Played version 1.3 with Echo of Chains update. Took me about 26 hours to 100% it. Tremendous respect for the devs. Several times I thought I was cheesing some mechanic only to find that it was intentional. Great balance of exploring new areas and collecting goodies in old ones. Great pacing overall. Kept me engaged every day until I completed it. Difficulty is good. There's some challenging platforming in places, but nothing I had to bang my head against for hours. A few bosses I had to attempt a few times, but again nothing terrible. And each time you die, you gain a special currency that can be used to reduce the difficulty of a boss or the game in general. Between the feeling of constant progression and the customizable difficulty, I feel like the game respects its players time. Constant backtracking isn't essential to proceed, but I felt rewarded for doing it early as opposed to collecting several abilities before doing fewer, bigger sweeps of old areas. I think either style should work. Good metroidvanias make revisits feel different than your first pass, and the mix of movement and combat abilities do a good job of showing how much more powerful you've become. It may not be a game I come back to and replay, or one which changes how I view the genre, but it executes its concept well. Time and money well spent for me.
Crystal Project reminds me why I loved JRPGs. Great balance of exploration and mechanics, keeping me interested and binging until I finished it. Most JRPGs just don't engage me long enough to do that. The job system allows for depth, but 100% completion isn't too difficult, and nothing stands out as gimmicky and weird. I love that there are "assist options" for things like skipping racing minigames, or other features that respect a variety of players and their time or ability. Leveling up in a class affects your stats "permanently", but late-game it's going to be cheap to reassign those levels/stats to make your ideal team. I had no bugs or other issues with the main game. Without permanently missable items, I didn't have to choose between going in blind or fearing I'd miss out on 100% completion. Deaths are forgiving and there are early-game fast-travel options. I recommend enabling the assist option allowing you to remember up to three save points to return to. It's nice in the first few hours, before other fast travel methods are acquired. Late-game, it allows "bookmarking" a handful of areas which are annoying to reach. The game world is huge. As you acquire more mounts and teleport options, it has that pleasant metroidvania feeling of making that huge world feel cozy and familiar, and fast to navigate. That said, most of my backtracking I did because I felt like taking a break from newer areas at the end of a day's play session. The exploration sometimes gives me the feeling like I'm "getting away with something." Like in other games where I might try to jump and climb out of bounds, looking for secrets or sequence breaks. In this game, that's part of the fun and sometimes even the best way to proceed.
I like that "damage matters," but death isn't a huge setback. It's not a roguelite, because nothing is randomized. The state of each room isn't tied to your death in any way. Common enemies respawn every time you enter a room, like many classic-era games. However, items collected, doors unlocked, switches pressed, and (mini-)bosses killed are permanent. Avoiding damage is rewarding, and makes progress easier. It can be frustrating to wander an area for a long time without finding an elevator, but many rooms can be "cleared" along the way. I frequently unlocked shortcuts. Most were small, and some were massive. I never felt roadblocked. Likewise, every annoyance improves in time. Orbs spilling all over the place and forcing you to chase after them. Heavily restricted character swapping opportunities. There's even a very lategame healing item that makes chip damage a non-issue, and a method allowing you to grind millions of orbs in minutes if you really want to buy every single upgrade. It's possible to beat this game without grinding, let alone maxing your stats. You earn more orbs in later areas, and there's definitely benefit and convenience to improving character stats. I took the time to collect and max out everything, and barely dipped below half health in the final boss fight. For completionists, consider doing the final boss fight before 100% map and item completion, to see one of the endings. Then you can continue the same savegame, reach 100%, and do the final battle a second time to unlock additional content. I ran into very few bugs. With certain unlocks, you should be able to pick up specific blocks. Sometimes, you can't. The first patch has a fix for that. And sometimes, you keep drifting after leaving a moving platform. You can even get pushed offscreen and softlock as a result. The developer is aware of that issue as well. I expect these patches to come to GOG soon, but they didn't prevent me from binging and 100%ing this game.
This game clearly wants you to have fun, and provides just enough challenge to do so (my experience on Normal difficulty). Everything feels very well polished. Graphically, mechanically, and in overall game design. This is not a low-effort, cash grab, genre game. Despite shovel-loads of free and cheap tower defense games on the Internet, I think X-Morph is a great value even at full price. X-Morph excels at constantly giving the player fun stuff to do, but in a streamlined way. I can't think of any "unfun" mechanics. Tower design phases last as long or end as quickly as you wish. You can freely modify your tower layout without penalty. You can likewise respec all your technology and upgrade points between missions. The active phase of each wave encourages directly dealing with problematic enemy units, collecting extra resources from destroyed enemy units, or reworking towers in response to changes. Sometimes all at once. I never felt bored during the active phases. Each of the roughly two dozen maps feels distinct. I never had a "Oh, look. Yet another city area" moment. Whether visually, mechanically, or otherwise, levels are different enough they never felt rehashed. Many times, the map area is gradually revealed after each wave, so that even six waves in the same spot generally avoids becoming stale. The occasional side objectives and boss fights round things out. The bosses have all felt interesting, unique, and appropriately challenging (Normal difficulty). Bosses are where the shooter mechanics really shine. Towers remain valuable, but in different ways each time. The DLC included in this purchase feels genuinely good. It's one of the few cases where "more of the same" is a compliment. More, varied levels. More new units and mechanics. More new bosses. Nothing felt phoned in. The game automatically saves between waves. This makes it easy to put the game down for a while, or to adjust your tower maze if you weren't satisfied with its performance.
