In the future, people transfer their minds and thoughts into an empty shell avatar on another planet so they can play an online game called CrossWorlds, except it’s actually on a real planet in a distant galaxy!  But there’s trouble brewing on this planet.  You play as Lea, an avatar who has lost her memory and wakes up on a ship heading towards the island where the game is played.  Could her memory loss have something to do with what’s been going on?  You’ll find out in Cross Code, a 2-D top down viewed action RPG game for nearly all current game systems and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.  It kind of reminds me of a cross between the Avatar movie and the .hack anime.

In the game you control Lea, who has lost her memory and most of her speech, but you gradually gain it over time.  You’ll travel the CrossWorlds island in 2-D top down fashion, with pixel graphics that remind me of what you’d see on a 16-bit console like the SNES.  Like other RPGs, you’ll gather clues and items in town, as well as TONS of sidequests and missions.  You can recruit certain other characters to join you in battle, too.

Battles are the main part of the gameplay.  When you are ready, you can venture into the wild to fight monsters and other players in real time, and when you win you gain experience points and items.  You can even use points to boost stats on a skill tree.  You can attack enemies in one of two ways.  You have a short-range slash attack, and you can also throw a ball to hit long distance enemies.  Certain foes are best dispatched close up with the slash, while others are better hit from afar with the ball. You can also put up a shield and dash. You will also use these attacks to solve Zelda-like switch-based puzzles from time to time.  Battles are extremely hard, but one neat thing you can do is change the difficulty in several ways. You can edit how strong the enemies are, how high your defense is, rate of attack, and more!  It’s a neat feature if the game gets too tough.

The only problems I had with the game are mostly personal preferences and not worth mentioning much, but I will anyway.  You use nearly every button to fight, and I would’ve preferred a more simplistic battle system.  But at the same time, I also felt battles were a bit tedious in places.  Go figure.  I also just couldn’t get into the story.  Granted, I’m not a big fan of Avatar or .hack, which this game takes inspiration from.  But I think if I were a teen when I was more into these kinds of games, I would’ve liked the plot more.  But otherwise, this is a pretty fine action RPG.

Cross Code is published digitally by Deck13.  But it is published physically by Strictly Limited and Inin Games.  You can pre-order a physical copy of the game here.

Kid Factor:

Cross Code is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence and Language.  You hit pixel monsters with futuristic virtual weapons and balls.  I didn’t notice any bad language in the text, so it must be used sparingly.  Because of the high difficulty and level of reading involved, I’d say it’s best enjoyed by older players.

Tags: Game Reviews