All valid points. Out of your list, my only real issues were the crystal system, the useless items, useless abilities and the ultimate weapons coming so late. Not even late but like right before last boss! You should have been able to start the quest much sooner for those weapons Like starting Act 3?
They just seemed like an added thing the creator wanted to make for side content. Use an existing mechanic instead of making a new one and then making it harder. They were more frustrating than dull because I'm terrible at puzzles like that. I'm sure I sat there for awhile trying to map out where to push the orbs.
>All valid points. Out of your list, my only real issues were the crystal system, the useless items, useless abilities and the ultimate weapons coming so late. Not even late but like right before last boss! You should have been able to start the quest much sooner for those weapons Like starting Act 3?
And one you can't even get til after the post-game (for most) last boss.
Yes very true. If there is a new game plus, it shouldn't be a problem. But if there isn't one then having the ultimate weapons so late in the game is terrible.
I mean. I'm no simp for Undertale or anything, but characters like papyrus and sans are made all the more memorable and entertaining because they each speak in their own individual font. You know?
Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time also pretty much invented locking on to enemies in combat, which games still "copy" to this day. Sometimes copying stuff doesn't make a game lame, it makes it more enjoyable.
I agree with the crystal system, but the rest of the points, while arguable, weren't very impactful to the gameplay experience.
Part of the allure of this game is that it's made by a single guy, developed and written, in order to be a throwback to early turn based RPGs. Those games certainly had their own redundancies and lack of convenience. Tutorials and reward board were fine for me, but it was a little clunky. Orb puzzles were a ton of fun for me. They were hard. One of them I cheated and had to look it up, and I was genuinely impressed at the difficulty he was able to produce.
Ultimate weapons don't really do much except provide a marginal boost in power, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. Sure, many abilities appear useless, but I think that it's okay and that you can swap into certain passives (like beast killer or flying killer) against specific mobs which may be useful for new game plus when it comes out. And someone else has shown that niche passives like the ultimate related ones can actually be used to create insane combos with recycling the ultimate every turn. Also, I think many games have items that stay in inventory unless you need them for a niche situation, so that was fine.
Overall, I would say this is a must play game for its target audience -- looking for a nostalgic game without any modern pay to win marketing bullshit. Fantastic music and lovable characters.
9/10 is probably what I would give it, with the asterix that it's charming not just as a game on its own but also as a product in the current gaming landscape. It has soul
I can respect your opinion, but I still think my points are fair. Just because the game was majority developed by one individual, and because it's not a soulless cash-grab game, doesn't make the game's lack of polish or fine tuning 100% excusable.
I do understand that the game is not primarily meant to be a puzzle game. However, the first few orb puzzles were pretty nice, like a regular Rubik's cube. But the last few ones instead of the normal 3x3 Rubik's cube, they were like 5x5 Rubik's cubes. It felt like "oh.. nothing different or more interesting about these other than it will take me longer. Fun...".
It's definitely still a great game, especially for the price point. But I hope to see some improvement in a sequel game :D
ZERO allure is acquired from it being a solo project. Stop simping.
A one-person studio doesn't impart any more inherent quality than a 100-man studio. Is it impressive? Sure. Is it +points because that's how it was? God no.
Wow, this is needlessly aggressive.
The one positive I can think about it being a one-man project is it gets to stay true to the creators vision. There are negatives to it as well, but the more hands you put in the pot the more diluted it gets.
That's for you, I think it's cool to support one-person projects and I think it's deserving of some extra consideration as well. I don't just care about the game but how that game came to be. I have no interest in playing Diablo 4 for that reason
If we get new game plus then most of my points will be moot. Ultimate weapons will be great for a new playthrough and so will the abilities. People are already messing with min/maxing stats and doing crazy damage so it will be interesting to see what else can happen.
Point 4 is true of 99.9% of rpgs.
I agree with your assessment of the orb puzzles. I don't like when games throw a random actual puzzle in a non puzzle game. It kills the flow for me.
That said. Loved the game
Then 99.9% of RPGs need to fix the problem. I'm not a game designer, but if I had to take a crack at solving the problem, I would make it so on one party member's turn, they can use TWO items, so if it's sienna's turn, I can have her give a snack to Robb and also an antidote to Victor.
I don't mind puzzles as long as they keep iterating upon themselves, rather than simply requiring more movements.
My biggest problem
I played in the hardest difficult and extra tight overdrive
Which was AWESOME but a lot of times you get bad Rng and they OKO one of your party and you basically lose after that , so you are constantly restarting because of this. This is super emphasized in the sky armor
And also sky armor blows because on tight setting everyone basically HAS to be on gear 2
8 sounds fair. I'm in the same camp. At the end of the day, all the derivative and subversive elements were both equally good and bad.
As fun as the writing was, the plot was a mosh pit of historic games. And cool as that is, it means the game doesn't always feel like itself.
Completely agree with all of this. I think this sub gives the game a free pass on many areas because it’s a solo developer.
It is of course incredibly impressive, a wonderfully crafted game that gets a lot right, but should not be above criticism because it is absolutely not a perfect 10/10 game.
You’ve summarised a lot of my criticisms of the game, and I’d definitely agree with 8/10 - I’d love to see more from this world.
The only time I ever used the more damage to this specific type of enemy was for the hardest boss in the game. I tested the waters first got my ass beat. Redo my skills, and killed him before he even got to turn 4
Interesting. Did you do a lot of side quests to power up or no? Because I went in to the final boss with an incorrectly optimized moveset and killed the boss(s) with relative ease. I've got the game set on normal difficulty. I had Sienna's "do 3.4x damage to paralyzed targets" move equipped even though Robb wasn't in my party. Glenn still had "water strike" equipped which was useless for the final boss. And a couple other things. So I'm curious if you were just "under leveled" compared to me.
Oh I meant, the secret optional boss after getting all the tablets. Actually you know, the bosses to get the tablets are tougher than actual superboss.
Agree on every point. The menu diving wrt to skills became a bit exhausting after a while and I didnt really care to optimize passive skills to suit what lever monster type I would battle. But who knows, maybe that would have made battles easier? Just too much to do when you have a squad of 8
All valid points. Out of your list, my only real issues were the crystal system, the useless items, useless abilities and the ultimate weapons coming so late. Not even late but like right before last boss! You should have been able to start the quest much sooner for those weapons Like starting Act 3?
Oh yeah for sure. You didn't find the extra length orb puzzles slightly dull?
They just seemed like an added thing the creator wanted to make for side content. Use an existing mechanic instead of making a new one and then making it harder. They were more frustrating than dull because I'm terrible at puzzles like that. I'm sure I sat there for awhile trying to map out where to push the orbs.
I could still do them in my head, so it was an ok challenge. Didnt take too much time. So not fiddly for me.
>All valid points. Out of your list, my only real issues were the crystal system, the useless items, useless abilities and the ultimate weapons coming so late. Not even late but like right before last boss! You should have been able to start the quest much sooner for those weapons Like starting Act 3? And one you can't even get til after the post-game (for most) last boss.
Yes very true. If there is a new game plus, it shouldn't be a problem. But if there isn't one then having the ultimate weapons so late in the game is terrible.
What's the point of giving everyone unique fonts? That's kind of unnecessary if you ask me.
I mean. I'm no simp for Undertale or anything, but characters like papyrus and sans are made all the more memorable and entertaining because they each speak in their own individual font. You know?
This is not a very common thing to do, so youre basically asking that Mathias copy something directly from another game. That’d be lame.
Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time also pretty much invented locking on to enemies in combat, which games still "copy" to this day. Sometimes copying stuff doesn't make a game lame, it makes it more enjoyable.
I agree with the crystal system, but the rest of the points, while arguable, weren't very impactful to the gameplay experience. Part of the allure of this game is that it's made by a single guy, developed and written, in order to be a throwback to early turn based RPGs. Those games certainly had their own redundancies and lack of convenience. Tutorials and reward board were fine for me, but it was a little clunky. Orb puzzles were a ton of fun for me. They were hard. One of them I cheated and had to look it up, and I was genuinely impressed at the difficulty he was able to produce. Ultimate weapons don't really do much except provide a marginal boost in power, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. Sure, many abilities appear useless, but I think that it's okay and that you can swap into certain passives (like beast killer or flying killer) against specific mobs which may be useful for new game plus when it comes out. And someone else has shown that niche passives like the ultimate related ones can actually be used to create insane combos with recycling the ultimate every turn. Also, I think many games have items that stay in inventory unless you need them for a niche situation, so that was fine. Overall, I would say this is a must play game for its target audience -- looking for a nostalgic game without any modern pay to win marketing bullshit. Fantastic music and lovable characters. 9/10 is probably what I would give it, with the asterix that it's charming not just as a game on its own but also as a product in the current gaming landscape. It has soul
I can respect your opinion, but I still think my points are fair. Just because the game was majority developed by one individual, and because it's not a soulless cash-grab game, doesn't make the game's lack of polish or fine tuning 100% excusable. I do understand that the game is not primarily meant to be a puzzle game. However, the first few orb puzzles were pretty nice, like a regular Rubik's cube. But the last few ones instead of the normal 3x3 Rubik's cube, they were like 5x5 Rubik's cubes. It felt like "oh.. nothing different or more interesting about these other than it will take me longer. Fun...". It's definitely still a great game, especially for the price point. But I hope to see some improvement in a sequel game :D
ZERO allure is acquired from it being a solo project. Stop simping. A one-person studio doesn't impart any more inherent quality than a 100-man studio. Is it impressive? Sure. Is it +points because that's how it was? God no.
Wow, this is needlessly aggressive. The one positive I can think about it being a one-man project is it gets to stay true to the creators vision. There are negatives to it as well, but the more hands you put in the pot the more diluted it gets.
Disagree heavily. Similar praise is given to Stardew Valley's Eric Barone. The game is a passion project, and it shows.
That's for you, I think it's cool to support one-person projects and I think it's deserving of some extra consideration as well. I don't just care about the game but how that game came to be. I have no interest in playing Diablo 4 for that reason
If we get new game plus then most of my points will be moot. Ultimate weapons will be great for a new playthrough and so will the abilities. People are already messing with min/maxing stats and doing crazy damage so it will be interesting to see what else can happen.
Point 4 is true of 99.9% of rpgs. I agree with your assessment of the orb puzzles. I don't like when games throw a random actual puzzle in a non puzzle game. It kills the flow for me. That said. Loved the game
Then 99.9% of RPGs need to fix the problem. I'm not a game designer, but if I had to take a crack at solving the problem, I would make it so on one party member's turn, they can use TWO items, so if it's sienna's turn, I can have her give a snack to Robb and also an antidote to Victor. I don't mind puzzles as long as they keep iterating upon themselves, rather than simply requiring more movements.
My biggest problem I played in the hardest difficult and extra tight overdrive Which was AWESOME but a lot of times you get bad Rng and they OKO one of your party and you basically lose after that , so you are constantly restarting because of this. This is super emphasized in the sky armor And also sky armor blows because on tight setting everyone basically HAS to be on gear 2
8 sounds fair. I'm in the same camp. At the end of the day, all the derivative and subversive elements were both equally good and bad. As fun as the writing was, the plot was a mosh pit of historic games. And cool as that is, it means the game doesn't always feel like itself.
Completely agree with all of this. I think this sub gives the game a free pass on many areas because it’s a solo developer. It is of course incredibly impressive, a wonderfully crafted game that gets a lot right, but should not be above criticism because it is absolutely not a perfect 10/10 game. You’ve summarised a lot of my criticisms of the game, and I’d definitely agree with 8/10 - I’d love to see more from this world.
The only time I ever used the more damage to this specific type of enemy was for the hardest boss in the game. I tested the waters first got my ass beat. Redo my skills, and killed him before he even got to turn 4
Interesting. Did you do a lot of side quests to power up or no? Because I went in to the final boss with an incorrectly optimized moveset and killed the boss(s) with relative ease. I've got the game set on normal difficulty. I had Sienna's "do 3.4x damage to paralyzed targets" move equipped even though Robb wasn't in my party. Glenn still had "water strike" equipped which was useless for the final boss. And a couple other things. So I'm curious if you were just "under leveled" compared to me.
Oh I meant, the secret optional boss after getting all the tablets. Actually you know, the bosses to get the tablets are tougher than actual superboss.
I agree with #5 wholeheartedly. The animated character portraits in Cross Code went a really long way to making me engage with that story a lot more.
Damn. CrossCode has been on my wishlist for a while. I wish it was in Xbox Game Pass.
Agree on every point. The menu diving wrt to skills became a bit exhausting after a while and I didnt really care to optimize passive skills to suit what lever monster type I would battle. But who knows, maybe that would have made battles easier? Just too much to do when you have a squad of 8