon tracks invoke Metroid vibes that feels oddly nostalgic to the ears.
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The lighting, colors, sprite work, and level
of detail is just simply mesmerizing.
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After sinking nearly 50 hours into CrossCode, I must say that it's among the most fun games I played all year thanks to the slick gameplay and impressive production values. While not the deepest story you'll come across, the game manages to tell a pretty entertaining one. Even with its faults considered, I would easily put it among my top picks of the year. For just $20, CrossCode is an accessible and content-rich game that action and RPG fans can enjoy.
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