Cross Edge Review

I was really excited about Cross Edge when I first heard about it over a year ago.  A hardcore RPG with characters from a bunch of different games joining forces?  What’s not to love?  I waited patiently for it to hit the States finding that its release was somewhat muted.  Most major gaming sites gave Cross Edge negative to mixed reviews, making me a little worried once NIS America sent me my review copy.  Would this be my first negative review?  Do I write reviews with an actual polarity?  I guess I will leave that up to you to decide.

Battle System – An Old School Schooling

Cross Edge requires a lot of self-educating.  Most important elements of battle are touched on briefly with little detail.  When it comes to figuring things out, you have two options: trial and error or reading the “help” tutorials of every section in your menu.  I kind of mixed these two methods to really get a handle on the battle system.

If you are the impatient type, this learning process is probably not something that interests you, so you may not be a fan of Cross Edge.  However, once you get a decent handle on the battle system, it’s pretty fun.

A typical battle… does it look complicated?

Battles take place on a map made up of two 3×4 grids, one for the enemy and one for up to 4 allies of your choice.  Each attack has a certain fixed range that can hit on the enemy’s grid.  Moving the ally obviously also moves the area of affect for the attack.  You do have the option of arranging your units in your main menu before battle, but if an enemy is out of range you can move an ally or even switch them out right in battle — both of which expel AP.

Attacks are assigned to buttons on the PS3 controller and likewise consume AP.  AP is generated each player’s turn, as well as when an attack lands a “Guard Break”.  It is possible to link attacks, which causes a good amount of damage.  This will probably help you decide who to bring in your party, since only certain skills can combine with others.  If you save up a huge quantity of AP, you can perform EX Attacks for ultimate damage.

The attack range for “Double Edge”

The difficulty adjusts itself rather abruptly once a new area becomes available.  This had me leveling to survive, which reminded me a bit of an old school RPG.  What can I say, I like a little grind, so I was happy with this.

If you’re still feeling a bit confused by the battle system, but intrigued, I would recommend a hands-on with the game.

Item System – Synthetic Synthesized Synthetics

The weapon and armor creation/modification system is probably the part of Cross Edge you will grope through most blindly.  Perhaps this makes it feel more like an authentic alchemy system, since in real alchemy you probably wouldn’t really know what you are doing either.

I admit, I still don’t fully understand this step of weapon synthesis

As with battling, there are a variety of “help” tutorials available for alchemy, most of which assume you are familiar with the terminology.  It seems to me like there is a lot the player can do with the item system, but I don’t understand all the potentials enough to really take advantage of it.

While I may be missing out on the nuances, I do enjoy crafting new weapons.  The system couples nicely with the battle system.  To actually make decent gear, you need to acquire items dropped by enemies that are thoroughly beaten, or “overkilled.”  The stronger the enemy, the harder it is to get an overkill, meaning that the item they drop will be that much rarer.  Despite some confusion on my part, I do find this pattern enjoyable: kill>get rare item>turn it into strong weapon>hunt down stronger enemy>repeat.

Story – Reinforcements from the Underworld

The story for Cross Edge can be a bit lacking.  I guess one would have to put logic aside a bit since it is a game with characters from multiple other titles.  Initially, the rate at which you gather allies may contribute to the feeling of a somewhat lacking story.  The first few hours are really just wandering around gathering allies, cleverly disguised as story.

That doesn’t mean Cross Edge does not entertain.  The more humorous characters (mainly those from the Underworld) help provide a good chuckle from time to time.  If Morrigan wasn’t one of the first characters the player recruits, early dialogs would have been painfully goody-goody.  Scenes involving Etna and Prinny are especially comical, after all NIS knows how to make us laugh.

Searching the world map for souls

The two main characters York (a.k.a Yuuto) and Miko are both painfully stereotypical.  York is rash, abrasive, and has more faith in his abilities than he should.  Miko on the other hand is a soft spoken girl who constantly tries her best and apologizes for basically nothing — at least she isn’t a healer/mage.

Perhaps these characters are meant to really highlight the supporting characters, which ultimately are the reasons most people will play Cross Edge.

Visuals and Content – (Fan)cy Service

It is no stretch of the imagination to label Cross Edge as fan service.  It provides an excuse to slap together a bunch of characters that people love into a single game.  While that may be the most obvious way the game aims to please, there are some more subtle ways that the game made me happy.

Voice acting is a crucial element in a game like Cross Edge and I was so happy when I learned that the Japanese dialog was being included in the localized edition.  After hearing from a few readers, I know I am not alone here…  Still, I was surprised at the special attention given to the voice acting.  By pressing triangle during a dialog scene, it’s possible to replay any phrase that you have already heard in the current scene.  This may seem like a strange option, but I think those who appreciate voice acting will like this feature.  Also it doesn’t hurt if you’re studying Japanese!

Another nice feature of Cross Edge, which is one area many sites marked it down for, is graphics.  Obviously the game is primarily 2D: sprites, backgrounds and dialog art are all void of a third dimension.  This doesn’t really bother me since the quality of said sprites is really high.  The sites that marked the game down on graphics simply because Cross Edge isn’t in 3D, just don’t understand Cross Edge…

Getting back to sprite quality, I was very pleased to see that when changing weapons, the image of the character’s weapon changed in battle.  I guess this should be a given considering the computer power of the PS3.  However, this same attention was not given to one of the most unique features of the game:  costumes.

As the above screens show, costumes affect the dialog art and menu art for your character as well as augment certain stats.  I frowned a bit when I saw that in battle however, the characters are unchanged.  This would have bumped this feature up from cool to friggin’ awesome.

Final Thoughts

Cross Edge is a game which you will grow more and more fond of as you play it and understand it.  The initial learning process will most likely try the patience of most people, but those who push on are the ones who Cross Edge was made for: hardcore RPG players.

While I had a few gripes with the game, for the most part I find myself having fun using my favorite characters and adapting to a healthy level of difficulty.  I think the message I want to stress with this review is that Cross Edge is for a specific niche of gamers.  Those who fall into this category will truly love the game.