Cross Edge
Cross Edge is an interesting concept and is in the same vein as Chaos war. It’s basically a new RPG that combines characters from other game series which include Gust games (Atelier Iris, Ar Tonelico), Disgaea and Darkstalkers.
The storyline is fairly interesting and makes good use of the characters from those franchises and there’s a lot of dialogue sequences to get to know the characters if you haven’t played any of the previous games. Though the dialogue sequences are frequent and length, the game does provide you with a lot of options to speed them up, quickly review what was said and skip them altogether, which is a VERY welcome addition to a game like this.
The story involves a group of crazy bad guys who are trying to steal people’s souls. They gather souls from the 3 worlds. The Fantasy World where Gust game characters come from. The Demon world where Disgaea and Darkstalkers characters come from, and the world where the games original characters come from. Basically souls are captured easily in this world unless you have a very strong soul in which case your body is also transported along. Your party exists of the characters that were able to keep their bodies and have decided to fight back. There are a TON of characters that can join your party so it’s good they built a system where everyone gains exp. Character in the battle get more or course, but you don’t have to worry too much about characters you don’t use falling behind.
The gameplay is a real love it or hate it variety. Within just an hour or so you’ll be able to tell if this is a game for you. The battle system is interesting, you arrange your characters on a grid, and enemies are placed on an opposite grid. Each character gets a certain amount of AP to use each turn. During your turn you can choose any character and execute any attack they have AP for, during that attack you can quickly switch to another character and perform another attack. Performing the attacks in the right order can lead to a chain for huge damage. You can also save up your AP for a special attack, and swap out group members at any time.
It’s tough to explain the combat in more detail than that. It’s a weird cross between Valkyrie Profile and Xenogears. The game does all it can to keep it as simple as possible, but there’s a lot of complexity to it. Learning all the correct chains really adds to the system, but if you aren’t the kind of gamer who likes to learn the workings of fighting engines like this, you’ll probably find the combat very boring.
The rest of the game is pretty uninspiring. You move around a map and search for events. To search you have to press the square button as you move around and if an event or souls pop up than you can go there to search the area. This is necessary to save souls and continue the story, but it ends up being a tiresome mechanic. Instead of being able to just rush through the map to the new location, you have to perform a search on each area of the map to make sure you don’t miss anything, or just to continue the game.
All in all, this game was made with the hardcore J-RPG player in mind. If you love niche games like the ones that Gust and NIS create then you might enjoy this one. If you don’t know who Gust or NIS is I recommend you just stay away. There’s nothing really here for the casual RPG player.
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