CrossCode

My feelings are more complicated than expected after witnessing consistent high praise over the years. In short, I think CrossCode does what it sets out to do well, which is combine the fun combat and gear progression of an arpg alongside a top down puzzler akin to Zelda wrapped up in a simple yet charming artstyle. These two focuses while I believe done well in general, have flaws that I felt in the overall experience of the game which I want to elaborate on. To start with the combat, it is at a baseline fun, and certainly challenging. I like that it manages to make the often stale 3hit combo core more interesting via the juggling of elements and all the special moves that come with them. The enemy variety is also good and the mechanics that come with attacking some enemies prevent you from disengaging and resorting to mindless button mashing. The double edged sword with said mechanics, and especially in bosses, I feel is they end up feeling less like true fights and more like elongated survival phases where you run around, barely doing damage, trying to exploit the boss weakness before you then dump damage without them reacting to move onto the next phase. Another thing I'm mixed on is phase gating hp which I understand why it exists, but also made building damage feel kind of pointless in most cases where I was doing overkill per phase. A couple times though you can sometimes do enough in a single instance to skip which felt really cool! Now the puzzles, especially in dungeons, are also a focal point and a big reason why I can be hesitant to recommend the game unless you're a certain type of player. Overall they're well designed with solid tutorial puzzles to introduce mechanics that're then iterated on and combined with past knowledge to truly test you. The main problem can lie in the density if unprepared as it can get exhausting. Dungeons try to help break it up by alternating a puzzle room with a combat room, but the balance isn't achieved as, in my experience, combat encounters are resolved much quicker than puzzle rooms if you're not on your A-game. Therefore you'll spend probably at least twice as much time solving puzzles in the session leaving you fatigued/saturated of the experience. Personally I enjoyed the puzzles but also took many breaks, and so [u] if the described experience isn't something you'll appreciate I wouldn't recommend [/u]. In addition to the traditional puzzles, CrossCode's greater exploration is essentially one giant puzzle as you traverse its dense maps trying to put together the line you can autohop your way to the chest. I think this is a cool way to tackle exploration in a 2D game and feels on theme with the game's puzzley nature. On the other hand, this can also get exhausting, especially if you're a completionist, as I found the best way was to start from your goal and run down all the way following a potential path so essentially running twice the distance (barring you don't fail a jump). Some areas are better than others though with respect to exploration feel. As a side note, sometimes it can also be difficult to tell/factor height differences in the 2d presentation which is something I can sympathize with but also want to make a note of. Finally to touch on the story, my only real gripe was the first half felt predictable and the pacing between actual story beats felt really long as the space inbetween them was filled with CrossCode's in-game's setting which I felt was both maybe underutilized and also nonexistant in terms of story. The actual game's plot bits when happening though I really enjoyed so all that "dead air, "which is essentially purely the game part of the game, was something to get over. I really loved the story in the DLC though and think its partly by being a tighter 4 chapters and avoiding the aforementioned pacing issue. Overall I think at its pricepoint, especially since I picked it up on sale for 5$?! it's unnecessary to be overly critical. Especially for how much you can potentially get out of it. I may have been negative in my review but I wouldn't have played it all the way through if I wasn't enjoying it for the most part. There's just some sour parts of the whole experience that I had to get down onto paper. Still definitely want to check out Alabaster Dawn though! Finally, If you're unsure, the demo is right there to the dev's suggestion. P.S if you're using a high refresh rate monitor (in my case 280hz) you will have issues on controller. Your solutions are either to turn down your monitor's refreshrate which sucks or download an fps limiter mod. I found 144fps completely normal/useable.