CrossCode

It's not just a "great tribute", "very nostalgic", "SNES throwback". To hell with those things. It is, more importantly, a game with surprising amount of enemy variety, solid combat that keeps evolving throughout the game, and a very well-written story. It shows a lot of love with the attention to details throughout all the game, and it's supremely well-crafted. I know I'm not the only one to whom all the babbling about retro, nostalgia and beautiful pixels raises a red flag. So this review is for people like me. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Great game, with a good story, good music, and it ran great on my Linux machine! No stability issues, all the features worked! The reminder on the in-game menu for your next goal helps move things forward without getting lost. The elemental abilities that come through the circuits keeps things interesting and customizable.

For me the puzzle sections are good and I like the story, but working out how to do damage to some of the bosses has made me have to watch other people's videos for strategy guides. The typical boss has armour, which means that you first hit it doing almost no damage; enough hits break the armour and you then quickly knock a complete phase of hitpoints off. Sometimes you need to guess the strategy that the developers intended, as other methods mean a lot of hitting it without breaking the armour. Some bosses have a weak-point during the armoured subphase where only hitting that point removes armour. Some of the bosses need to be hit during the armoured subphase in a particular way. That doesn't feel good, especially when late phases of a boss have critical hit attacks which mean starting again from the beginning of the fight and redoing the early phases. That combines badly with some of the early phases having a should-have-done-this strategy and also a works-but-slow strategy, where missing the trick means it takes a long time to get back to the late phase. I feel there's a part of the difficulty curve that the developers have missed, which is a shame as there's a place in-game that's designed for it - in the starting mission hub / info centre there's a dojo with a tutor who initially says that he'll only train you once you've mastered both fire and cold; however once you have those the training doesn't use fire or cold at all - it is only target practise and not the boss-killing techniques.

Cross Code is addictive, beautiful and satisfying. The difficulty can be harsh but as any good RPG, some grinding and exploring can help a lot. The combat is deep yet easy to get the hang on. The story is good and relevant to our times. Highly recommended to fans of old school Quintet games like Illusion og Gaia and Terranigma.

A game that juggles story, combat, puzzles and exploration excellently. Some people have mentioned that the pixel art style may throw people away from this game because what pixel art games hold the test of time other than through nostalgia? The beauty of pixel art though is the abstractness of story and the world. Everything is beautiful in it's own right, but when you're going through it at your own pace your imagination can take the set layed before you and really expand on it, guiding your emotions in a way modern graphics can't.