CrossCode

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.

Crosscode may not be as famous as the likes of Hollow Knight, Celeste, Stardew Valley, among others. But it should be. It is a masterclass of game design, writing and soul. A perfect experience that is far more than hte ssum of its parts. It could be fully priced at $150 and you'd still be hard pressed to complain given the sheer amount of content you could extract out of this game, and even without that, just hte base game and the New Home DLC are easily 60 to 90 hours of content depending on how much you do, and it could easily stretch to 300 or more if you wanna tackle replays in NG+ It's my favorite game of all time.

The story? As far as i've gotten, the story is just "look, it's a game, IN A GAME!", really makes me self conscious about how i don't like this story. The controls? they feel nice and would love them in a different game, as this game just feels open, but ultimately uninspired gameplay wise. Obviously imo they put mass amounts of work in the pixel art and it looks great. controls ✓, pixel art ✓, you'd think it'd be a home-run hitter, even with the questionable story. well... maybe it says more about me then it does about the game but man do i just feel lost all the time, and when i continue after a puzzle it does not feel satisfying. the battles are alright, but they all feel the same. i've got 10 hours on this game and it kinda still doesn't make any sense. why cant i find any material? i feel like im killing enemies enough so i dont understand? im i just supposed to grind my life away or im i not keeping my eyes peeled enough or what? The menus are imo super un-intuitive so that doesn't not help, even after what can seem like forever of useless talk about how things work in the world and bad story writing, of which i probably skipped a bunch as it starting feeling like doing paperwork before starting your actual job. ngl if this game had actual online multiplayer it would've potentially been a freak'n good game imo, but alas, just a story plot. if you're even a bit curious about this game, it seemingly goes on sale for rather steep so i still think it's worth the few bucks just to fill your wonder, other words, id pass.