Project Cross Zone!
Jul. 6th, 2013 02:54 pmThis seems to be the year of the 3DS for me. The first new game I picked up this year was Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, which I really enjoyed despite not being a fan of dungeon crawlers at all. After that I played Fire Emblem: Awakening, which was fun. It's probably the only Fire Emblem game I'd ever care to play due to giving you the option to not have stupid permanent death (still one of the dumbest things ever, in my opinion).
And now I'm playing Project X Zone and having a total blast. This game is amazing! For the unfamiliar: Project X Zone is a strategy RPG crossover between Capcom, Namco, and Sega. There's over 40 playable in the games overall, I think? It's pretty simple for an SRPG, but surprisingly fun.
I originally bought it because I was one of those people complaining that we never get cool crossover games like this (we never got Namco x Capcom on the PS2). So when the game was, seemingly against all odds (I heard the actual creator begged for it to be released outside of Japan O__o), I pretty much felt obligated to buy it. I hadn't heard much good about the actual gameplay. Apparently the game bombed in Japan, and reviews as well as some of my friends here have been saying that it's boring and repetitive. So I tentatively picked it up without even playing the demo...
I thought the gameplay was literally mashing buttons, but it's not that at all. Doing damage is all about juggling the enemy in the air for as long as possible and carefully managing when you call in assist units to keep enemies airborne. The attacks themselves are repetitive, but I'm too busy focusing on figuring out the best way to do damage and build up my meter for special attacks to mind the repetitiveness.
Gameplay aside, though, I love crossovers! And this game is so ridiculous about it, oh my god. In one of the battles I just finished, I was fighting off a horde of zombies with Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine from Resident Evil, Yuri and Estelle from Tales of Vesperia, Frank West from Dead Rising, Hsien Ko and Demitri from Dark Stalkers, and Dante (the original) from Devil May Cry. Amazing XD Never thought I'd be able to combo Nemesis into oblivion with Savage Wolf Fury, hahahaha.
Even with the game play and the crossover awesomeness, though, another reason I was pretty much obligated to buy this game was because you get Mega Man X and Zero in it as team members. Out of every Mega Man, X has constantly been left out of crossover games (never got into any Capcom fighting game unlike classic Mega Man, Zero a million times, and Mega Man from the Legends series). As my favorite Mega Man character, I just had to get a game that featured him (not to mention that the X series is dead). This is pretty much my last chance to ever play as X in any capacity. And I must say, he is awesome to use. He even has the Hadoken from the first MMX game!
The localization for Project X Zone is really impressive, too. I'm noticing that they take some liberties with the translation, but it's mainly so that they can have characters' dialogue match the English releases of those games. They even made a reference to a somewhat obscure joke from the first Resident Evil. And as far as I can tell from looking at some of the characters' move names, this translation matches the original games (which in many cases departed from the original Japanese in naming attacks and techniques). Just... amazing. I love attention to detail like this in a localization.
I'm already on chapter 24, so I think I might try to slow it down a bit in this game, lol. I really need to savor this game. They may never make another one like it since it didn't sell well in Japan. I didn't expect to love this game this much. The 2D sprite artwork, too! Oh man <3 It's so rare that you can see such lovely and detailed sprites these days where everything's 3D models.
Speaking of crossovers, I finally uploaded chapter 2 of In Stark Contrast. It seems to be getting a few favorites and even some reviews. I'm really surprised. Guess I'd better hurry up and get the next chapter ready. I really hope I can push myself to finish this. I've already accepted the fact that a beta is a luxury I'll never have. It takes me awhile to write a new chapter because I have to go over it a bunch of times. Even then, I still miss things. Oh well.
And now I'm playing Project X Zone and having a total blast. This game is amazing! For the unfamiliar: Project X Zone is a strategy RPG crossover between Capcom, Namco, and Sega. There's over 40 playable in the games overall, I think? It's pretty simple for an SRPG, but surprisingly fun.
I originally bought it because I was one of those people complaining that we never get cool crossover games like this (we never got Namco x Capcom on the PS2). So when the game was, seemingly against all odds (I heard the actual creator begged for it to be released outside of Japan O__o), I pretty much felt obligated to buy it. I hadn't heard much good about the actual gameplay. Apparently the game bombed in Japan, and reviews as well as some of my friends here have been saying that it's boring and repetitive. So I tentatively picked it up without even playing the demo...
I thought the gameplay was literally mashing buttons, but it's not that at all. Doing damage is all about juggling the enemy in the air for as long as possible and carefully managing when you call in assist units to keep enemies airborne. The attacks themselves are repetitive, but I'm too busy focusing on figuring out the best way to do damage and build up my meter for special attacks to mind the repetitiveness.
Gameplay aside, though, I love crossovers! And this game is so ridiculous about it, oh my god. In one of the battles I just finished, I was fighting off a horde of zombies with Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine from Resident Evil, Yuri and Estelle from Tales of Vesperia, Frank West from Dead Rising, Hsien Ko and Demitri from Dark Stalkers, and Dante (the original) from Devil May Cry. Amazing XD Never thought I'd be able to combo Nemesis into oblivion with Savage Wolf Fury, hahahaha.
Even with the game play and the crossover awesomeness, though, another reason I was pretty much obligated to buy this game was because you get Mega Man X and Zero in it as team members. Out of every Mega Man, X has constantly been left out of crossover games (never got into any Capcom fighting game unlike classic Mega Man, Zero a million times, and Mega Man from the Legends series). As my favorite Mega Man character, I just had to get a game that featured him (not to mention that the X series is dead). This is pretty much my last chance to ever play as X in any capacity. And I must say, he is awesome to use. He even has the Hadoken from the first MMX game!
The localization for Project X Zone is really impressive, too. I'm noticing that they take some liberties with the translation, but it's mainly so that they can have characters' dialogue match the English releases of those games. They even made a reference to a somewhat obscure joke from the first Resident Evil. And as far as I can tell from looking at some of the characters' move names, this translation matches the original games (which in many cases departed from the original Japanese in naming attacks and techniques). Just... amazing. I love attention to detail like this in a localization.
I'm already on chapter 24, so I think I might try to slow it down a bit in this game, lol. I really need to savor this game. They may never make another one like it since it didn't sell well in Japan. I didn't expect to love this game this much. The 2D sprite artwork, too! Oh man <3 It's so rare that you can see such lovely and detailed sprites these days where everything's 3D models.
Speaking of crossovers, I finally uploaded chapter 2 of In Stark Contrast. It seems to be getting a few favorites and even some reviews. I'm really surprised. Guess I'd better hurry up and get the next chapter ready. I really hope I can push myself to finish this. I've already accepted the fact that a beta is a luxury I'll never have. It takes me awhile to write a new chapter because I have to go over it a bunch of times. Even then, I still miss things. Oh well.