Cross Edge

5 Responses to “ Cross Edge ”

1. D. A. Theisen
   12/11/2009 at 9:49 pm

   Do you miss the old days of RPGs? Large character rosters, recurring enemies, sprawling worlds, dialogue that makes little sense at best? Good news! Cross Edge is, for better or worse, the most interesting attempt at a re-invention of the oldschool 8 and 16-bit RPGs that I’ve seen in years. It also happens to be one of the most addicting, complex but sometimes downright frustrating titles to roll onto a console in recent memory. Let it be said in advance that, despite my scoring a 7 of 10, this is certainly the most fun and most I’ve played any title with such a score. There’s a lot to love here, but a lot of it happens to be flawed as well.

   To say Cross Edge, from Nippon Ichi Software (best known for the Disgaea series), appears to be a niche title is an understatement. Not only does it meet 100% of the qualifications of the infamous JRPG formula, but its premise is based on a mashing together of settings and characters from the other titles in the NIS software lineup. In other words, it’s a JRPG made up of JRPGs. Confused yet? Good. Oddly, that’s part of the appeal here. You could think of the Cross Edge running as the Kingdom Hearts series of NIS. The only notable pitfall with this is that sales are a magnitude of 10 lower than the titles that comprise Square-Enix’s set.

   You’ll be starting your adventure in the usual unknown land with mysterious creatures. In no time flat, you’re sucking in new characters to your lineup. A lot of characters, actually. To be precise there are 32 voice actors listed for characters in the end credits, if you’d like some warning as to what’s in store. Whether you known the characters in advance or not, you’ll find them to all have their quirks. This is backed up with all the goofy dialogue you could ever ask for and a character for every RPG stereotype you can think of. The introduction to the game’s combat system and basic mechanics is straightforward and will have you strutting ahead with confidence in your first levels.

   Sadly, you’ll probably be reconsidering that confidence in a hurry, as the learning curve becomes very steep, very fast. By the time all the game features such as item synthesis and upgrading become available you’ll start to get an idea of what you’ve gotten yourself into. Take however insane you think that is and multiply by about 100, and you’ll barely be scratching the surface of everything that’s crammed on to this game. Speaking of said features, they’re accessible at ‘Save Points’ around the map. I only mention the name specifically because, ironically, they’re not where you save your game (you can do this anytime you’re on the open world map), but it is where you do your business including the incredibly important revival of dead characters. Though you can revive them mid-battle, if combat ends with them KO’d you’ll need to pay to have them healed here.

   You certainly don’t need to dive right into synthesis, but it will become a necessary evil as you move along. The usual reaction to this is “can’t I just buy everything at the shop?”. The answer is no, no you can’t. You start out with only a very limited number of things you can buy and the only way to lengthen this list is via crafting it so it will appear for later purchase. Although this doesn’t apply to all items (such as special weapons with unique traits), it does work for all the incredibly important medicines so that you’ll have a constant supply of them if needed. If you’d like a further demonstration of how important synthesis can become, the later gear available to you can only be made using a combination of existing items combined with items dropped from monsters and items you receive from converting your old gear. Yikes. Seriously, I don’t know how to accurately describe it all. The tutorials are acceptable, but no matter what you’re trying to make you’ll be handed a screen loaded from edge-to-edge with numbers representing different stats of the item in question. The frightening thing about this isn’t so much that you’re given this much info, but that all the numbers actually mean something and are something you’ll have to keep track of.

   In case just synthesis wasn’t enough for you, there are also three very important ways to enhance the equipment you already have. Double yikes. One is to use ‘EP’ (one of no less than 8 types of ‘points’ you’ll have to follow) to upgrade items between levels 1 and 5. Generally speaking this is a cheap and effective way to improve your performance, as a level 5 older item will outperform something several tiers higher. Second, you can use some of the items dropped by monsters in combat to supplement the stats of your gear. Each piece of equipment has a certain point balance which dictate how much upgrading you can do via items, and one of the eventual benefits to synthesis is that the point allowance can be much larger if you can create a high-quality item (again, using items dropped from monsters as material). Lastly, equipment has a certain number of slots that you can equip a bonus skill in. These are mostly the RPG-standard things like HP regeneration and attack bonuses, though there are dozens total. Unsurprisingly, these traits are not handed to you either, and it requires upgrading a piece of equipment to level 5 and then “converting” it in order to make it into a skill you can place on something else. Triple yikes.

   The other major feature Save Points is the “Database” menu, which is something quite unique to Cross Edge. Here you can earn extra loot via earning Titles (basically mini-quests or monster hunting), and your discovery of treasure and plot events along the way will unlock costumes for everyone. Equipping a costume will change the stats of your characters in one way or another, either increasing or decreasing certain attributes. If you’d like to keep things simpler, there is at least one generic “add HP and little else” costume for everyone which can make obtaining these rather important. As a very JRPG-ish feature, equipping a costume on a female character changes their appearance on menus and in cutscenes. Thankfully, the most ridiculous of costumes such as swimsuits change stats such that they’re impossible to leave equipped for combat and will keep your perverted mind at least a bit in check.

   Wandering the world map isn’t the standard you’ll see in most other games. Most of note is the random encounter warning device, which is color ranging from blue and green to red when it’s time to fight something. The farther you walk the more the color changes. Although untraditional and nonsensical, it’s actually an awesome feature. Even better, if you deliberately want to fight something during exp grinding or the like, you can force a fight by pressing R1. No longer do you need to spin around in circles waiting for something to smack you in the face. Good times. While walking around you’ll be searching for “Souls” (explained in the storyline), which take the form of treasure for you to collect or mark plot events around the map. One somewhat frustrating thing is that, although a lot of these events are optional, some of them you absolutely must find in order to trigger the next main plot event from appearing on the map. It can get tedious, and you will need to re-search earlier areas for new events and treasure after you move on, but doing this actually eliminates the need for substantial exp grind on normal difficulty. Merely searching should keep your levels up and will earn you Titles for the better rewards.

   Your eventual opinion of the game will most certainly hinge on what you think of the battle system. It could well add or subtract 2 full points on a scale of 10 to a review score, depending on what you make of it. It’s that important. No, wait. It’s that COMPLICATED, I mean. In total seriousness, I have old calculus textbooks that are more straightforward than all the depth of battle here. If you peek at some game screenshots you’ll get some kind of idea, as you’ll note that the character and ability displays take over half the screen. Quadruple yikes. It’ll take you many hours to get used to how all the different bars and arrows and numbers work. This is either a really GOOD thing, or really BAD thing, depending on how you like your RPGs. It makes the game a massive turn-off to new or more casual players, but it is massively rewarding to people who sink their teeth into it.

   In short (lol?), combat is in the tried-and-true method of standing face-to-face with your foes on a flat plain. In a bit of a throwback to the old front row/back row **** each side of the field is split into a 3×4 grid of places you can stand. This is important to use and you must master positioning to be successful in combat. Depending on the character and the ability you’d like to use they have different ranges and lateral distances, so you need to think ahead to where you want to stand. For example, a member with a sword will need to stand in front to hit targets, but even then may not be able to hit the enemy back row. Your magic users need a minimum distance to cast so they’ll have to stand back, but then they might not be able to reach the far targets either. Versus bosses your placement also becomes vital since you want to minimize how many characters the strongest abilities can hit at the same time. It might prevent you from a Game Over, but it makes shifting around for healing more complicated and, uh… sorry. My brain just froze for a second.

   On both sides of battle, combat is run via an AP system. You get a certain number of points per turn based on your equipment, its level, your costume, etc.. With it you have up to 8 abilities per character that will become available, each of which have a different AP cost and range/area effects. Each also has a certain attack ‘type’ (direct, magical, break, etc.), an element attached, a strength designation from I to V, and a skill level you’ll increase from 1 to 10. With alllllll this information in hand, combat revolves around skill combinations. There are over 100 different skill effects (yikes) and each has very different requirement in terms of element/type/level needed to use. The only thing that saves you from this insanity is the “Archaic Tomb” in the game. As you collect bits of it along the way, you can view from the menu (or even while in combat) which combinations you can pull off. They’re coded by color, meaning you can either perform them immediately, or if you swap characters mid-combat, or if you equip different skills, and… wow. Uh. Ok, my brain is really hurting now. The last thing about combat I’ll mention is that there is a very handy Practice Battle feature available from the game menu so you can test out your skills on dummy targets. If you’re bored of the long attack animations, pressing L2 will skip the graphic, and this makes combat a lot more tolerable in repeated encounters and longer battles.

   The storyline? There’s a story? Oh, sorry, my brain was crammed full of combat graphics and numbers and was still overloaded from trying to explain synthesis. But yes there is a storyline, but please don’t expect too much from it. Frankly, it’s pieced together as well as can be expected given the insane scenario. It has characters from so many different games mixed in with all-new ones in a world setup that can only be stretched so far for it to even be theoretically imaginable instead of completely off-the-wall. In a word, it’s “fun”, with some level of character development, and some downright entertaining villains. There are rivalries and romances both amongst and between the ally and enemy forces alike, and there are some quite notable one-liners that’ll keep you laughing. Did I mention there are Prinnies? No? Well, there are! By definition of how the game world is set up, there are only a maximum number of bosses to face and number of times you can fight them, but this is played out well nonetheless. Actually, I’ll expand on the rivalry system. Though it doesn’t change anything about combat, there are a lot of one-on-one arguments with certain foes and you are actually required to use the feuded character in your party for some combat. A minor detail but it’s at least something different. The bickering can get quite grumpy and there are running gags and teasing flying everywhere.

   The variety of characters and villains and how they interact is a major strength in this game, but it is also a substantial pitfall. In the bigger plot scenes, it’s almost as though there was something in the contract with the voice actors to get everyone an equal number of lines. The result is very, very confusing (at best) and incomprehensible (at worse) dialogue split amongst literally 20 different people at times. The optional plot events I mentioned above to help and work on smaller group of characters, but depending on when you discover them they can seem entirely out of place and even some of the main story scenes seem to fall out of the sky and make no sense whatsoever. Unless you take the time to actually process what is said and what’s going on, hours of story can fly by without really having a clue about a thing.

   In closing, I’ll mention how much this game caters to the 100%-clear-perfectionist types. Merely accessing the ‘best’ of the 3 possible endings is a massive amount of work, and as this is the only way to access post-game super-hard content it practically begs repeated plays (which are politely enhanced via the NewGame+ system). Cross Edge has, hands-down, the most ridiculous PSN trophy set put together to-date, and will take the most advanced of players with complete walkthroughs in front of them hundreds upon hundreds of hours to work out. They’re so ridiculous I’m starting to think names of the people insane enough to go for the Platinum should be put up on a billboard. Seriously. It’s just insane.

   There’s a lot of fun to be had here, and I’ve become quite addicted in working toward total completion. So why the meh score? Where the flaws and frustrations are here, they are really hard to get over. The finer points of synthesis and combat feel like flying a 747 as much as playing a game. Deaths are very common and you’ll learn to be saving constantly. Even if you play things very well, instances of bad luck can kill you out of nowhere. Difficulty can be manic, with some tasks seeming impossible. Grind can be absolutely terrible on higher difficulty levels and the process of leveling is tied far too much with how quickly you can kill bosses, as they give more than half your total EXP and you get bonuses (from -50% to +1000%) based on speed. To get at all the features or even all the normal story scenes you MUST have a game guide. Just too many teeth-grinding issues to keep the score up. If the menus could be simplified, items and skills easily referenced, and some of the monster AI tweaked it could go a VERY long way to a better score, but even then the game certainly doesn’t scream out as something truly special. Other reviews of Cross Edge have been incredibly harsh, and I wanted to put together something that at least tried to look from the bottom-up instead of the top-down.
   Rating: 4 / 5
2. Raphael F. M. Mariz
   12/11/2009 at 11:47 pm

   If you are looking for something simple and a little bit funny, this is the right game to you. Its is quite simple sistem, damage is huge and you have a lot of caracters to play with, if you like Overpower characters you will find out in this game with over 5k hit combo and damage up to 999,999,999 you may have some hours of fun.
   Rating: 3 / 5
3. Erdal Ozkul "kibagami"
   12/12/2009 at 1:15 am

   I had great expectations from this title,however,I dont feel satisfied overall.Story is weak, gameplay is really hard and exhausting.Nothing suprising at all;monotone…and after it installs 1.5 gb on hdd,it still loads 3-5 secs after every scene change and etc.
   Rating: 3 / 5
4. J. Mendoza
   12/12/2009 at 2:45 am

   Do you love grinding? How about having 5 different menus just for the items? Or having to figure out how to actually use the several different skills each of the 30 or so characters in the game can learn? And then having to see which of those skills can be combined? Or how about having to learn the best way to synthesize items for the best weapons? And then upgrading said weapons to make them stronger? And then converting said stronger weapons into raw materials to synthesize better weapons and so on and so on?

   Now, you’re probably wondering why I would give the game 4 stars after all that rambling. Simple, really. Because I actually like doing all of that. It’s been a while since I play an RPG that actually makes me work for the victory. The game does have simple graphics, reminiscent of the SNES era, with static images for the cut scenes. You do get to choose between Japanese or English voice overs. The music, as the graphics, is simple, and repetitive. Don’t know why I thought of the old Mega Man games when I first heard the background music…

   The game does have a steep learning curve. If you decide to take the plunge, you’ll be scratching your head for the first few hours trying to figure out the many nuances of the game and possibly checking game forums for help. But in the end, the game is truly something different and enjoyable.

   If you like standard RPG fare, like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, don’t bother with the game. However, if you felt like I did and wanted to experience something new, something that makes you remember why you liked this genre in the first place, then by all means pop in the disc and start playing. You just have to be a little open minded and have a little patience.
   Rating: 4 / 5
5. M.D.C.
   12/12/2009 at 4:35 am

   (UPDATED 6/4) OK.

   I have a confession to make. The fanservice of this game is what drew me to it. I mean, what real RPG’er wouldn’t want a game that mixes the best characters of so many notable games into one great RPG? The chance to see Morrigan from Darkstalkers engage in battle alongside Aurica from Ar Tonelico? To be able to hear the memorable characters from the Disgaea series d00d!

   Unfortunately, fanservice is all the game is. For you, that might be all you need. For me, I was left wanting.

   Some background. Cross Edge feels more like a Disgaea offshoot than anything else. Where it does mix the worlds of Disgea, Ar Tonelico, Darkstalkers, Spectral Souls (an older strategy RPG), Mana Khemia 2 (which we in the US have not received yet) and Atelier Marie (the first in the Atelier series which we in the US never have received). It was released first in Japan of course, and the US received it in the latter part of May with very little advertisement or fanfare. In fact I only found out about the game by way of a general search for RPGs. Truthfully, the PS3 is hurting for good JRPGs, and Cross Edge isn’t going to satisfy your hunger if Disgaea didn’t.

   Let me explain that. Disgaea 3 is a PS2 game on a Blu-ray disc. Period. There was no reason for that game to be a PS3 game instead of a PS2 game. The graphics aren’t that great, there aren’t any anime cutscenes in the game, everything’s voiced but then PS2 can handle that, and while the game is somewhat lengthy and whatnot, it is a testament to the fact that it had no business on a Blu-ray disc. Cross Edge is another such game with such an identity crisis. It doesn’t act like a next gen game, yet is on next-gen media inexplicably.

   The game starts out with York and Miko in a forest. There is no background given, no introduction really, just thrown into the thick of it. You run into Morrigan with very little introduction as well, fight some enemies, then get to do some exploring. You then run into Marie, fight some enemies, then get to do some more exploring. You then run into….

   If it sounds like a broken record, that’s intentional, because it’s apparent from the onset of the game that there was no real planning to how this game came about. They figured they would bank on the fanservice of all of the characters involved and not really put effort into the game itself. I might be able to forgive this if there were some anime cutscenes, but alas, like Albert Odyssey and Ar Tonelico before it, the cover is severely misleading and there is no anime to be had. Just still imagery and voiceovers.

   Disregarding all of this which is admittedly a turnoff, I decide to stick with it, hoping that it was redeemed in some other way. Sadly, the battle engine isn’t it. Someone was definitely an Enchanted Arms fan here, because the battle engine works almost identical to that engine except for the button mapping of skills. Your four characters and your opponents are on separated grids which are horizontal (which is a problem in of itself as you can’t always see your characters or their orientation. More on that later). The object is to take turns to damage your enemy before your characters run out of AP. Instead of standard turn based fighting, Cross Edge uses a derivative of turn based and action based fighting. You map skills to the face buttons on the controller, each of which has a set AP cost. For each character, you can use the skills as you see fit, up to the expenditure of your AP. You can then swap to another character to use their skills in the same fashion. If you’re lucky (or strong enough), you’ll kill the enemy before they have a chance to counter. This of course is rarely the case as you’ll come across enemies who for some reason can make you miss 99% of your strikes. Frequently you’ll find that no matter what you do, you are unable to land all of your hits clean, or if you do, they take such pathetic damage that it’s as if you missed.

   What makes this battle engine truly frustrating is that, instead of some custom mapping for the skills, they are pre-set to certain face buttons. You’ll run into instances where you’ve learned 3-4 skills which can only be used on one button, forcing you to decide instead of being able to map them freely any way you see fit. The game is already linear to a fault; did they really have to force you even further to stick to a structured path? You’re already limited on AP, isn’t that enough?

   Other irritants are simple: things such as functional descriptions. You know how you might highlight a skill, task, or selection and receive a nice description of what it does? Not here. This might seem like nitpicking, but it becomes a problem in battle. Because of the grid-based board that you fight on, it means certain characters are close range, some are far, some are a certain number of squares forward, etc. The game does not tell you in advance about each person’s fighting restrictions. This leads to you effectively guessing as to who should be where on the board. It also makes it extremely difficult to decide who to take in battle with you as you don’t know which characters are best suited for each situation.

   Yet another irritant comes in the form of the controls. You might think that for such a game, the controls are fairly simple, but not here. It’s just too complex to be able to do simple tasks, and the problem comes due to the face button mapping. Most RPGs have accepted that Triangle is the standard for accessing a menu, but not Cross Edge. Here you must press Start. That wouldn’t be a problem, but for the fact that the menu you receive varies depending on the previous action(s) that occurred. For example, if you just did an attack and the counter is still going, you don’t get the full menu. Instead you get two useless (in battle) options that confuse the player. Once the counter is done, you get a full menu, where you can use items…the problem is that even if you meet all of the conditions, you might still not be able to use an item, and the game will not tell you why. I tried to use a Life Fragment, which has an 18 AP requirement. I used Morrigan, who at the time had 24 AP. Would not go. No explanation given. This is a glaring issue, because that type of behavior can get a person killed.

   Yet another irritant (yes, there’s more) is the unbalanced difficulty. Now normally I blast a game that has this condition, and I’m not going to do that here, but trust me, if I did it would be well deserved. The game does everything in its power to make sure you are at a distinct disadvantage at all times. There will never come a time that you will truly dominate your enemy. The store will never have weapons or armor strong enough, maxing out the stuff you do have won’t do any good, and even if you get to a new area, the same stuff is available and nothing even remotely strong enough. The end result is crabs that take three times the damage, bees that get to go three times before you get to go once, and spell masters that will easily knock off half of your magic. Meanwhile your measly weapons barely scratch your enemy, and you’ll end up forced to use one of the magic users, such as Aurica or Misha, to do any notable damage. Of course, the enemy will just target and take them out; not difficult, seeing as their HP is always pathetic.

   I was reading over on IGN (they rated it a 3.5 BTW, which is actually lower comparably speaking than I gave it, and while I agree with the review, I think that score is a bit harsh) about the game, and they noted some things I didn’t even clue in on; there were so many irritants to the game that I just cut it off and sold it. But there’s one thing you definitely should know. If you’re the kind of person, like me, who likes a game to MAKE SENSE…be careful about Cross Edge. There are no real “towns” in the game. You run across these huts and hideouts where your characters sell you weapons and items. Yes, you read that correctly. YOUR CHARACTERS sell you the stuff you need to complete the game. Meaning they already had it. Meaning they should have just given it to you. And as IGN noted, your character (Morrigan) is responsible for reviving; well, if Morrigan is the one that’s dead, she’s then reviving herself. Silly little issues like these just destroy the continuity of the game for me; I know it shouldn’t bother me but it does. If the game doesn’t even make sense, how am I suppose to take it seriously?

   If the game really wanted to stand out, it should have used the best features of each game instead of taking a Disgaea approach to all of the characters. I should be able to use Misha and/or Aurica and/or Shurelia as the singers in the back, with the ability to defend, and build up their songs to do massive damage. I can’t. I should be able to use the attacking style in Ar Tonelico with Lyner’s various skills to destroy my enemy before they can even breathe. I can’t. I should be able to move freely around the battlefield with Morrigan and fire Soul Fireballs at them. I can’t. I should be able to dance around my enemy with Felicia, throwing ridiculous combos. I can’t. Nothing of what makes each of these characters fun is present in the game.

   So…do I recommend it? As a rental? Sure. You might like the game, but personally it’s not that great at all. I give it three stars because of the dialogue, which at times is downright hilarious, especially Prinny (even though there are numerous errors), the fanservice, and the various options such as costumes, titles, and synthesis, which extend the types of things you can do in the game

   I’m not saying it’s downright terrible. I’m saying that:

   (A) This is a PS2 game burned onto Blu-ray. It should have been released as a PS2 game. Why does that matter? For one, my standards wouldn’t be so high.

   (B) The difficulty is severely unbalanced. Maybe you like that. If so, this might appeal to you. Me, I’m not keen on paying $50 to get cheated.

   (C) This was an absolute rush job. There was no sincere effort to make this a great game. All they wanted to do was release something for fans, whether it was garbage or not.

   If you like Disgaea, this game might actually work for you.
   Rating: 3 / 5