CrossCode

And that's not to say that this review is based on the nostalgia factor. Actually, as a game goes, it's extremely well designed and fun. It was clearly designed with the sights and sounds of games like Brainlord and Secret of Mana. You do get party companions, and the premise of Cross Code is super cool. It isn't based on 1990's thinking. It's based on 2015 thinking. Modern day elements drive the story arc and getting to know the storyline and characters has been enjoyable to say the least. In the game, there are in-game NPC's, that the game actually tells you are NPC's, and then you have npc's that are presented as actual people within the game. I won't spoil it too much here, but the concept really is genious and it's an absolute pleasure to get to know what's going on in with the storyline. Whether you play on keyboard or gamepad, the control system is tailored to your gaming play style. Playing with a gamepad is INCREDIBLE, as it utterly has that SNES feel, but MAN your options with the gamepad are robust. Also, instead of the up-down-left-right gamepad style of SNES, the gamepad style of Cross Code has your toon running around in a 360 degree analogue fashion. Like every other modern game in there. Playing Cross Code has brought be back to playing SNES, except with all of the upgrades and improvements of not only modern day hardware, but with incredibly well thought out game world and storyline. If you're sitting on the price tag, don't bother. Other games like oh, ACTUAL secret of mana, even on android, runs you close to $30, and that's just a re-hash of an ages old game. This one is 100% worth the purchase even at full price, and that's saying a lot, I've spent over 150,000 hours of my life playing video games over the last 35 years. I know what I'm saying, and this is one of my top RPG's of all time. And yes, I've played them all! JUST BUY IT!

I got this game through a bundle on Itch. The best way I can describe it is like Legend of Zelda on Steroids. The dungeons and combat are excellent, while also being quite difficult. The only real criticism I have is that the story kinda ends on a cliffhanger and you need the DLC(which I haven't played yet to get a proper conclusion. So keep that in mind before you get it.

Cool game, story, art and characters but the puzzles are way too long. Should have cut it down to a 20-25 hour game. Focus on combat + story and be be done with it. The game puzzles drag on for way too long.

It was sitting there all the time in my library and I didn't even look at it... what a mistake! It ticks all the boxes for me: ARPG, big world, secrets, many many quests, a cute pixel art... Well, I need to play so I'll cut the review here :D

I bought this game on Steam a few years ago at random, just wanted something that wasn't a Roguelike/Roguelite to play back then and I was positively surprised. The game has a good story with interesting characters, including the main, almost silent protagonist, Lea whose personality despite the poor vocabulary (which is also explained in-game) shines throughout the many interactions she has with everyone else in the in-game world. It took me around 120 hours to see and do everything the game had to offer and that's way more time than anyone would ever need to complete every single side-quest CrossCode has to offer. The game has good controls for Keyboard and Mouse, but I remember never being able to properly play with a controller because my analog stick or directional buttons would randomly get stuck to one of the sides of my screen. The battles and puzzles that can be found are challenging, but not unforgiving so it may take a few tries to adapt yourself to what it throws at you. With patience you'll be able to overcome everything, but if you feel like you're not patient to retry something that's already taking too long then CrossCode has a few gameplay options to tweak things: 2 sliders in the options (that you can access anytime the in-game menu is available) to adjust the puzzle speed and the combat difficulty. I like to have those options even though after some time I didn't need them anymore. Replayability in this game is one of its strong points. For those who end up buying this game I definitely recommend getting all the achievements when possible and, at least on the first playthrough, not bothering too much with the missable ones since those require a bit more effort. Achievements net points that at the start of a "New Game Plus" can be used to enable different options to either make things difficult or easier depending on your choices, The story remains the same, but the changes to gameplay can be quite noticeable. Anyways, I love this game.