CrossCode

Heard about [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3110760/Alabaster_Dawn/]Alabaster Dawn[/url] going EA some time ago and remembered about this little title. I was gifted this from a friend couple years ago to try, but ended up forgetting to play this for a long while (lol) I definitely was on board when i see this is recapturing that old "game about MMORPG games" feel, and I did give a light chuckle when i heard the nostalgic prontera's theme (but bossa nova) on rookie's harbor BGM (which tbh kinda feel like a cross between alberta and prontera theme?). anyway, the vibe's was definitely on point. My favorite part of this game was definitely the platforming puzzle that blends in with the environment that forces to do puzzle to explore parts of the map for loots, which I believe was pretty prevalent in games back in the days? but somehow is gone from the modern games. Honestly? We really should bring back these. even JRPGs that are notorious for keeping things vanilla, old traditions don't have these nowadays. On the topic of puzzles, got dang, It is so German you can SMELL the rotkohl from a mile away. It is Gimmicky, Technical, and requires extra Precision. Puzzle starts simple, then harder, then it goes "you have to stand here at this precise angle, throw a ball forward then move 10 pixels to the left and press a different sent of combination within the span of 10 second".... or something like that. Honestly, i'm not really complaining; i like hard(er) puzzle, but at some point it definitely felt too much. I had to take a break some time after that fire dungeon, holy. The same principle also applies to the enemies. they're so Gimmick-heavy it's not even funny. In this game, enemies take reduced damage until you "break" them, and that means most encounter what you're doing is waiting for the enemy to do a specific move, and then you need to "charge shot/use map gimmick/use specific element" before you start dealing damage to them. Now, it wasn't too bad on 1-3 enemies, but the encounter will ramp up so much at some point there's like 6 flier enemies shooting it at you from all across the screen and you'll need to do a bouncing ice mini game to break even one of them. Too much? very. altho at some point from the middle of the game you can feel theyr're relenting for a bit and the number of enemies are lessen and the gimmick is more straightforward; so i do feel that some encounter has some "haven't been balanced" feel on it I can't really say much about the story as honestly it does feel like some mishmash of it-has-been-dones before but the characterization is great and all the tidbit peppered out in the overworld is great. Oh yeah there's also a lot of old games references all around the world. I totally laughed out loud when i see the part where you need to input a 10 controller button input i can guess the solution right away without any hints (it's the "K" code) All-in-all its a very good game with a lot of hearts, that honestly need some tweaks here and there but hey. still a solid experience.