CrossCode

Honestly? This game is one of a kind on so many levels. The whole quality is amazing. I didn't encounter a single bug, and I played a lot. The graphics are top notch. The story is interesting, rather unpredictable. The protagonist feels true and emotional without having too much text for various reasons. This game feels more like MMO than a lot of those do. The difficulty is rather high, but there are neat accessibility options to tackle that. I didn't have to go into a single guide to complete it. New Game+ is really fun and rewarding. What can I say? Hi!!!

After dying to a miniboss for the fourth time I felt that I finally got the hang of the timing of its attacks. But I also noticed that I had gone through 4 cycles of it enhancing itself with smaller mobs, me tediously dodging attacks and cracking it open to clear out the mobs, then it doing it again after like 2 non-reinforced attacks... and I got through like 1/4 of its HP. So in order to defeat it, I would possibly have to go through 16 cycles, dodging and weaving for something like 20-30 minutes, and the combat system is just not fun enough to justify it. Maybe I was underleveled, but that was towards the end of a dungeon and the last thing I wanted was to go fight more mobs just to farm XP. TLDR: The game started feeling like a chore. Not what I wanted.

[h1]Hi? Hi! [nods] Lea![/h1] [h2]The Good[/h2] [list] [*]The game is just gorgeous, one of the best looking pixel art games I've ever seen, animations are extremely fluid as well [*]The concept of the world is so fun and well thought out, and plays with the narrative so incredibly well, helps me get immersed in the environment and story progression so effortlessly [*]I absolutely adore the characters and the story, all the characters have such distinct personalities and relationships, and play a part in the story to some extent. The game also randomly throws some pretty humorous bits and dialogue at you when you least expect it, and I laughed more than a couple times [*]So many things are puzzlefied in this game, and while that may sound tiring at first, the game executes the puzzles so well that it strikes a perfect balance of action, difficulty, and problem solving for me. So many of the harder puzzles take some time, but I eventually get there without any guides [*]The pure puzzle levels in the game always surprise me with new concepts, and how they are handled, seemingly simple mechanics are added upon to create really smart and unique interactions. These levels are also cut up by combat which helps with pacing a lot [*]Exploration is extremely fun and rewarding, as you need to find certain routes to get to certain places, and the fluid movement really makes it flow amazingly. For an isometric game, verticality is also handled fairly well [*]Even certain combat encounters like minibosses or certain enemy types, cant be defeated just by blindly hitting, requiring certain things to be done first, making it a mini puzzle on the fly that tests your quick thinking [*]Customization when it comes to equipment is plentiful, and they all have unique attributes for you to lean into certain builds. The skill tree having branching paths that you can swap at will is genius [*]There's so many QoL and helpful features throughout the game, and the game slowly introduces each aspect which paces it very nicely. Info on enemies, items, traders and other useful things are all easily accessible and incredibly helpful at times [/list] [h2]The Bad[/h2] [list] [*]The DLC is absolutely amazing, BUT, I feel like it should have been part of the base game all along. Without the DLC, many aspects of the game just feel incomplete, the story, the chracters, equipment, side quests and even some game mechanics and levels. I adore the DLC, but wouldn't be surprised if people were mad at the decision after finishing the base game [*]Certain enemy types just have straight up invulnerable periods where you have to just wait for a window, which is not great design and really hurts the quick flow of combat [*]Ice physics are never fun lmao [*]The exploration is really fun, but the vertical terrain in an isometric view can really mess with your depth perception, causing many falls and (sometimes long) runbacks, which can get frustrating at times [*]For how well the entire game is designed, I'm surprised at how terribly the achievements are designed. A bunch of the endgame achievements are just grindy number achievements, that are not fun to grind for [/list] [h2]The Random[/h2] [list] [*]SPHEROMANCER LEA [*]Lea [spoiler]slamming against Joern's armor for a hug[/spoiler] is the funniest thing ive ever seen [*]The endgame content of the base game, [spoiler]the arena and NG+[/spoiler], are just not for me personally, most of my love for the game comes from the first experience through the exploration, story and quests, but I appreciate that it's there for people who want to enjoy it! [/list] [h2]Overall Thoughts[/h2] This game was phenomenal, I got attached to most things in the game, the world, the story, the characters, the mechanics, the levels, the puzzles, everything, up there among my favorites list now. If you get this game, please get the DLC as well, you wont regret it. This game struck the perfect balance of literally everything for me, and I recommend it 1000%, and I hope anyone else who tries this game, will feel the same feelings I had for this game

dont know how this one flew under my radar for eight years. only learned abt it from seeing alabaster dawn get announced and looking into the studio, but this is easily now one of my favorite games ever. absolutely superb gameplay, soundtrack, story, characters and their relationships, pixel art, bosses, dungeons, just so beautiful in every way. gameplay is like hacknslash and dual stick shooter stuff with heavy emphasis on combos and quick actions, which i was not expecting at all. huge recommend.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game. I think this game has more positive reviews than it deserves, and the reason why is simple. Players want to like this game. It does a lot of things right. The devs clearly put a lot of time and effort into the game, and it is pretty unique. However, the game has several flaws made it too frustrating to continue. I probably got about 40% of the way through the game. There are some great moments, but there are long periods of frustration and gratuitous gameplay that make it not worth sticking around. Platforming- This game has tons and tons of platforming in it. Basically every screen in every overworld area has different elevations of platforms that have items to collect on them. Unfortunately, the forced perspective of the camera makes it impossible to tell the heights of platforms at a glance. You cannot just look at the screen and determine if another platform is the same height as the one you are on, especially if the platform is south of you. This sounds like I need to get glasses, but it is true. You frequently have to stop and charge up your ranged attack to see if the reticle passes over platforms to see if you can jump on them. Look up a video of someone going through the desert or jungle biome, and you will see what I mean. This is simply unacceptable with how much focus there is on platforming. It quickly becomes annoying with the sheer amount of platforming alone, even without the issues with the perspective. It makes exploring the overworld a chore. Also, the platforming ends up becoming a boring find it game of trying to find a ledge that you can climb up to get to an item. Often you have to go across multiple screens of platforming to get your reward, and it gets boring fast. Most of the non-dungeon areas aren't even that long. It could probably take about 15 mins to go from point A to point B, but if you want to get the items there, it takes way longer because you have to run around to find a ledge to jump on. Again, look up a video on item hunting in the jungle and desert, and you will see what I mean. It is really bad. Pacing- You get no progress of the story until about 30% of the way through the game. The story actually gets good, but there is nothing for so long at the beginning. Another problem with the pacing is that the game does not have a good mix of puzzles, battles, and platforming. The dungeons are about 75% puzzles, and they repeat the same mechanics over and over until you are sick of them. As for the combat, the game wants you to chain together kills for better loot, but it forces you to choose between platforming to get items and farming kills. I often run through an area killing everything I see, then backtrack through the area to do the platforming to get items. The gameplay doesn't flow together very well. Also, everything just goes on too long. Something that starts out as fun goes on and on until you get sick of it and want it to be over. It's this way with the puzzles, the dungeons, and most of the regular areas. They game beats the content to death instead of having a good balance. Puzzles- If you don't like puzzles, don't play this game. Seriously, the dungeons are way more focused on puzzles than combat. The puzzles get boring and frustrating because they start to get repetitive, and it doesn't feel rewarding completing them sometimes. The puzzles often have components that only last a short amount of time and they also frequently require precise aim. This got frustrating after a while because most puzzles so far weren't hard to solve, the challenge is in the execution of the puzzles. The tight timing and accuracy requirements make it feel more like a time trial than a puzzle. If you are going to play this game, I recommend playing with mouse and keyboard to do the puzzles. The controller is harder to aim over long distances, and precision aim in very short time windows is frequently required. There are some settings that can increase the time windows to make it less annoying. I am not against puzzles, I like zelda dungeons, and I beat talos principle reawakened and all dlc without looking anything up. This game just doesn't do the puzzles well, in my opinion. I'm sure I have spent a lot more time trying to execute the sequences to complete puzzles than the time I spent trying to figure out what to do. Plus, some puzzles have multiple steps that must be done quickly and in succession. If you miss a shot or take too long, you have to start from the beginning. It gets very annoying. I regularly felt relieved that I was done with a puzzle instead of happy that I solved it. Then the next room contained yet another puzzle with basically the same mechanics. Combat- I think the combat is above average overall. Enemies on the world maps are ok for the most part. Some fly away and fire a bunch of projectiles at you while they cannot be hit. It can be annoying sometimes. The bosses so far have been good. There are expansive skill trees and moves you can learn. A lot of enemies have to be broken, which means you have to hit them while they are charging an attack or in a moment of weakness. This stuns them and allows them to take way more damage. The bosses I fought so far don't take any damage when they are not broken. For boss fights you you break them, damage them until they hit the next phase, then repeat. I thought this was ok, but maybe some people wouldn't like this. It doesn't feel like you are trying to dodge and attack back and forth in the fights. You're usually dodging a few attacks until they use the one that allows you to break them, and then burst them down to their next phase. The game doesn't seem to require you to be good at combat except for the pvp battles. There are only a few of them, but I thought they were frustrating. You fight another character that has your abilities, but he chains together attacks and dodges in ways that you cannot. These fights are much harder than any other enemies in the game, and you cannot practice for pvp battles. When you get to a point in the story that has a pvp battle, you go first to 5 wins, and then it's over. You cannot rematch, and you cannot practice. It was frustrating for me because I wanted to improve. I wanted to get better and win, but the game doesn't allow you to do that. You breeze through the combat with regular enemies so you don't have to really learn it. Then you face a much stronger enemy and you only get one shot at it. The good- There are some great moments in this game. The boss fights were fun and the story picked up eventually. Sometimes I was excited to see where the story was going, or to progress in the dungeon. Unfortunately, these moments were far outweighed by periods of frustration and wanting to be done with repetitive and tedious portions of the game. It began to feel like a chore.

Nobody will read my review, so I'll just say I'm gay

Most underrated game ever.

Hi! Lea! Bye!

I really wanted to write something good about this game. I started it with a positive mindset. But the developers simply have no sense of moderation. Honestly, if you cut this game in half, it would only be better. Dungeons Right from the start, the dungeons feel dragged out. But as time goes on, they just become infuriating. Hundreds of rooms with the exact same puzzles. "Oh, here's this puzzle, now here's that one, now a combination of both, and now a slight variation of the two..." Over and over and over again. "Yes, I get how to do it. I get it, well done for coming up with it. I really get it, honestly. Just bloody stop already!" And just when you think the dungeon is probably coming to an end - because you're completely fed up and thinking "how much longer can this go on?" - you're most likely only halfway through. The problem isn't that these puzzles are hard; they just get incredibly boring by the 10th time. And they are cheap. No matter how simple they might be, you still have to waste time figuring out what to do and where to start. But even if you grasp the concept, you often need to execute a chain of actions. Sometimes it's short, sometimes it's very long. And it doesn't matter if you got stuck in an object or just lost your focus - you have to do the whole sequence all over again. It gets exhausting when you already have 20 rooms of roughly the same puzzles behind you. I had to clear some dungeons over two or even three separate gaming sessions. Bosses Some of them are fun to fight. However, my issue with the bosses is that they are completely invulnerable until you execute a specific chain of actions. After that, they enter a staggered state, giving you a strictly timed window to deal damage. At some point, this just becomes obnoxious. Every new boss phase is a new variation of a "puzzle" to stagger them, and you’d better think fast. First, you're on a timer to solve the puzzle and break their guard, and then you're on another timer while the boss is actually vulnerable. If you spent too long thinking or made a mistake - sorry, start breaking their shield all over again. There is also one major flaw with the bosses that feels completely unfair: the health bar phase gates. This is the absolute cancer of this game. Here is what I mean: imagine the boss has 90% of their health stripped away on their second HP bar. You spend 30 seconds breaking their defense. They get staggered, opening a damage window. You hit them once - and that’s it, the second health bar is gone, and the boss immediately transitions into the next phase, gaining invulnerability. It feels absolutely terrible. But the "fun" doesn't stop there. Late in the game, Lea unlocks incredibly powerful combat arts that require a longer charge time. So, when the boss is staggered and you've been hoarding your SP for an ultimate, you pop that ultimate, watch the boss's health melt, and then... it just freezes in place because the phase gate has been reached. Meanwhile, the ultimate's animation keeps playing, and all that massive damage from your strongest move goes completely to waste. This feels especially agonizing during the final boss. The Final Boss (Spoilers ahead) This is just an atrocious challenge that I stumbled into already exhausted by the game. The first phase is okay - a standard boss. Dragged out, but standard. [spoiler]But the second phase... It starts as usual: you need to break their defense to stagger them. But then the "plot" kicks in, and the boss starts acting like a cheater. He basically starts regenerating health. Because of this, even if you stagger him, your damage barely registers unless you've met the condition for the "attack multiplier." And this is while you spend 20–30 seconds running around the arena dodging his attacks between those vulnerability windows. It is so exhausting. I played the entire game fair and square, without touching the difficulty sliders, exactly as the developers intended. But during the final boss, when I realized what was being demanded of me, I just gave up and turned the damage received down to the absolute minimum. Even then, it was an incredibly tedious fight. You run around the arena dodging and trying to fulfill the game's conditions, and when the damage window finally opens, you can't even unleash the full potential of your ultimate due to the phase cockblock. [/spoiler] Conclusion Can you enjoy this game? Yes, you can. The numerous positive reviews from people with over 80 hours of playtime prove that. Do I recommend it? No. Because in those 80+ hours, I could have beaten several smaller indie games and had way more fun.

one of the best games ive ever played and by far the most underrated. the puzzles are so creative and they always keep things fresh with new mechanics to master not just for combat but also for the puzzles. its not going to be everyones thing but so much charm is in this game i would recommend everyone to at least try it out. i'd give it about a 6 out of 7......