CrossCode

...a lot has been said about the good stuff, so I'll focus on the bad and say why you might want to NOT buy CrossCode: right now I'm about 18 hours in, and strongly feel that most gameplay elements overstay their welcome. Each new enemy gimmick and puzzle mechanic is thoroughly ran into the ground. It's not low-effort content by any means, but by the end of most areas and dungeons I was sick of them. The a-ha moments are gone about halfway through, and then you're just going through the motions. That's not even going into the material grinding required to get most gear which is thankfully mostly optional. Some of that can be seen as embracing the MMORPG/JRPG tropes and fitting into the whole meta narrative, but characters in the game empathizing with me about stuff being tedious to do doesn't make it any less so. If you're a gamer with a strict time budget, or just like tight experiences and tend to feel that less is more. CrossCode may not be your thing.

The game is great in many aspects, hence the 4 stars. Unfortunately, it is too hard. I'm stuck in the execution of an enigma in the 2nd temple (fire, water, ice). All enigmas require very good timing (tough a bit of error is allowed, but just a tiny bit). I did well up until now, but too much is too much, I'm out.

The game on Mac is rock solid and the developers are VERY committed to updates and feedback. The art is nice the gameplay is hard at points but fair and the story is easy to skip over (if you just want to get to the game itself) :-)

The game and even demo had a great start. The characters seem cool, the combat system is a ton of fun and I like the parkour. At first the puzzles were cool but that gets old very quick. Just get to your first elemental dungeon and it is soooo long. I am currently at the second elemental dungeon and...I think I might quit playing this game now. These puzzles aren't fun. I just want to get back to good combat and advancing the game but I can't unless I want to waste hours inside a dungeon riddled with frustraiting puzzles or cheat and watch a youtube video (I'm not into doing that though.) When it comes to it...I don't know if I can recommend this game or not. If you are on the fence about this and don't like puzzles or are neutral toward them then first look up the subject and you will easily find a lot of post about people complaining about the puzzles.

Sound - The moment you turn on the game, the main menu music will snatch you up right away with its lovely melody. This game doesn't have any voice acting, so its all text, so the music has to compensate for it, and it does so tenfold. Not only does the music feels right for each area, but the music is the type of music thats good enough to put on your listening device and just listen to on your commute to work. Got damn, whoever made this soundtrack needs a medal or something. Graphics - The graphics is in the form of sprites, similar to Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono trigger. The graphic style actually looks really well, like a bit of finesse with all the pixels, like you can clearly see what the object is when you look at it, even tho its blocky construction from the pixel graphical style. My one criticism is that the camera is locked to one perspective, so some environment is difficult to tell what elevations they are. Combat - Aww man, the combat is so damn good in this game. Its all real time, and action based to combos, well timed dodges and blocks, knowing when to use your special attacks and quick reflexes all matter here. The animations are great when fighting, as its all nice and smooth 60 frames, and the effects are flashy and nice looking. You really get that OMFF feel when you hit something. But the combat is DAMN difficult, the enemies are not push overs and will punish you for half ass effort. Story - Still playing the games story right now, but from what ive played so far, the plot has me very interested, think of a plot similar to Log Horizon or Sword art online where you got people logging into games that takes over the 5 sense of your body, but your character, the main character, is stuck in the game. I really like the conversations with some of the NPCs as there is lots of light hearted humor, and call backs to todays memes, like a dude named Mauradershields(Mass effect 3 ending meme) Ran outta text space, so cant continue my review. Crap. 10/10