Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

Cross Edge

1. Official Site
2. Platform: ps3
3. Publisher: NIS America
4. Developer: Idea Factory
5. Release Date: 05/26/09
6. Genre: RPG

by Mike Repella

Have you ever played a game where your first impression of it was that you hated it, but for some reason you spent more time with the game and slowly started to appreciate it? Well I have played that game and it’s called Cross Edge for the PS3. After my first hour of playing the game, I literally thought to myself that Cross Edge is the worst game that I have ever had to review. That’s saying a lot, since I have reviewed the god awful MLB 2K8 for the PSP.  But, since this was a review, I stuck with the game and once I figured it all out and got past my first impressions, I found a fairly decent, niche RPG.

Cross Edge comes to us from NIS America, but it is really the product of several different development houses, including: Capcom, Gust, Namco Bandai, Nippon Ichi Software, Idea Heart and Compile. All of whom, besides Capcom and Namco Bandai, have little known franchises to the North American market. With Cross Edge, the various developers have lent characters from their franchises to create a third string all-star cast of characters who all play their own part in this RPG.  The game features characters from well known series like Darkstalkers and Disgea , as well as, characters from relatively obscure titles like Mana Khemia 2, Atelier Marie, Ar Tonelico, and Spectral Souls.  If you haven’t heard of half of those games, don’t worry, I haven’t either.

As I said earlier,most people’s first impression of Cross Edge will not be a good one.Right off the bat players will recognize that the visuals in Cross Edge are in no way next generation. In fact I struggled to find graphical effects or details in the game that couldn’t also have been produced on the PS2. The characters are all hand drawn and really tiny. During combat the characters do have animations and they move around the screen, but the animations aren’t particularly impressive and the characters lack any high level of detail.

Most of the game will take place on a flat hand-drawn over world map, and the battles will take place on a classic 2D side view, like the one used by so many 16-bit era RPGs used. Occasionally the player will have to enter a dungeon, which consists of a 2D side scrolling adventure style labyrinth. These sections remind me a lot of the dungeons in The Legend of Zelda 2, but with Playstation 1 graphics. The side scrolling sections shake things up a bit, but again, the graphics leave a lot to be desired. Given the graphical quality of the game I almost suspect that Cross Edge was originally developed for the PS2 and then someone made the call to put it on the PS3. I have no facts to back that assertion up, but it does point out just how simple the graphics are.

The visuals aren’t the biggest problem facing Cross Edge. Let’s face it, many of the game series that the characters in Cross Edge come from aren’t exactly known for cutting edge graphics. What the game really needed was solid gameplay to make you forget about the lackluster graphics. Sadly I don’t think that most people will be able to get past the controls in Cross Edge. The game has the most unintuitive and overly complicated control scheme of any RPG that I have ever played. For example, during battle you have to use the L1 and R1 buttons to cycle through your characters, you use the D-pad to cycle through enemy targets, you have to use either the X, triangle, square, or O buttons to attack, but if you want to use a special attack you first have to hit the R2 button, if you want to use an item you have to hit the start button, but in order to do that you can’t be in the middle of an after attack countdown sequence, in order to end your attack turn you have to hit the up direction on the left analog stick. Confused yet? You should be, because whoever designed the battle controls for Cross Edge should be fired.

Sadly, the control problems don’t end there. The menu system in Cross Edge is insanely complicated and will take the average player several hours of play time to fully understand. This is due in large part to the overwhelming number of customization options that the player has with each character coupled with poor menu system design. I was literally over 20 hours into the game before I figured out that there were Party Points that I could assign to players in order to improve their stats. A careful read through of the skimpy manual will help players understand the game and its mechanics. I would also recommend going online to the game’s website, as it offers several pages of hints and tips. It seems like even NIS realized the game has a huge learning curve and as a result they put up the web page to help out.

If you’re still hanging in there with this review then here is the good news. Once you get past all of the issues above, you will find a very deep and enjoyable RPG, on a system that is light on the genre.  The storyline isn’t exactly a mature cutting edge epic filled with politics, but that’s ok. A lot of the dialogue is witty and fans of the various characters will no doubt enjoy seeing them interact with characters whom they would otherwise never meet.

Cross Edge’s story places the various characters in a dream world where they all start waking up and they can’t remember who they are, where they came from or even who their friends are. The people in charge of the dream world have trapped souls from other worlds in order to maintain their world’s existence. I don’t think anyone will ever accuse the storyline in Cross Edge of being anywhere near the quality of recent RPGs like Final Fantasy 12 or even Fable. However, the game does do a good job of slowly moving the story along by introducing new heroes and new villains like Etna from Disgea and Demitri from Darkstalkers. The dialogue in Cross Edge is often times very entertaining as well. There is an overall juvenile style, sexual theme to much of the dialogue between the characters. The dialogue is humorous if you are into that type of thing. One scene in particular has the characters commenting on how similar Etna (Disgea) and Morrigan (Darkstalkers) are, until one of them points out just how large chested Morrigan is. From there on out Etna’s flat chest becomes a running joke in the game.

As I mentioned above, the gameplay in Cross Edge is incredibly deep.There are literally dozens of character that you have control of throughout the game and each one of them has their own unique powers and attributes. In battle you can use four characters at a time, but you are free to swap characters in and out throughout each battle. Each character has a pool of actions points that can be used and various attacks or spells that take up those action points. Using character skills in specific orders will create combination attacks which really up the damage done. The key to the game is to find out which characters create the best attack combos and then use them together to really slaughter the enemy. On top of that, each character has their own attack range which limits how close or how far they have to be from the enemy.

There is also an incredibly robust weapon, armor and item crafting system. If you kill an enemy with an “overkill” (an overkill occurs when you cause massive damage above and beyond their normal health) an enemy will drop crafting ingredients. Collect enough ingredients as well as the recipe for a weapon and you can then make new more powerful weapons. There are hundreds of items and weapons that you can make and I can’t imagine someone being able to craft everything on their first play through of the game.

Progression through the game is mostly done by unlocking “events”. Players will unlock events by wondering around the over world map and performing a search, which will reveal events and souls. The system sounds odd, but it really does create a collection feeling, the one you get when you want to stop playing a game, but you tell yourself that you are just going to search one more area of the map before quitting. Before you know it, it’s two hours later and you have the entire map cleared.

Collecting souls throughout the game will unlock new items, potions and even new outfits for the characters. In keeping with the juvenile sexual theme of some of the game, the developers have added a ton of outfits for the female characters. The outfits not only power up the character’s individual stats, but also reveal a ton of skin. There is even a movie sequence showing the girls changing whenever you put a new outfit on them. This part of the game is kind of weird, but in a lot of ways adds to the quirky charm of the game.

Surprisingly enough, for as low budget as the visuals in the game look, the sound actually fares pretty well. All of the characters are voiced by professional actors. The vast majority of the storyline cut scenes are all done by in game dialogue and the actors do a fairly competent job, considering that most of their lines are campy. The in game music is also up beat and won’t put the player to sleep.

Players willing to stick with the game will find a lengthy adventure clocking in at well over 50 hours. NIS America is also supporting the title with free content downloads on the PSN.  As I write this review, NIS has already released six free content downloads, including new weapons, items, and even a new dungeon.  If you can look past the subpar graphics and unintuitive controls, then you will find a very deep game that has a ton of customization options. Hard core players will also want to unlock the “true” ending which can only be done by playing on hard mode. In the end, I can’t recommend Cross Edge to everyone, but I can recommend it to people who like deep RPGs and don’t mind a little bit of camp with their story.

Gaming Trend Score

68

1. Graphics: 50
2. Audio: 85
3. Controls: 20
4. Gameplay: 85
5. Value/Replay: 85
6. OVERALL:68