QCF: Project X Zone

he video Game Crossover is definitely nothing new. Much like many comic and cartoon series have in the past, quite a number crossovers have been mashed together over the last three decades or so in North America, including notable entries such as Battletoads & Double Dragon, Aliens Vs. Predator, Capcom Vs. SNK, and of course, Super Smash Bros. But in Japan, the sheer amount of crossovers is kind of mind-numbing. Perhaps the greatest crossover series ever is Bandai and Banpresto's Super Robot Wars (oddly titled in its original Japanese name for releases in North America, despite Japanese stickers on merchandise reading “SRW”). Super Robot Wars collects a simply ridiculous amount of giant robot anime series together and crossses them over in a hugely deep strategy RPG setting. So it's no surprise that Banpresto was the one to collect over 50 different characters together in Namco Bandai's Project X Zone (pronounced Cross Zone) on Nintendo's 3DS.

Project X Zone is a Strategy RPG that massively crosses over many different video game series from three main players: Namco-Bandai, Capcom and Sega. There are all kinds of surprising entries here, with a vast catalog of games present: Street fighter to Dead Rising, Virtua Fighter to Fantasy Zone, .Hack to Endless Frontier, and even original characters from other Banpresto crossover games like Namco X Capcom, the select characters from the many games they originte from is sure to please fans of any one of these Japanese megadevelopers.

The core gameplay of Project X Zone contains features found in your typical Strategy RPG. You can move your units around the stage turn by turn, along a specified grid. When enemy units are within attacking range you can engage them to decrease their health, and hopefully, destroy them. However, there are some neat twists to this very standard formula.

First off, core units are teams of two. These teams can sometimes be characters from the same game but can also be crossed over between series as well, as is the case with pairs like Dante and Dimitri or Morrigan and Chun-Li. Having the two characters is an interesting dynamic when it comes to the battle system, which is heavily timing-based and requires a bit of fooling around to really get a feel for all of the different attacks in order to maximize the damage you'll inflict. It actually feels like a light fighting game in this respect, with a number of moves mapped to combinations of directional buttons and the action button. As far as Strategy RPGs go, it feels pretty fresh this way, and keeps the action going fairly smoothly. If you can complete attacks with every different combo, you can even get free hits for the extra damage that can sometimes be needed to off an opponent in a single battle.

But it goes even further than this: There are also solo characters which can also be assigned to the two-person teams to assist and boos the damage in battle. In addition, if another team is within range, they too can be called into the melee. All hell breaks loose almost every time and it's pretty darn satisfying.

While all of the action happens, an XP gauge will be build on the bottom of the screen every time you or your opponent takes damage. This XP gauge can be used for countering, defending, using special techniques to boost movement, or attack range healing or stat buffing. But most importantly, it enables special super attacks at 100 percent. These moves are super slick, detailed, well-animated, often fanservice-y to the max, and can inflict ridiculous amounts of damage prefect for destroying boss characters. At 100 percent, group attacks designed to take out multiple units can also be engaged by units that have obtained them.

Of course, there are always conditions for loss, like losing specific characters in specific missions, not doing something within a certain amount of turns, and so on. But with as many units as you will have in every match, despite there being reams and reams of enemy units, it almost feels like you're never unfairly matched.

However, all of this kind of makes Project X Zone really, really easy. To date, I've only seen the game over screen once, and that was because I was barely engaged in a cakewalk challenge. As a result, the opponent KO'd one of my specific characters.

As far as the presentation goes, all of the 2D elements here are pretty great, especially when the super attacks are engaged. Same goes for the music, which brought back waves upon waves of nostalgia and warm fuzzies when themes like those from Ghouls and Ghosts (Dai Makai Mura), Rival Schools, Fighting Vipers, and The Misadventures of Tronne Bonne started to play.

It's also pretty awesome to have characters from not only different games and publishers, but completely different generations interact with each other in battle. The conversations can get pretty great, as was evidenced by the banter between Bruno of Dynamite Cop (aka Dynamite Deka) and Frank West of Dead Rising. Project X Zone blends all of these different franchises together in a way that works, even if the nonsensical story that brings them together is flimsier than tissue paper. Some of the mission titles are pretty great though, such as “The Further Misadventures of Tronne Bonne”, for example.

I'm not going to sugar coat this review, though; Project X Zone is a very shallow, easy game which, basically, is a Strategy RPG that core Fighting game players will be able to conquer, and a fighting game that core Strategy RPG players can defeat. The main prerequisite is that you dig crossovers, because really, the character interaction in battle, not to mention the cheesecake-laden fanservice, is actually the main draw here. With everything from Virtua Fighter to Yumeria to Mega Man and more, there has to be something in here for any player to like. But in the end, even though I quite enjoyed my time with Project X Zone, it still may not be for everyone.

Comments

[Parko]

I played the demo and didn't really like it, and I agree, it seemed fairly shallow. Its only appeal to me would be to play as Capcom characters.