User blog:Steven Star/Project X Zone Review

Namco Bandai has had a long history of developing crossover titles. Beginning with the Super Robot Wars series, these universes crossover would later gain so much of these strategy RPGs of many famous mecha anime from Japan, they began branching out further. One of the more notable releases was the 2005 title, Namco X Capcom, in which they collaborated with Capcom characters to create an SRPG with a loosely fighting game-inspired battle engine. The game was clamboured over by fans in the west for a release, but never got one.

Up until 2013, and the latest japan crossover finally come to the west, and this is Project X Zone. An even more ambitious crossover game with both spiritual and direct successor to NxC, now introducing Sega franchises into the mix. To longtime fans of gaming from Japan, a teamup between Capcom, Namco, and Sega almost sounds like a dream work. These are, afterall, three of the longest standing companies in the video game world.



Having a long history of developing SRPGs held in high regard, among other titles, Namco is the actual developer would result in this being an absolutely fantastic game. And to be honest, in a handful of ways, it succeeded. But with all crossover, there's alway going to have several issues that begin to drag down the game and ultimately it hurt greatly.

Like it’s old brother, Namco X Capcom, this game is primarily a Strategy RPG. The game is entirely linear in progression and there aren't any random encounters to fight, there's no grinding to be done, and the story has no branches. You progress chapter by chapter, stage through stage, through a grand total of a little over 40 stages. Each stage is divided into turns. During each turn, all allied units and enemy units will get to act once in a predetermined order. On their turn, allied units can use their skills, move around, and launch an attack on enemies. PXZ breaks the mode is when you launch the attacks, as this game shifts from an overhead grid view to a side view look reminiscient of a fighting game, with detailed sprites and beautiful backgrounds. The units will launch into very lovingly designed attack strings and combos, with you having a limited number of attacks, including calling in a solo units and other nearby unit, before the attack automatically ends.

Between stages, you'll be greeted with the preparations menu, where you can equip items that you've picked up and change around unit assignments. And that's it. That's basically the whole thing. So let's get a little more indepth, shall we?

Since you're probably wondering, yes, each company has roughly equal representation, mostly by the character in each series, playable or not. A large number of the game's locations are almost direct from the games in question. There are technically a grand total of 60 playable characters from between the three major publishers.

Bot you may be be confused by some of the characters and series chosen, or more likely, flat out clueless. While I know many characters in Capcom, I barely knew half of the Namco cast and Sega probably the most confused. I know Virtual Fighter and Space Channel 5, and that’s it. I guess Sega was limited to humanized characters and that’s gonna be hard with 85% of your franchise is Sonic the f-ing Hedgehog.

This was probably due to the fact that several of the characters were from titles that were never released overseas, mostly noticing those from Namco X Capcom. At least the game includes an in-game encyclopedia which describes the characters, enemies, and references and plot elements that come up, so you can familiarize yourself with them.

Unfortauily, that didn’t excuse the seemingly sporadic mess of franchises is brought together of a plot. The boundaries between dimensions, times, and parallel universes are beginning to break down. With Kogoro and Mii, they’re brought together with the other heroes of the other universe as they stumble about and try to stop an ominous plot from the original villain, the Oros Phlox and other villain from the other universe. Did you get that?

Actually, the story's definitely one of the weak points. You thought this game did its best to try to link worlds together and occasionally brings some moments of pleasant surprises, the actual story going on is incredibly weak. This is a disappointment, especially compeer to Namco's major SRPG Crossover series Super Robot Wars, a game that famous for actually doing a fantastic job of tying together multiple universes and sometimes even strengthening their storytelling in the process. The writing is still solid. Characters and their many lines are accurate to their personalities, and the places you go and the quips they make and references back to their home worlds are sure to make any fan smile. While some characters get all these personalities mixing, you can imagine that there's plenty of interaction and you won't be disappointed. There's a large array of wonderful little jokes and chitchat between cast members to brighten it up. May I point to the quotes from those like Nenoko, Dante, and Demitri.

PXZ uses 2D sprites on 3D stages. Some people may be put off by sprites, but the fact is that the sprite work in this game is actually top notch. Especially in battle, the sprites are amazingly detailed and beautifully animated which is shown after you do your super attack. (Also, dat fanservice. :D ) All of the animations when launching attacks feel straight out of the source material, and you'll love the little references back to the characters' home games scattered throughout. During story scenes and special attacks, you'll get very well-done cut-ins of the characters who are busy speaking, visual novel style.

In terms of music and sound, the game succeeds well again. Every character has a theme song or two attached to them, straight from their source games, remixed a little but completely recognisable. The game plays an appropriate track for each character when the character's turn comes up, getting you in the mood for their actions. This is surprisingly functional way to offset the whole "there's an hour of this stage" and the general danger of becoming bored of music. =-=

Yes, I should note that. This game is long. Like…really long. Don’t expect to finished this game easily. stages start taking an hour or longer to complete. This is simply because you'll be leading 10-20 units through masses of 50-100 enemies, including bosses. It's not particularly fun, or riveting, and can get repetetive fast. Now arguably, this makes the low risk of failure a good thing, because nobody would want to sit through an hour long stage again after screwing up at the end, but neither of these things are good. Other downback is how most of the mission just to killed all the enemies and the bosses, mostly the final boos. Ugh…

In the end, PXZ is a game that had a huge amount of potential. And in some ways, it does deliver. The fighting system is fantastic, the characters are true to their source material, the presentation is great, and there's plenty of little things for fans to nerd out about. But in other ways it failed to deliver. The characters and enemies could use more diversity, the stages are often badly designed, and the game is really long for having so little variety. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the game, but do I think it's good? Well, yes and no. And rarely have I ever felt that being conflicted about whether it's a good game or not is so completely accurate. It’s on the viewer eye, test the demos on PXZ before playing the game….or wait until Project X Zone 2. :l