I am extremely biased towards this game. How could I not be? I had a 15-year-long lingering emptiness from weeks of grindcore MMOs and this game comes along to hit the spot perfectly. I’ve overlooked the technical problems on the Switch port because I think having this style of game on the go is so valuable. It’s a crowd-pleaser, a game which welcomes you to have it your own way, focus on the things you enjoy, and leave a play session feeling good. It is a heavenly JRPG – one which has the love and insight to make the necessary changes and improvements to the formula, while keeping the strange idiosyncrasies which make the genre what it is. And just in case I haven’t hyperbolised this game enough, I’ll end with this. It’s better than Secret of Mana. Go play it.
With its high-quality story, gameplay, and delightful protagonist, I want to tell everyone to play CrossCode. However, without a stability patch, the experience is noticeably worse on Switch. At the moment it’s an amazing game, but one plagued by bugs and crashes. Just like every MMO in its opening days.
Best game i played this year, one of the best RPG's i got to play in my entire life. The story was entertaining, the gameplay was cool, the puzzles were mind breaking
I had some doubts about this game but after 1-2 hours my opinion changed. It's beautiful, deep and interesting. Story and the characters are amazing. Surprisingly one of the best games I've played last couple of years.
CrossCode is an amazing puzzle action RPG with a touching story and a beautifully detailed world. Combat has tons of options and puzzles require a lot of critical thinking and creative solutions to solve. It draws inspiration from classic SNES RPGs and the Zelda series, but stands proudly among them as a modern classic.
Cross Code is a marvelous 2D action RPG that features an interesting
idea of a game-within-a-game and which treats the player to a lovely
visual environment that recalls the 16-bit era right away, versatile
combats, appealing dungeon exploration and plenty of freedom to wander
around. Its occasional performance flaws, already under rectifying
action, are not enough to tarnish the experience, which is one of the
best to be had among RPGs in the Nintendo Switch catalogue.
CrossCode is a near-perfect attempt at recapturing the charm and magic of action RPGs from the 16-bit era. Fortunately, this experience is only slightly marred by the occasional technical hiccup.
While CrossCode is a superlatively excellent game, the Switch version is an astoundingly rough port. That said, the game is worthy of your time, even in this compromised version. While I can’t speak to the other console ports (due out the same day as the Switch release; the Xbox version will be on GamePass), the PC version is clearly better. If you can play CrossCode on PC, I advise you do that unless you desperately crave a handheld experience. A lot could be salvaged from this middling port of a stellar game with some of the same refinements and polish that made this crowdfunded gem so exceptional. As it stands, CrossCode gets a high recommendation from me with some slow, glitchy caveats.
This has a tremendous amount going for it, but ultimately, it is going to appeal to puzzle gamers far more than JRPG fans, as the puzzle sections are incredibly demanding. Having players do hours of complex and convoluted puzzles in a row, is something that is going to put off many gamers that otherwise would have loved this title. For a RPG romp it could have been outstanding if this was shortened, and the puzzles/trickery were reduced by at least half.
Hard to find something I don't like about the game. It looks gorgeous, it is pleasantly tough, keeps you busy for hours, and amazingly, the story is really good. If you know your SNES games, you will be remembered of the classics, and also how much CrossCode is its own thing.
Current version of the game crashes occasionally, and some graphic-heavy areas cause the game to stutter a bit, which gives me a slight headache. But that won't stop me from praising the game - I just like everything else so much.
Crosscode is pixel art RPG that gets a lot of things right with some major caveats.
Firstly, I loved the story. The characters and twists made is so compelling. With the story being something very personal and a life experience instead of 'saving the world' cliché, I really wanted to know more. And Emilie is simply the best character
The pixel art and animations is amazing also. I think its more of a 32bit style having such detail and expressions.
I appreciate that they removed the major grindy issues of this game as some "MMORPG's" tend to have
The combat is engaging. There is a some button mashing enemies but you have to plan and find weak points in attacks.
However there was some major downfalls on this game for me:
- The dudgeons. They should be a high point but they were just so long. With some puzzles requiring perfect timing and with so many rooms, it just broke me as it because such a chore.
- The balancing between zones. For instance, in the first zone you fight enemies at level 11 and could be level 12 by the time to move on. But find the enemies in the next zone to be level 16, why the 5 level gap between zones?
- I know you can adjust the difficulty in the game at any moment, as I found the game very difficult but the precision needed to shoot key areas to progress is too tight and became very frustrating.
- Being a top-down game and lack of depth perception I wonder if the platforming had to be such a regular occurrence due to the amount of falls
- Unlike MMO's the opportunity to find great loot is so sparse and you will end up buying gear from vendors. Anyone that play MMO's know that is not what you want to do.
It took me 45 hours to get though but feel it could of been a 30 hour experience and suited me better. It's a great game and expected something different then what I got. Recommended for the gaming enthusiasts out there that love huge dudgeons and a challenge.
Worst controls ever for a game that gets the fluffer treatment so often. Imagine if you will, an overhead *platformer* where you control Data from the Goonies while wearing his Slick Shoes. It's that bad; character slips and slides everywhere. They make you do trials built around platforming by programmers unable to accept platforming isn't a genre they're especially skilled at. This game tries to do too much, and sadly you can see how it could've come together. Instead, shoddy controls, lazily programmed enemy AI, and a stick shooter you can't adjust your cursor speed on make it more of a chore than entertainment should be. There's good here. Unfortunately it's buried under far too much bad to make it worth digging for.
If you ask Alexa for the definition of overrated, Cross Code will be it's first pick. This game has terrible gameplay mechanics. My right arm began to hurt from how long you have to hold the right stick down, combined with how you have to SLOOOOWLY correct your aim. It helps little that the aiming reticule has two settings: move at the speed of a dead grandmother, or ludicrous speed. There is no third option. This is why slowly was in all caps and dragged out. You have to barely move the joystick hair by hair to correctly aim. And the game absolutely requires *tons* of shots where you have to aim perfectly, and it isn't shy about lining up multiple shots like this in a row. Which must be done quickly. Part of this is due in part to the joycons, but the meat of the issue lies solely with the game itself. It's largest flaw is it tries to do so much with such a limiting interface. The old school look drew me, so I'm not one to bash throwback formats. The platforming is abysmal. I got stuck for hours on one side quest bc I could not figure out how to jump to a platform in a time limit. The answer was that a nearby platform, that looked lower than the destination, and thus useless, was actually on the same height level. This was in a side quest, however, which I could overlook
I cannot say the same about the temples, as they are mandatory. After doing the first one I immediately began dreading the fact there were at minimum four more. I spent hours doing every single side quest available between temple 1 and 2, simply bc I dreaded doing it. I was not wrong to feel so. Recall the issues I mentioned about aiming and the hair/hairless trigger for aiming? Without giving away any solutions, one such puzzle involved shooting through an ice orb to freeze four water pillars which are cut at an angle. Then you must get into position and wait the one second charge up which allows your shots to bounce. The pillars unfreeze if anyone anywhere on the planet breathes.
I'd like to note there's a difficulty setting, for both combat and puzzles, which would increase the time the pillars are frozen. This feels like a cop out via lazy programming; reclassifying bad programming as "challenge". The game goes out of its way to tell you there are difficulty sliders directly from the start. That's a red flag sandwich. It's by default set to max, and most games aren't going to start you off on expert. A flaw becomes game time padding.
Ultimately, that's what a lot of smaller issues that snowballed into much more feels like: lazy programming. I'm willing to buy that perhaps it is the Switch hardware, but until I see otherwise, I won't be purchasing anything from this company again. The very few high notes (humor/story) simply aren't worth the torture of playing something made by people who learned to code last week.
SummaryThis retro-inspired 2D Action RPG might outright surprise you. CrossCode combines 16-bit SNES-style graphics with butter-smooth physics, a fast-paced combat system, and engaging puzzle mechanics, served with a gripping sci-fi story.
CrossCode is all about how it plays! Take the best out of two popular genres, find a good balance betwe...