CrossCode is Lovely

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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XoPachi
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CrossCode is Lovely

Post by XoPachi »

So I bought this on Switch. This would be my second time purchasing it. I'll be upfront, the PC port is better. Switch port is definitely playable, but it has a lot of strange bugs and hiccups that are sort of annoying. Main one being that if the game is going when the Switch falls asleep, resuming the game causes all sorts of bizarre issues and they actually force a restart. Not a soft lock, you can actually still save and just reload, but...you definitely can't play when that happens. lol
Still, if you absolutely want it on the go, you really can get past them. I sure have.

ANYWAY...

Time to ramble.
I've had this since it first hit it's early access on Steam and holy Christ, this game checks nearly every box for me in terms of action adventure. It's really just an incredible top down Zelda with so many smart design choices. It's a hard game that will make you spend a lot of time figuring things out, but I like that a lot. I like that the temples are these gigantic, sprawling puzzle laden things that take hours. And they end in huge satisfying bosses that are presented wonderfully. Like this first one is so cool.
Spoiler
I can't describe it other than classic Nintendo. They got that feel just right.

One other thing that sticks out, is the combat flow. I think it's approach to farming for items is brilliant. The longer you "chain" fights, the higher your grade goes. If between fights, your "chain" meter begins to decay until you pick the next fight. At anytime, you can cancel the chain, but if you keep the heat up and don't die, you
reach S rank. I don't think there's a name for it, but you basically go into "S mode" where rare trading items just drop wildly from enemies. So it helps curb super low drop rate item grinding while still keeping the spontaneity of rare drops. It helps a lot that combat is reeeaaaally fun. And there's just a ton of stuff to get. SHIT load of quests and side secrets. The game is really packed full of stuff to do but isn't "clear out the draugr from these mines" levels of monotonous.

It's as much an RPG as it is Zelda, but the Zelda elements are what attract me the most and this really was the Zelda game I wanted in 2017. I was elated when Steam recommended it to me around that time. Made me immediately forget about Secrets of Grindea. lol

Can't say I care for the plot and characters oddly enough. Too many hard tropes and there is -no- way to make the MMO isekai shit or whatever anything more than eye rollingly cringey for me. But the game's presentation more than makes it tolerable and the world always stays fun to explore.
I would flip shit if there was a sequel of some kind.

(the CRISPIEST pixel art)
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guigui
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by guigui »

I'm also interested in Crosscode, did you get to finish it ? How does it hold in the long run ?
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Obiwanshinobi
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by Obiwanshinobi »

XoPachi wrote:One other thing that sticks out, is the combat flow. I think it's approach to farming for items is brilliant. The longer you "chain" fights, the higher your grade goes. If between fights, your "chain" meter begins to decay until you pick the next fight. At anytime, you can cancel the chain, but if you keep the heat up and don't die, you
reach S rank. I don't think there's a name for it, but you basically go into "S mode" where rare trading items just drop wildly from enemies. So it helps curb super low drop rate item grinding while still keeping the spontaneity of rare drops.
Your description reminds me of Crimson Tears for PS2. Though it's more "Diablo" than "Zelda", its combat has that hook to it that enemies hit when they are NOT touching the ground drop loot and keep doing so even depleted of HP, for as long as you keep them "airborne". Which leads to some addictively fun combat system abuse. That I did care about characters and story in this one didn't hurt, either.
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floralcateyes
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by floralcateyes »

Loved the game as well but had two main complaints:

1) Played the game when it first came out of Early Access and found it was in that limbo state where there's enough content for a full release but also a lot of obviously unfinished stuff like side quests and whole areas. Of course, I wouldn't have been so bothered by what wasn't there if I wasn't so fond of what was already there.

2) Found the end to be quite unbalanced.
Spoiler
Since the game made them available at that point, I decided to go for the end-game equipment before entering the final area. But that involved grinding enemies with much higher levels than those in the final area. So I ended up steamrolling through the end, having more or less the best equipment in the game and being way overlevelled.
The devs are obviously working hard at that first point, and the second may have been addressed in a patch, idk. But yeah, great game.
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XoPachi
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by XoPachi »

guigui wrote:I'm also interested in Crosscode, did you get to finish it ? How does it hold in the long run ?
I have yet to complete the Switch port which has some content I didn't get to on my PC file, but I was about 50 hours in.
I'd say your enjoyment depends on what you want.
To my absolute shock, it seems most people prefer overworld narrative as opposed to puzzle and combat fueled dungeons in games like this. Crosscode doubles down on it's dungeons even harder than Zelda (not to say they're better because as good as they are, they have some things holding them back). And these dungeons are HARD.
So if that's not your thing, CrossCode might overstay it's welcome. There are some intuitive difficulty sliders that make the game easier, thus making dungeons faster to complete. But they are extremely thorough in making you earn everything you need to complete the dungeon. There's even one dungeon that is actually *three* full size dungeons that have to be completed back to back with a ridiculous boss at the end of it all.

If you ask me, everything mostly stays fun. The only thing I can imagine getting old is anything involving plants.
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ED-057
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

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This is a twin stick game. I don't do twin stick games. My brain is not wired for it. When I was a kid, you had a d-pad and two buttons. Remember how NES Smash TV would allow a single player run with one controller in each hand? I would play this with my brother in a cooperative arrangement where one of us was in charge of movement and the other was the gunner. We did BETTER that way. And moving and shooting were the only things to be done in Smash TV. Crosscode on the other hand, somehow expects you to run, jump, guard, shoot, and slash at the same time. Totally impossible.

Just thought this crucial piece of information should be mentioned, in case anyone else who never learned to speak twin stick was considering this game.
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XoPachi
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

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ED-057 wrote:This is a twin stick game. I don't do twin stick games. My brain is not wired for it. When I was a kid, you had a d-pad and two buttons. Remember how NES Smash TV would allow a single player run with one controller in each hand? I would play this with my brother in a cooperative arrangement where one of us was in charge of movement and the other was the gunner. We did BETTER that way. And moving and shooting were the only things to be done in Smash TV. Crosscode on the other hand, somehow expects you to run, jump, guard, shoot, and slash at the same time. Totally impossible.

Just thought this crucial piece of information should be mentioned, in case anyone else who never learned to speak twin stick was considering this game.
...................................
Ok so...

1) Running is such a default natural thing in games it doesn't even need to be mentioned. You talk like there's some Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man Zero tier do-or-die platforming going on. There isn't. You run to the edge of a cliff and Lea jumps automatically. If you fall into a hazard, nothing happens. During combat, you don't need to run around a ton.

2) You do not jump in this game. Not manually. And certainly not during combat.

3) Yes, you shield if you so choose to build for a defensive playstyle. You don't have to. I don't.

4) Melee combat is as simple as hitting one button repeatedly.

5) Yes, the ranged combat, I GUESS, effectively makes it a twin stick game...sort of. It's a pivotal gimmick in it's design and is primarily used for it's difficult puzzle solving. But it's no different from action games that allow melee combat and a ranged option. Enemies are balanced to not be unclear when you can shoot at them and most of the time you can switch how you want to engage. If you can play WarFrame, PSO2 or any game that asks you to switch between melee and ranged at any point CrossCode is nothing new.

6) ""Impossible""
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I'm not even addressing the rest of whatever...that was.
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TransatlanticFoe
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

I knew there was a topic for this game! Been playing through seeing as it's on Gamepass, would have added it to my backlog on Switch if not though. It's mostly fun but has a few issues.

It's a very charmingly presented game. The pixel art style is well crafted, particularly in some character portraits and enemies (the meerkats with headphones are a personal highlight). While the setting relies on meta humour, it's carried on the strength of its character interactions, personalities and some genuinely touching moments. There are also a few fun little side moments, like an optional quest being locked behind (almost) the Konami code and a recurring character who likes to sit on tables. It pokes fun at MMOs, hackers, elitist gatekeeping and casual gamers. Frankly it's worth playing for the characters and their interactions alone, they're all well written and your main character being (plot related) locked to a handful of words throws up some great moments - including NPCs responding to her saying her own name as though she's given a detailed description!

The story is a bit slow to unravel at first, to the point where you're often racing around exploring and completing side quests without a care for what's supposed to be happening - because what's supposed to be happening is "do the main questline of this future MMO reality" which turns out to be a cliched (that's the joke) but doesn't make for an especially engaging plot early on. However it counters this by making exploration a joy as you zip around environments discovering the area map, uncovering secrets and bashing open plants (for science, it's tied to a story-long side quest). Most enemies won't attack on sight so you can explore if you're underlevelled or just want to zip through an area to get somewhere.

Combat is an odd but satisfying hybrid of twin stick shooter and top-down melee, with elemental attacks and skills opening up along the way. It does a good job of letting you customise your dominant playstyle - you can focus on ranged attacks, tanking damage, agility, all sorts. A minor downer is the game leans heavily on providing temporary buff items as rewards and not equipment, with most decent equipment tied to trade shops - which unfortunately often have frustratingly rare or high level requirements so that, by the time you have the necessary items you've found something as good elsewhere.

The bad though...

The game does a really poor job of conveying planes and could do with being a bit more lenient in traversal. It's frustrating to miss a jump that looks fine but is actually on a higher plane, sure you can fire off a few projectiles to test it but the game makes such a buzz out of traversal being fluid and fast 90% of the time. There are also jumps that need to be deliberately made shorter and it's often too fiddly for no real reason - which gets frustrating in timed puzzles when you screw up on a fiddly jump.

While the overworld is mostly traversal puzzles and combat, dungeons are very puzzle heavy. While they're often satisfying to work out, later in the game they become an exercise in trial and error due to a few obtuse mechanics coming in. Only once have I gone into a room and just stand there with no idea how to proceed, even after looking up the solution it didn't make much sense. Too often are the timings and aimings just too precise to be enjoyable, I think the devs went a bit overboard on the puzzle aspect - I'd have certainly enjoyed a few more puzzles that span multiple rooms (as in A Link to the Past) but are a bit clearer in their end result. Unfortunately this all bites early on then eases up, as the first dungeon requires a load of keys from all corners of its map and once you're down to the last one or two it's all backtracking to find what you missed - later dungeons are more sensibly put together.

Worse though is where puzzles are integrated into combat. I had one optional boss fight where I had no idea how I was supposed to damage its final form, with all the bouncing projectiles it had set me up to do - so I cheesed it with some ability I had fortunately unlocked. Having to line up fiddly aiming while stuff attacks you, just so you can land a blow on enemies outright isn't enjoyable. It doesn't happen often enough to be a huge downer but it often happens in dungeons, where you're just being worn down with puzzle after puzzle anyway. It's frustrating when you run rings around an enemy but are struggling to work out how to get it into a damagable state because there just isn't time to try anything out before you have to go on the defensive again.

I don't normally go in for these retro-styled indie games but this is definitely worth a look. I'm halfway through the penultimate chapter, would give it a solid 8/10.
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Squire Grooktook
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by Squire Grooktook »

Picked this up a while back and was enjoying it before being sidetracked by other things. Was definitely enjoying the top down mix of shooting and melee combat (always a good thing), the huge game world, and the general loving presentation of the whole thing. Felt like a surprisingly ambitious little title for what it is.

Was probably just me, but I kind of slightly lost interest due to a certain feeling of directionlessness while exploring and seeking out the next objective. Do need to give it another shot though.
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TransatlanticFoe
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

Yeah there are a couple of moments where the game doesn't give you a quest for the next thing you're meant to do - so if you wander off or save and come back a few days later, it's easy to forget that someone told you to meet at the quest hub, the guild HQ or a fountain somewhere.
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XoPachi
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by XoPachi »

Yeah, sometimes the planes can be a bit ambiguous. I know I've flubbed a jump after a fairly winding path and just threw my head back. lmao
If you're having issue with puzzles, there are difficulty sliders that directly state they slow the timings on them. I haven't tried them, but it might be a good idea to test them for yourself and see if that helps you.
Personally, I like the gratuitous puzzles. It's like a Master Quest for some non existent Zelda entry. I've made it known here, but I *adore* older Zelda particularly for the temples and dungeons. So games that get serious about it make me happy. I love getting stumped and having to think a bit harder to progress.
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by floralcateyes »

XoPachi wrote:Personally, I like the gratuitous puzzles. It's like a Master Quest for some non existent Zelda entry. I've made it known here, but I *adore* older Zelda particularly for the temples and dungeons. So games that get serious about it make me happy. I love getting stumped and having to think a bit harder to progress.
I found the puzzles to be more performance than solution based. Didn't take me too long to figure out what needs to be done in a given puzzle; usually took longer to actually perform the solution. As TransatlanticFoe said, the timings can be strict. But I enjoyed that aspect as well. Felt like a choreographed fight without any enemies, if that makes sense.

Tangentially, have you tried the Ittle Dew series? Made as a just satisfactory homage/knock-off of top-down Zelda games (title's an admission that while it might not be mind-blowing, "it'll do"). But the two games are teeming with puzzles, some of which can get quite devious. First game even has extra-tricky puzzles for if you want to challenge the final boss without first getting all the items/abilities.

Back on topic: been waiting for more than two years to replay this. For longer than I've known what a shmup is lol. Just waiting for that DLC to drop.
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by Sturmvogel Prime »

I'm not into RPG's (being Terranigma and Zelda: A Link to the Past the only exceptions) but I've managed to finish this game all the way to the end.

While I applaud the Terranigma-like gameplay (feels more like that than a Zelda game which is commonly compared with), some of the puzzles were enraging, especially those of the last dungeons. Maybe is just i'm not an expert of speed-based puzzles, but the battles were well made and the overall lore is amazing. For an indie game feels like something you'll see on late SNES/PS1 titles when it comes to graphics and sounds
The battle theme is my favorite of the whole game 'cos it reminds me of shmups like Ginga Force and Gridseeker.

BTW, is just me or Lea looks like a personification of the Styx from Thunder Force III?
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TransatlanticFoe
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

I feel the difficulty sliders should be more an accessiblity thing than a workaround for annoying design. Figuring out the puzzle is the fun part, gradually stepping through it from the beginning over and over because your timing is slightly off or a bounce isn't dead on... nah that gets tiring. I don't think they got the balance right.

Gave up on one side quest because it dumped me into the most ludicrous boss fight, hardly surprising the meta game refers to it as breaking boss design guidelines. Takes an age to damage, and fires off attacks which require precision chained dodges and will hit repeatedly if you slip up. I assume I need to tweak my character build for dodging but I feel that's classic post-game RPG stuff. Also I have no idea how to get back to the area after leaving it anyway.

Just started the final dungeon, will see quite how crazy it gets. Wondering if it can top the ape riding a whale!
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guigui
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by guigui »

Bought this game on Switch, 40% sale for 2021 Christmas is pretty good.

I'm at the very beginning, just reached Bergen trail. Currently enjoying it, there seems to be a lot of progression possible. Quick questions for you veterans out there :

1) Are traders scattered all around the world actually worth it ? From what I see now you can buy a lot of very precise stuff from them, but I'm not sure if, for instance, the equipment you can get are worth the investment, compared to equipments you can buy in regular shop or find in chests.

2) What is this "infinite dodge" I keep reading about ? To me it looks like I can chain as many dodges as I want w/o having to wait for recharge.

3) Do you unlock a higher jump ability at some point in the game ? For now I'm not sure if I should try to make my way to areas apparently out of reach, or if I should just wait to get the correct ability to reach them.

4) Skill/circuit tree : do you get enough points in the game to unlock about everything ? Or gotta specialize on a branch ?

I can also use general tips on the best skills to use early on, or general spoiler free tips for beginners.
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XoPachi
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Re: CrossCode is Lovely

Post by XoPachi »

guigui wrote:Bought this game on Switch, 40% sale for 2021 Christmas is pretty good.

I'm at the very beginning, just reached Bergen trail. Currently enjoying it, there seems to be a lot of progression possible. Quick questions for you veterans out there :

1) Are traders scattered all around the world actually worth it ? From what I see now you can buy a lot of very precise stuff from them, but I'm not sure if, for instance, the equipment you can get are worth the investment, compared to equipments you can buy in regular shop or find in chests.

2) What is this "infinite dodge" I keep reading about ? To me it looks like I can chain as many dodges as I want w/o having to wait for recharge.

3) Do you unlock a higher jump ability at some point in the game ? For now I'm not sure if I should try to make my way to areas apparently out of reach, or if I should just wait to get the correct ability to reach them.

4) Skill/circuit tree : do you get enough points in the game to unlock about everything ? Or gotta specialize on a branch ?

I can also use general tips on the best skills to use early on, or general spoiler free tips for beginners.
Later on, traders wont ever be imperative but the stuff the end game ones offer are extremely powerful. Particularly at the arena.

I think Infinite Dodge refers to using the dash and holding it just long enough to extend your shield then repressing the button the moment it does. Its actually pretty easy. There *is* cool down on the dash if you mash it. Lea will briefly pause after three in ssuccession and if you keep trying to mash she wont go anywhere. I assume the Infinite Dodge refers to the more rhythmic one I explained that sidesteps this cooldown.
The triple dodge/dash is fairly fast but the Infinite is more consistent speed.
(Aside note but you get more damage and quicker meter build extending your normals with short dashes between finishers)

Theres no movement upgrades in this game. Everything that seems out of reach is part of an enviroment puzzle. You can reach everything with her movement but later areas will involve multi room navigation to find the start of the sequence and and next step. It can be tricky but keep an eye out for steps corners, ledges, suspicious spires, and any higher tiered landscapes that clearly lead into loading zone gates.
There will be things gated off to sphere elements though.
You should be able to get everything but you will have to grind. Though you cant use everything because some branches fork into 2 and you can only use one path at a time.

And general tips, personally I just went for melee and sphere damage. Guarding is HIGHLY valuable and elements really can fuck you in this game so it might be worth speccing into those defenses. Any skill that reduces elemental overheat is a must.
And this games puzzles get mindbendingly brutal so prepare yourself to really be stumped and experimenting for a while in some temples. Dungeons are refreshingly long so I hope you have patience.
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