10-08-2018, 04:48 AM
So I have finally finished the main quest of CrossCode. And. I. Have. To. Say. I was completely blown away by it. The last time that happened must have been 2015 with Undertale and 2017 with Breath of the Wild. So here is my review on it. And I must warn you, it is going to be quite the lengthy read.
Everything about this game screams perfection. Ok, not quite, but I get back on that later. It is already without a doubt my Game of the Year 2018 (which I seriously doubt will be beaten by another game this year) and already even is part of my Top 10 Best Games Ever Made. Sorry, Chrono Trigger.
The combat, the puzzles, the story, the gradually balancing of the difficulty, the controls, the music, the flow, the lack of tediousness, severe backtracking and handholding, the pixel art, the writing, the quests, the characters (especially the main characters), the world, the dungeons, the treasure hunting, the presentation of the interface, the logic behind it's explanations and what not more. It all is perfect and forms together a cohesive game. I really hate it if a game does not connect it's elements together and CrossCode actually manages to feel completely consistent throughout the whole game. Nothing is more annoying than a game that is not consistent (for example the new Chapter 6 room in A Hat in Time being split from the rest of the hub).
I couldn't recall a single time when I ran into a bug or issue, so for a change I actually played a game that is technically sound. Ya know what's great too? I can put my computer into sleep mode while the game is running and it still runs exactly where it was after waking up my PC. The Trails of Cold Steel games did that well too. It is not something that often works. I can even minimize the game or put it out of focus and it completely pauses. Quite handy when I need to leave my controller alone for a while and want the in-game time to pause as well.
CrossCode is probably not finished yet. Supposedly there is more coming, and I ain't gonna reveal that here, you just got to experience it yourself. So far it seems very promising. The are actually parts of the game that are not completed such as an additional chapter and a dungeon, but the game brilliantly hides that by providing in-game lore to why the content isn't finished yet, teasing you for what is to come next. Normally I would hate it to play a half-finished game, but CrossCode is actually avoids that by providing a resolution to one of the major storylines. The story still seems to be far from over.
It even brilliantly provides a different ending which you can easily miss if you are eager to continue (you can always replay that part after finishing the game if you are worried and skip the rest of the game). But it isn't that hard to discover either, you just have to pay attention to the story (which you should as it is amazing) and continue your search from there. The game will not guide you towards it directly. And I absolutely loved that. Even better, once you are on the path to a different ending you can still mess it up, yet at the same time it feels completely natural how you need to react.
I have been watching this game for a while now, and I really never wanted to play it until the official V1.0 release was out, but man, it was worth the wait. I took about 45 hours for completing the main story, including almost every quest, a hefty chunk of treasures and the full map (or at least I think so) and every plant species being discovered.
It is already an impressive feat that the whole game is perfectly balanced in it's difficulty. I never felt there was a difficulty spike that was unfair, or that the game became too easy. It is challenging for sure, even quite hard at times during a few boss fights. It always felt to fair because you can study the patterns and because you can adapt. A boss doing too much fire damage? Just switch to the Fire element for reduced fire damage (of course, you likely need the opposing element to dish out damage). You can even relocate your talent points if you messed up there. Or, go grind some extra levels, gear and recovery items. It is really satisfying to overcome seemingly impossible odds. Near the end of the game you can even unlock boosters which (as the name implies) boosts all monsters in level in the several regions there are, if you need to keep going on grinding, and is not even the planned New Game+ mode.
The best part? CrossCode is absolutely grind-free and does not waste your time. Well... That depends how you interpret grinding. Not once felt a quest forced. No killing monsters just because. Every quest has a backstory, all bosses are unique in their mechanics, every dungeons introduces new mechanics. Even something as simple as tracking down as boss for a quest leads you to a mini dungeon. Not a single boss can be bested by simply hitting it without any thought. That's exactly why I love the Zelda series too, complex dungeons and complex bosses. Not once did I felt like that killing 10 boars (surprise, there are no boars) would yet be another boring task, simply because CrossCode doesn't do fetch quests. Every sidequest is here for a reason, which is exactly why I love the Zelda series too. And CrossCode manages to do so for well over 45 hours. I have played games before that are grind-free and don't waste your time, but not that many games exists of this duration of playtime.
I am really looking forward to what is coming next. I don't doubt that could go wrong from here on forward (although I thought the same for A Hat in Time too... Then the first DLC severely disagreed with me).
So, what the lesser parts of the game. It isn't much, but it can be somewhat annoying, tedious or frustrating. In general the issue is that some mechanics are poorly explained or are explained too late.
For example, treasure hunting. Each map screen can contain treasures you can hunt (for great rewards obvious). The issue however is that you never know is you have gotten all the treasures on that specific map screen. Until... Once you reach the end game in an end game area you can buy a specific item that tracks the missing treasures. There are two issues with that. First the tracer only shows how many treasures are left when you enter a map screen. It is not shown on in the map interface for example. You will have to manually re-enter all areas. The map screen only shows how many treasures in total you have and it's total for the whole region. The second issue is that you are playing all this time without any awareness of a solution that might help you. If would have helped for example if the tracer could be seen for purchase in the very first town but could only be bought in the end game. That way you know that there eventually is a tracker that helps you.
Another example can be found mostly within dungeons. Most of the time when a dungeon introduces a new element it succeeds into teaching you how to interact with them with the tools at your disposal. Often with each new puzzle room that new element is being expanded on with a small iteration/addition. Eventually you reach puzzles you require you to interact in several ways because you game taught you so. Occasionally you might found yourself wondering what to do because it feels sometimes that a puzzle skips an iteration and adds a second iteration as well at once. I was seriously stumped for a while in the second dungeon when I had to shoot a water bubble forward, freeze it and afterwards aim and ricochet it to power up a generator which was out of the way. Multiple steps which were new for me at once. It might seem silly that such a simple thing that seemed confusing is actually pretty straight forward once you know about it. And so these puzzles reoccur once in a while. Sometimes you might even miss a room. I had to search around for at least 10 minutes in that dungeon to find a missing room. In combination with the previous issue, I had to search again another 10 minutes for a while I had been in before with an unsolved puzzle but could not remember where it was. Zelda actually has a pretty simple solution with it's compass and minimap.
I had a hard time to understand how to execute lvl 2 and lvl 3 skills. It was pretty straight forward how to execute skills, but I never knew I could charge them up after I learned the first lvl 2 skills. After I unlocked the lvl 3 skill tier I shortly afterwards discovered how to charge my skills and perform a lvl 2 or lvl 3 skill. Coincidence? After you unlock the lvl 3 skill tier you receive a SP upgrade (which you spent on skills) which made it easier for me to discover to how to charge skills outside of combat. But the game also ramps up it difficulty from there, forcing you to consider new strategies (just hitting stuff ain't gonna work from there on). All that time I never used lvl 2 skills (or perhaps on accident, but I was never aware of it, I did unlock and purchase them, yes). I felt quite stupid, yeah. Haha, I would have made the dungeon before it quite a bit easier, especially the boss for it. There is actually a quest in the first town that teaches you the basics of combat (melee and ranged), but the quest actually comes after quite a while that it doesn't effectively teach you anything (except for more sweet XP). I think it might have helped if a quest was added that taught you to use the lvl 2 skills in a similar way as that combat training quest. Once you know how to charge skills for lvl 2 skills, you also discover to to charge them even further for lvl 3 skills.
But once you get past these issues, and learn how the game behaves it comes easier to predict what the game expects from you regarding it's solution in puzzles. You also will start to see how you can effectively use the most of your arsenal. And the game knows it. Some of the puzzles are particular tricky, even if you can immediately observe the solution. Puzzles could either be intelligence, patience or agility-based. It is particular clever when you finally manage to understand and succeed at a puzzle with so many components you have to react to in a short period of time you never would have thought you could have completed earlier in the game. It is effectively calling on your reflexes and becomes a second nature to you when controlling the game. Did I mention the controls are superb yet? Of course I used my trusted Xbox One Controller.
Don't let yourself misguide by the negativity and relative lengthy explanation of these issues. These are quite minor compared to the game. The positives massively outweigh the negatives. The developers already seemed to have patched the Continue button being the default option when opening the game, rather than New Game.
Normally, I don't go out praising games that in depth. I believe it is that first time I did it in this scope during my stay on the Dolphin forums. I praised Breath of the Wild and Chrono Trigger as well a few times, but nowhere as extensively. It is exactly the type of game I could never dream of it would happen and why I started caring about gaming in the first place. The fact I did that just proved that I absolutely loved the game.
It is quite weird actually, all these major A+++ games these recent years, with only the exception of a few big games, indie games or games from smaller studios actually seem to impress more than what companies such as Bethesda, Square Enix, Activision Blizzard, EA Games and Ubisoft manage to do. Skyrim is nothing compared to CrossCode (actually... It can not even compare to the Trails series... Skyrim is quite bad in my eyes, mostly because it is so bland and does not excel in a single thing). Mostly Nintendo and CD Project CD are the A+++ studios that have my respect.
A Hat in Time almost succeeded in achieving a similar amount of praise from me, but the length of the game was really too short and it felt that with only four worlds the game was incomplete. And I hate games that are incomplete. Majora's Mask could have been the best entry in the series if it had a few more dungeons. Or if the Moon at least was a complete dungeon rather than being four separate trials and a boss fight. I suppose given the deadline of one year, Aonuma had to call it a day. If only Majora's Mask had more time... I could see how the promise of future DLC for a Hat in Time could make the game live up to it's expectation and scope. The first DLC eventually arrived, and as I have pointed out by now far too many times, it was bad, quite bad. Now I fear that the vision that once was for A Hat in Time might not be realized anymore. Sure, it is only one DLC, another DLC could fix that easily. What can not be fixed however is if you as a development team suddenly have a shift of philosophy, one that steers away from what it made so promising in the start. I have not seen or heard a single thing yet how the developers want to continue going back to the original premise and vision. It really is a shame, since it had gotten so far, so suddenly throw it all away. There is still some merit to the DLC and it is not all doom and gloom. At least all the new cosmetics are cool, the ship was pretty fun to explore and the new time rifts are great as expected. I wouldn't have complained if the base game wasn't that great. Perhaps the next DLC will be amazing as I would like to expect. But it shows how CrossCode differs from it with it's vision so far.
All in all, 10/10. I would recommend everyone to try it at least and not to immediately discard it as yet another Pixel Art game. It has the best elements of a Zelda game, RPG's and the Ys series (which you might not be familiar with). As the game so itself explains, it seeks out the ultimate
experience. Ya know... It took the developers seven years to realize this game. This is just an indie game. But I wouldn't have surprised me at all if a major studio made it. It feels like Square Enix (when I still had respect for them) all over again back from the days of the SNES.
Wow... That was quite long, even by my standards. Please don't judge me. The next post I am going to make, I will be shorter about it.
Everything about this game screams perfection. Ok, not quite, but I get back on that later. It is already without a doubt my Game of the Year 2018 (which I seriously doubt will be beaten by another game this year) and already even is part of my Top 10 Best Games Ever Made. Sorry, Chrono Trigger.
The combat, the puzzles, the story, the gradually balancing of the difficulty, the controls, the music, the flow, the lack of tediousness, severe backtracking and handholding, the pixel art, the writing, the quests, the characters (especially the main characters), the world, the dungeons, the treasure hunting, the presentation of the interface, the logic behind it's explanations and what not more. It all is perfect and forms together a cohesive game. I really hate it if a game does not connect it's elements together and CrossCode actually manages to feel completely consistent throughout the whole game. Nothing is more annoying than a game that is not consistent (for example the new Chapter 6 room in A Hat in Time being split from the rest of the hub).
I couldn't recall a single time when I ran into a bug or issue, so for a change I actually played a game that is technically sound. Ya know what's great too? I can put my computer into sleep mode while the game is running and it still runs exactly where it was after waking up my PC. The Trails of Cold Steel games did that well too. It is not something that often works. I can even minimize the game or put it out of focus and it completely pauses. Quite handy when I need to leave my controller alone for a while and want the in-game time to pause as well.
CrossCode is probably not finished yet. Supposedly there is more coming, and I ain't gonna reveal that here, you just got to experience it yourself. So far it seems very promising. The are actually parts of the game that are not completed such as an additional chapter and a dungeon, but the game brilliantly hides that by providing in-game lore to why the content isn't finished yet, teasing you for what is to come next. Normally I would hate it to play a half-finished game, but CrossCode is actually avoids that by providing a resolution to one of the major storylines. The story still seems to be far from over.
It even brilliantly provides a different ending which you can easily miss if you are eager to continue (you can always replay that part after finishing the game if you are worried and skip the rest of the game). But it isn't that hard to discover either, you just have to pay attention to the story (which you should as it is amazing) and continue your search from there. The game will not guide you towards it directly. And I absolutely loved that. Even better, once you are on the path to a different ending you can still mess it up, yet at the same time it feels completely natural how you need to react.
I have been watching this game for a while now, and I really never wanted to play it until the official V1.0 release was out, but man, it was worth the wait. I took about 45 hours for completing the main story, including almost every quest, a hefty chunk of treasures and the full map (or at least I think so) and every plant species being discovered.
It is already an impressive feat that the whole game is perfectly balanced in it's difficulty. I never felt there was a difficulty spike that was unfair, or that the game became too easy. It is challenging for sure, even quite hard at times during a few boss fights. It always felt to fair because you can study the patterns and because you can adapt. A boss doing too much fire damage? Just switch to the Fire element for reduced fire damage (of course, you likely need the opposing element to dish out damage). You can even relocate your talent points if you messed up there. Or, go grind some extra levels, gear and recovery items. It is really satisfying to overcome seemingly impossible odds. Near the end of the game you can even unlock boosters which (as the name implies) boosts all monsters in level in the several regions there are, if you need to keep going on grinding, and is not even the planned New Game+ mode.
The best part? CrossCode is absolutely grind-free and does not waste your time. Well... That depends how you interpret grinding. Not once felt a quest forced. No killing monsters just because. Every quest has a backstory, all bosses are unique in their mechanics, every dungeons introduces new mechanics. Even something as simple as tracking down as boss for a quest leads you to a mini dungeon. Not a single boss can be bested by simply hitting it without any thought. That's exactly why I love the Zelda series too, complex dungeons and complex bosses. Not once did I felt like that killing 10 boars (surprise, there are no boars) would yet be another boring task, simply because CrossCode doesn't do fetch quests. Every sidequest is here for a reason, which is exactly why I love the Zelda series too. And CrossCode manages to do so for well over 45 hours. I have played games before that are grind-free and don't waste your time, but not that many games exists of this duration of playtime.
I am really looking forward to what is coming next. I don't doubt that could go wrong from here on forward (although I thought the same for A Hat in Time too... Then the first DLC severely disagreed with me).
So, what the lesser parts of the game. It isn't much, but it can be somewhat annoying, tedious or frustrating. In general the issue is that some mechanics are poorly explained or are explained too late.
For example, treasure hunting. Each map screen can contain treasures you can hunt (for great rewards obvious). The issue however is that you never know is you have gotten all the treasures on that specific map screen. Until... Once you reach the end game in an end game area you can buy a specific item that tracks the missing treasures. There are two issues with that. First the tracer only shows how many treasures are left when you enter a map screen. It is not shown on in the map interface for example. You will have to manually re-enter all areas. The map screen only shows how many treasures in total you have and it's total for the whole region. The second issue is that you are playing all this time without any awareness of a solution that might help you. If would have helped for example if the tracer could be seen for purchase in the very first town but could only be bought in the end game. That way you know that there eventually is a tracker that helps you.
Another example can be found mostly within dungeons. Most of the time when a dungeon introduces a new element it succeeds into teaching you how to interact with them with the tools at your disposal. Often with each new puzzle room that new element is being expanded on with a small iteration/addition. Eventually you reach puzzles you require you to interact in several ways because you game taught you so. Occasionally you might found yourself wondering what to do because it feels sometimes that a puzzle skips an iteration and adds a second iteration as well at once. I was seriously stumped for a while in the second dungeon when I had to shoot a water bubble forward, freeze it and afterwards aim and ricochet it to power up a generator which was out of the way. Multiple steps which were new for me at once. It might seem silly that such a simple thing that seemed confusing is actually pretty straight forward once you know about it. And so these puzzles reoccur once in a while. Sometimes you might even miss a room. I had to search around for at least 10 minutes in that dungeon to find a missing room. In combination with the previous issue, I had to search again another 10 minutes for a while I had been in before with an unsolved puzzle but could not remember where it was. Zelda actually has a pretty simple solution with it's compass and minimap.
I had a hard time to understand how to execute lvl 2 and lvl 3 skills. It was pretty straight forward how to execute skills, but I never knew I could charge them up after I learned the first lvl 2 skills. After I unlocked the lvl 3 skill tier I shortly afterwards discovered how to charge my skills and perform a lvl 2 or lvl 3 skill. Coincidence? After you unlock the lvl 3 skill tier you receive a SP upgrade (which you spent on skills) which made it easier for me to discover to how to charge skills outside of combat. But the game also ramps up it difficulty from there, forcing you to consider new strategies (just hitting stuff ain't gonna work from there on). All that time I never used lvl 2 skills (or perhaps on accident, but I was never aware of it, I did unlock and purchase them, yes). I felt quite stupid, yeah. Haha, I would have made the dungeon before it quite a bit easier, especially the boss for it. There is actually a quest in the first town that teaches you the basics of combat (melee and ranged), but the quest actually comes after quite a while that it doesn't effectively teach you anything (except for more sweet XP). I think it might have helped if a quest was added that taught you to use the lvl 2 skills in a similar way as that combat training quest. Once you know how to charge skills for lvl 2 skills, you also discover to to charge them even further for lvl 3 skills.
But once you get past these issues, and learn how the game behaves it comes easier to predict what the game expects from you regarding it's solution in puzzles. You also will start to see how you can effectively use the most of your arsenal. And the game knows it. Some of the puzzles are particular tricky, even if you can immediately observe the solution. Puzzles could either be intelligence, patience or agility-based. It is particular clever when you finally manage to understand and succeed at a puzzle with so many components you have to react to in a short period of time you never would have thought you could have completed earlier in the game. It is effectively calling on your reflexes and becomes a second nature to you when controlling the game. Did I mention the controls are superb yet? Of course I used my trusted Xbox One Controller.
Don't let yourself misguide by the negativity and relative lengthy explanation of these issues. These are quite minor compared to the game. The positives massively outweigh the negatives. The developers already seemed to have patched the Continue button being the default option when opening the game, rather than New Game.
Normally, I don't go out praising games that in depth. I believe it is that first time I did it in this scope during my stay on the Dolphin forums. I praised Breath of the Wild and Chrono Trigger as well a few times, but nowhere as extensively. It is exactly the type of game I could never dream of it would happen and why I started caring about gaming in the first place. The fact I did that just proved that I absolutely loved the game.
It is quite weird actually, all these major A+++ games these recent years, with only the exception of a few big games, indie games or games from smaller studios actually seem to impress more than what companies such as Bethesda, Square Enix, Activision Blizzard, EA Games and Ubisoft manage to do. Skyrim is nothing compared to CrossCode (actually... It can not even compare to the Trails series... Skyrim is quite bad in my eyes, mostly because it is so bland and does not excel in a single thing). Mostly Nintendo and CD Project CD are the A+++ studios that have my respect.
A Hat in Time almost succeeded in achieving a similar amount of praise from me, but the length of the game was really too short and it felt that with only four worlds the game was incomplete. And I hate games that are incomplete. Majora's Mask could have been the best entry in the series if it had a few more dungeons. Or if the Moon at least was a complete dungeon rather than being four separate trials and a boss fight. I suppose given the deadline of one year, Aonuma had to call it a day. If only Majora's Mask had more time... I could see how the promise of future DLC for a Hat in Time could make the game live up to it's expectation and scope. The first DLC eventually arrived, and as I have pointed out by now far too many times, it was bad, quite bad. Now I fear that the vision that once was for A Hat in Time might not be realized anymore. Sure, it is only one DLC, another DLC could fix that easily. What can not be fixed however is if you as a development team suddenly have a shift of philosophy, one that steers away from what it made so promising in the start. I have not seen or heard a single thing yet how the developers want to continue going back to the original premise and vision. It really is a shame, since it had gotten so far, so suddenly throw it all away. There is still some merit to the DLC and it is not all doom and gloom. At least all the new cosmetics are cool, the ship was pretty fun to explore and the new time rifts are great as expected. I wouldn't have complained if the base game wasn't that great. Perhaps the next DLC will be amazing as I would like to expect. But it shows how CrossCode differs from it with it's vision so far.
All in all, 10/10. I would recommend everyone to try it at least and not to immediately discard it as yet another Pixel Art game. It has the best elements of a Zelda game, RPG's and the Ys series (which you might not be familiar with). As the game so itself explains, it seeks out the ultimate
experience. Ya know... It took the developers seven years to realize this game. This is just an indie game. But I wouldn't have surprised me at all if a major studio made it. It feels like Square Enix (when I still had respect for them) all over again back from the days of the SNES.
Wow... That was quite long, even by my standards. Please don't judge me. The next post I am going to make, I will be shorter about it.
![[Image: Sd2E3oH.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/Sd2E3oH.jpg)
![[Image: gLQwf6F.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/gLQwf6F.gif)
![[Image: LmaDoau.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/LmaDoau.jpg)
![[Image: 9vI2r06.png]](https://i.imgur.com/9vI2r06.png)
![[Image: 0PpTY26.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/0PpTY26.gif)