I have such complicated feelings about this game because on a surface level, it ticks all the boxes. Pixel art, action RPG mechanics, deep and engrossing story, compelling skill tree progression, etc. But by the time I was about halfway through, I could not wait for this game to be over. I think CrossCode was made by and for people with more patience and skill than I have, because for all the thought that was put into all the gameplay mechanics, I just found the game more and more infuriating and not fun the further I progressed.

The dungeons don't merely wear out their welcome. They are the guests that stay too long, eat all your food and leave their rubbish everywhere. The dungeons are INTERMINABLE. So many endless rooms of extremely finicky puzzles, trying to aim quickly and jump accurately and failing while racing against unforgiving timers. I would sometimes spend 1-2 hours in these things only to find I was halfway done. It's exhausting.

The combat has great ideas, brought down by irritating enemy design and pointless limitations. I got so sick of creatures bum-rushing me and interrupting my shots; aiming is already annoying enough without getting constantly knocked back and having to set up the shot again. The elemental overload mechanic is a useless, pointless, irritating constraint that sucks most of the fun out of using elemental skills, and does nothing but waste time during fights where you need to be constantly swapping elements. By Chapter 7 I had turned the damage slider all the way down because combat was making me so angry that I just wanted it over as quickly as possible.

I like the story hooks of CrossCode; I enjoy the way the game-within-a-game setting allows for some really fun metatextual references and jokes. But man, did I ever hate some of these characters. Roughly half of them are the kinds of people I used to avoid like the plague when I played MMOs, the sort of overbearing, overly competitive, abrasive personalities that I tried to minimise interaction with at all costs. Emilie is the worst offender in this regard. I spent the whole game wishing there were an option to unfriend her.

And (minor spoiler in this paragraph) I really hated the stuff with the main character's speech module malfunction. You learn at the outset of the game that your character cannot speak but for a few words, and the reasons for this are explained as the story progresses, but it is never fixed or resolved, and in my opinion the story suffers for the main character's inability to explain what is going on. There are a bunch of misunderstandings and awkward situations that arise because of this, that in the end only served to make me dislike the characters more. and as the game wore on I eventually started skipping all nonessential story dialogue because I was just so tired of looking at Lea's dopey facial expressions accompanied by "Lea! Hi! Wait! Sorry! Bye!"

That said, there are some really nice resolutions between the characters at the end of the story that I enjoyed and appreciated.

Oh and one more thing. Pixel artists, PLEASE. If you're going to create 16-bit style maps that allow us to run and jump all around cliffs and platforms, then you've really got to do SOMEthing that makes it more obvious where platforms are in relation to one another. It is so tedious to have to repeat areas multiple times because there is no way of knowing that the ledge I'm jumping to was higher than the one I was on. This happened CONSTANTLY. I'm a child of the '80s. I love pixel art; it's my childhood. But it needs to be done better than this.

Like I said earlier, I think this game for me is just a matter of unmet expectations and a skill and patience requirement that I do not have. Obviously many people love this game, and it's quite likely that you will too. I'm just glad I saw it through to the end, and now I can uninstall it and not think about it anymore.

玩之前非常期待的知名类塞，玩之后稍稍微微有些失望

我是冲着解谜和探索来的，购入前翻了翻差评看到基本都在说解谜太多更加坚定了购入的信心。但本作在这两点上没有特别达到我的高预期，解密部分虽然有着一些高光时刻，但好多谜题只给我留下了卡timing的印象，没什么意思，探索部分更是基本都是各种试图找到一个能往高处挪的地方，然后绕地图（我是跳跳乐爱好者，但其他评测提到的本作中的跳跳乐完全不是普通的精确平台跳跃，没有任何跳跃的乐趣只是单纯的绕地图找路）缺乏惊喜。本作的战斗也差强人意，boss战还算有趣，战斗手感也算不错，但是小怪战太多太频繁了，小怪也微妙的重复导致感觉像1级打小龙虾，50级打黄金黑暗龙虾。总得来说，本作游戏性部分各个方面都还行但不算突出。

但本作量大管饱，像素美术也好不错，缺点也只是因为我期待过高，所以总体还是推荐

这游戏是第一个教学关卡给我玩力竭的游戏，原本以为教学关放这么多解密是想让玩家提前了解下解密机制。

但我是真没想到后面真有这么多解密啊？野外地图和城镇地图解密多到我头皮发麻，而且它这个任务系统没有明确指引。讲真的玩的很累，退出游戏后我就不太想打开了。

游戏让我感兴趣的点就是战斗很流畅，以及它的像素画风了=。=