CrossCode

cool game. cool story. pretty graphics.

PEAK game!!!! (excuse the time that it shows as steam buged but i have 50h in this game and its reaalyy good)

(8 months old review, woops!) Been a minute since a game took me so long to hit credits. Long games require long reviews, so here I go. CrossCode is... a lot. It immediately goes overdrive with a story about agency and free will, rich ceos and surveillance states, the ethics of cloning, the true nature of a real being, and while you process all that, you get to do a billion ball-bouncing puzzles and punch a bunch of enemies real hard. It's a game that tries to do a lot, and to its credit, it finds some harmony in its own weird, unique way. However, I'd be lying if I said it didn't drown in its ambition as well. I'll discuss the gameplay first, ignoring ludonarrative dissonance for the time being. I'd say the crust of CrossCode is composed of three pilars: terrain navigation, puzzle solving, and combat. Terrain navigation refers to all those cheeky elevation riddles where your top-down view is deliberately weaponized against you to make the path forward confusing. This system encompasses pretty much every area outside the temples, and I'll admit, not a big fan, but it's whatever. It's largely limited to optional goodies, and even when it's mandatory, it's got some thought behind it. Overall, the hubworld is pleasant enough to explore, even though I wasn't compelled to do so in a particularly comprehensive way. Combat. Okay, I really like the combat of CrossCode. With an astherisk. I think it flows very well, has nice visual and sound feedback, has a very logical risk vs. reward with the overloading, and has the necessary enemy variety to constantly force you to swap out combat styles. Every enemy is like a little puzzle, not in the Skyward Sword way of stupid intrusivity, but in the "you actually need to think of what you're doing" kinda way. The only issue I have is the element variety, or lack there of. I was really expecting all the elements to differenciate themselves more, honestly. There's some of it I suppose, like shock being able to heal you, ice having a more delayed and powerful attack, but most of it is arbirtrary, and feels like an excuse to overcomplicate things "no, this guy is weak to blue, not red, dingus". This wouldn't be such an issue if the game wasn't so long. Whatever complexity the combat has, it can't wether the storm for 40 hours. That said, man these were some good boss fights, huh. Nothing like constant trial and error learning every single attack pattern of these fears killing machines, slowly but surely making your way through a hectic dance til conquering your foe. The samurai fight in Sapphire Bridge, man, what a duel. And as for puzzles, well, it's complicated. I'll admit I'm not much of a puzzle guy in general, but I'll give credit when it's due. If a puzzle is well designed, I'll give my compliments, and I'd say a solid 90% of puzzles in the game are. Some are a little too insane and feel like homework, but overall, pretty good. No, the real issue I have is pacing. For the first half of the game, there's a pretty effective flow: Visit town, journey through a field, and get into the dungeon. Dungeons themselves last 2 or so hours, but there's a lot of space in between them, so it's hard to get too tired of them. That is, until getting to Gaia's Garden. Someone thought it was a good idea to have around 5 or 6 hours of temple pretty much consecutively, and no mere temple either: Ones with the most annoying enemies in the whole game. Oh, and they don't drop hp either since the game decided I was overleveled, even if they repeatedly kicked my ass. Didn't matter how good the puzzles in this temple were, the constant repetition got on my nerves to an unfathomable degree. I prayed there were no more dungeons afterwards (there was one, wasn't too bad, but still), and dramatically lowered my opinion up until that point. So that's gameplay, now let's see story. CrossCode is a very interesting case, because the afformentioned ludonarrative dissonance is almost built into the story itself: You're playing a game within a game, a game that has no real significance to anyone. Every character you meet is just having fun, and they all think Lea is too, and that's kinda the heart of it all: What to everyone is just a game, to Lea is her entire reality. This to me was CrossCode's most entising promise, the idea of exploring what would a videogame character feel when knowing they were nothing but code, knowing there's a world out there that you're not really a part of. And they even have the nerve to give Lea limited speech, so as to further distanciate her from Emilie and the rest? Cruel, man. The existencial dread and melancholy of Lea's story was the beating heart of CrossCode, and I wanted to see it play out til the end. Sadly, there's a second half of the plot that I'm less excited about, which is the whole deal with Instatainment, Shizuka, and the dudes whose names I already forgot about. There is a comical amount of flashbacks to sit through, and each one makes less sense than the last. And sadly, this is the aspect the endgame chooses to focus on most. There's a big suicide in the end that I think I'm suppose to feel bad about? Sure, ok. The whole deal with Lea and her relationship with the others is really brushed aside. Everyone finds out she's an Evotar, are super supportive, and then wait for her to come back until she does. Oh sorry, that's only if you do the good ending detour the game refuses to tell you about. Doesn't matter that much anyway, since neither ending actually shows Lea getting back, that's for the paid dlc to give away. By and large, I have a big problem with just about every aspect of CrossCode, but that's really because I liked it so much. Before Gaia's Garden, I could've genuinely told you this game was some blocks away of a masterpiece. It's genuinely really fun, and moving, and emotional! Nobody forced me to play a 50 hour game til the end, but I did, because the world and characters of CrossCode captivated me. That's why it frustrates me so much that it can't reach its full potential, that it ends so middling in so many areas. Don't know if I'll ever play the dlc, let alone the game ever again, because it's genuinely a daunting task, but I'll also probably keep it at the back of my mind forever. So that's nice.

This game interested me so much it made me lose a diploma because I overslept due to playing it at night way more than I intended.

Holy soul, they really made their dream indie game huh! I got no qualms apart from game length. It didn't register at early parts and so it felt a bit long. But great indie game overall. No wonder the reviews are stellar.

解密非常有趣的像素风游戏，天赋树每个元素都有新体验很有趣。

Chore of a game, more puzzles than in the "Opus Magnum" puzzle game. Every RPG mechanic here is barebones imitation of MMORPG and you'll spend countless hours in the dungeons where completing obnoxious puzzles is rewarded with more puzzles, every map is a labirynth where getting a chest with nothing inside is a puzzle. This game is less fun than full time job.