What will the tails witness after a crossing tale? A tactical RPG that portrays a fantasy story of a war between the canine and the feline tribes playable from both points of view.
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KEY NOTES
-Grid-based SRPG battles
-No voiced dialogue
-Two selectable character stories
-Branching story paths
-~15-20 hours for the first playthrough
-New Game Plus option available
Developed by RideonJapan, Cross Tails is one of their latest tactical SRPG games. While RideonJapan is a fairly unknown studio, they have been developing games since the early 2000s. In the last decade, they have been focusing on mostly SRPGs with their Mercenaries series being their notable ones. They have also dabbled in other JRPG genres including Adventure Bar Story, Marenian Tavern Story and Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom. The latter two were published by Kemco along with Cross Tails.
STORY
Cross Tails takes place on a continent comprised of three nations. Of the two, the Kingdom of Ranverfurt and the Republic of Hidiq have a long history of conflict and war between each other. The tension have since cooled down in the years leading up to the start of the game where minor skirmishes on the border made up most of the conflicts.
Raverfurt is home to the canine people called Hundians. Their government resembles a European monarch system. The nation is blessed with good weather and natural resources. To the south of Raverfurt is Hidiq which is home to the feline people called Felis. Much of their environment consists of desert and sand. There isn't a formal head of Hidiq. Instead, control of Hidiq is formed through an alliance of multiple Great Hundian Tribes. The leaders of each Great Tribe are members of the Council which decides many of the major decisions on behalf of Hidiq.
There is also the third smaller nation of Dralbo where Reptilians originate from. Many leave the poor nation home to work as mercenaries for the two bigger nations.
Cross Tails' story mostly focus on political drama and military conflict. While interesting as a background, the game doesn't develop them into anything unique or more than what was established early on. It lacks the subtle and nuance politics employed in bigger known titles like Tactics Ogre (TO) and Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT). The story is very straightforward here and is quite predictable in its plot twists. The story as a whole isn't anything special and even forgettable days after completing the game. With that said, I was never bored with what was presented and never expected anything more based on the tone of the game. Expect a lot of lighthearted banter with some serious moments every now and then.
The one notable standout with its story presentation is having two character stories available. You pick one story at the start and watch their perspective on the conflict.
At times, the stories will cross over with each other. The crossovers are not frequent however which I did found disappointing considering it was one of the main standout feature.
Each character story has two routes with a single dialogue option that determines the split which occurs at some point in the story. Keep in mind that the dialogue choice isn't available until clearing the first playthrough with that character so you have very little choice to decide which path you want.
I was also disappointed that there's a lot of overlap between both characters' second paths especially when there isn't a lot of story paths to begin with.
CHARACTERS
Much like the story, the characters here aren't anything special either. The main playable characters are generally likable, but they don't have any real character development or growth for the most part. The game quickly glosses over a lot of character backgrounds and doesn't spend time on fleshing them out. I did enjoyed their various banter and dialogues however.
Unsurprisingly, supporting characters and antagonists are shallow and lack much depth. Villains don't leave much of an impression with very predictable motives.
There are a few supporting side characters that do have intriguing backgrounds, but their characters aren't explored much either due to the lack of substantial screentime.
MUSIC AND SOUND DIRECTION
Cross Tails' soundtrack is similar to what I have experienced in some of their games including their Mercenaries SRPGs. The songs fit the event scenes, the battle tracks are decent and overall, pleasant to listen to. Although, there aren't any songs here that I would like to listen to outside of the game. They didn't leave much of an impression otherwise. It's also lacking in the number of tracks so there is a lot of repeated songs throughout.
GRAPHICS AND ART DIRECTION
Rideon's games have never been strong in the graphics or art department. Their Mercenaries series and their prior ones published by Kemco are quite lacking in visual appeal. Cross Tails however, is probably their best looking game to date which isn't a difficult bar to surpass. The colors are vibrant and the environment textures are decent in general. In place of their usual character sprites, they opted for 3D character models instead. The textures on them are decent as well.
With all that said, the game still isn't that impressive looking compared to what's out there. The in-game character models lack a lot of variety in details so that many of the units (even the unique ones) look very similar and hard to distinguish at times. To makes matters worse, the in-battle character portraits look generic and nearly the same as well. I often have to highlight the cursor over a unit and check their name to recognize who they were. I would've preferred the sprites instead even if they have looked quite generic as well in the past. Cross Tails is sadly a very low budget game so expect the graphics to reflect it.
For me, the highlight are the character portraits used during dialogue and cutscenes. They look quite nice and have various expressions.
COMBAT
Customization and combat is where Cross Tails shine. At its core, the combat shares a lot of mechanics found in many other games in the genre which isn't anything new, but it's executed well. Elevation, distance, side/rear damage, and accuracy are the universal SRPG mechanics that all need to be considered when planning strategies and actions.
Some of the more less universal mechanics include MP regen each turn, Aggro, and Guts. Many of the skills in the game further boost such effects and in the case of MP regen, there are also equipment that affect the amount recovered. These mechanics further add an additional layer of strategy to the combat. The ability to employ traps onto the battlefield is another unique mechanic that I haven't seen often in these type of games.
Character turns are decided by a visible turn order with the fastest units at the top of the order. There's also a universal turn system where one main turn ends when all units have acted. This is mostly important for battles with win/lose on specific turn conditions.
The combat mechanics are solid overall and fun. I could've used more different victory conditions though since most of them are either wipe out everybody or defeat a specific boss. At least some of the lose conditions are varied such as keeping certain characters alive or clearing before a specific turn.
DIFFICULTY OPTIONS
Cross Tails has various difficulty options which can be tailored to individuals seeking different experiences with the game. Easy provides you with a number of benefits. At the standard normal difficulty, the game is fairly straightforward with not a lot of deep strategy required to clear most battles. You still have to be careful at times however.
The Hard and Maniac provide decent challenges that not only increase the enemies' base stats by a large amount, but can provide them with more advantageous effects like increased critical chance modifier. Maniac in particular gives enemies full starting MP at the beginning of battle so they can spam all of their abilities right away and you gain less EXP when using skills. KO'd allies also need to be revived quicker before they retreat from the battle. On the plus side, enemy drops are increased to provide some other incentive in playing the mode other than just for the challenge. Difficulty can be switched at anytime outside of battle.
Other than the difficulty options, the special post game battles provide a decent challenge with powerful enemies and bosses.
BATTLE MAPS
Battle maps have decent variety throughout the game. There are many straightforward maps where the areas are mostly flat, but there's also a good amount where elevation presents a large obstacle to complete. These are mostly seen in towns, fortresses, castles, and mountains.
Surprisingly, the game doesn't make much use of water obstacles. There's only a few maps where water is present and it's rarely the optimal path to take. The game could use some more map variety with such obstacles, but overall, it's not too bad.
CHARACTER STATS AND CUSTOMIZATION
Unlike Rideon's Mercenaries games where each character has a class and they can branch out to other set ones unique to their own, Cross Tails makes use of a class system that allows more freedom to change to any of the generic classes. In addition, each character essentially has 3 classes that can be used at a time, the unique, main and subclass.
Unique classes can't be changed and is tied to the specific character (generics get one of the generic unique classes based on their race). The main class determines the equipment type the character can equip along with the move and jump stat. The subclass is mostly used to gain access to the specific class skills during battle. Both the main and subclass influence the overall character stats.
Generic classes are unlocked by reaching specific class level threshold from Class Points obtained. Some classes require a combination of two classes unlocked and at a certain level.
There's a lot of fun to be had with the class customization and combinations. Active skills (attacks and spells) are tied directly to classes so they must be equip as either main or sub to use them during battle. Passive skills from the classes can be used regardless if the class is equipped or not. The caveat is that the Passive skills have to be equipped in one of the limited Passive skill slots.
Every class has a skill tree and it only requires money to unlock new skills. Some skills can be further upgraded with additional money as well.
The system gives you a lot of room to experiment and be creative with character builds. Want to make a dual wielding ninja white priest? You can do that! There's 24 generic classes and 10 unique classes in the game that you can use so there's a lot of opportunity to be creative.
The classes and skills aren't the end of the customization. Cross Tails also has the Faith system which is borrowed from Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom. Each character can equip one Faith where they will worship a specific god. These gods don't play any role in the story whatsoever and can be freely changed at any time. A specific faith provides additional benefits ranging from fixed stat boosts to various helpful effects.
Additionally, equipment can be enhanced and special stones can be inserted to provide special passive effects. Unique gold equipment that you can obtain will already come installed with some effects already.
In conjunction with skills and effects, Cross Tail has decent depth with its stats and related effects. Other than the common stats, they also have some unique ones like MP Recovery%, Critical Chance%, and Guard%. Then there's the element resistances/weakness and status abnormality resistance.
The combination of all these elements allows you to create different character builds to your liking. There's a strong degree of customization allowed here.
My main issue with these customization is that the highest tier of classes take a long time to unlock. Most won't be unlocked until near the end of the story so that limits on the experimentation you can really do for most of the game.
WORLD MAP
Cross Tails use a world map where you can travel to different destinations. They are mostly there for visual purposes since going to a location other than the next story destination doesn't do anything.
On the World Map, you can instantly access the shop and the blacksmith. You can also repeat generic maps as Free Battles from there too for easy grinding. The Free Battle Maps use the same story ones except the enemy types, positioning and win conditions are all changed. Generic chests return to their original positions and can be reopened for generic items. The unique gold ones return and can be opened if missed during the story battle. If already opened, the treasure doesn't respawn.
Battle Strategy can be adjusted here or during the deployment phase in battle. These further affect battle effects by influencing either stats, effects or providing bonuses to exp/gold/class exp obtained.
You can also hire generic party members here too.
NEW GAME PLUS AND SUBSEQUENT PLAYTHROUGHS
This game fortunately has a New Game Plus option to alleviate a repetitive 2nd playthrough for the other character ending. You keep every item obtained including equipment and money. However, character levels reset back to the original defaults including class unlocks and levels. The level reset can be annoying if you spent a lot of time investing in character classes and skills on the first playthrough. Fortunately, the second playthrough will still be a lot faster with the equipment carryover and skipping scenes prior to the story branch.
You also get accessed to the special post game fights that are available at the start in the Free Battle list. Although you won't be able to complete them until end game regardless.
It's important to note that character stories do not share anything between each other. That means each character save file is independent of each other. When clearing Felix's story for the first time, it automatically does a new game plus in his story without any option to hop right over to start Shaimaa's story with the equipment already obtained from Felix's playthrough.
FINAL REMARKS
There's a lot to be fun with Cross Tails even if its story isn't deep. The characters lack a lot of depth and development, but they are serviceable to keep me interested in seeing how things unfold. It also has decent replay value with multiple stories and multiple paths. It only takes about 15-20 hours to clear the first playthrough and 5-10 hours for the subsequent NG+ playthrough. It's not too long to see both endings for a character story, but it can be pretty lengthy if going for the same with the second character story.
The meat of the game however is in the deep and flexible customization. On the lower difficulties, Cross Tails is great for beginners to the SRPG genre and the higher difficulties are great for veterans that like a challenge.
Unfortunately, there's just isn't much to do in the game other than continue with the Main Story or repeat Free Battles to grind. There aren't any sidequests or side activities here. The most notable side content are the optional difficult Free Battles on NG+.
KEY NOTES
-Grid-based SRPG battles
-No voiced dialogue
-Two selectable character stories
-Branching story paths
-~15-20 hours for the first playthrough
-New Game Plus option available
Developed by RideonJapan, Cross Tails is one of their latest tactical SRPG games. While RideonJapan is a fairly unknown studio, they have been developing games since the early 2000s. In the last decade, they have been focusing on mostly SRPGs with their Mercenaries series being their notable ones. They have also dabbled in other JRPG genres including Adventure Bar Story, Marenian Tavern Story and Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom. The latter two were published by Kemco along with Cross Tails.
STORY
Cross Tails takes place on a continent comprised of three nations. Of the two, the Kingdom of Ranverfurt and the Republic of Hidiq have a long history of conflict and war between each other. The tension have since cooled down in the years leading up to the start of the game where minor skirmishes on the border made up most of the conflicts.
Raverfurt is home to the canine people called Hundians. Their government resembles a European monarch system. The nation is blessed with good weather and natural resources. To the south of Raverfurt is Hidiq which is home to the feline people called Felis. Much of their environment consists of desert and sand. There isn't a formal head of Hidiq. Instead, control of Hidiq is formed through an alliance of multiple Great Hundian Tribes. The leaders of each Great Tribe are members of the Council which decides many of the major decisions on behalf of Hidiq.
There is also the third smaller nation of Dralbo where Reptilians originate from. Many leave the poor nation home to work as mercenaries for the two bigger nations.
Cross Tails' story mostly focus on political drama and military conflict. While interesting as a background, the game doesn't develop them into anything unique or more than what was established early on. It lacks the subtle and nuance politics employed in bigger known titles like Tactics Ogre (TO) and Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT). The story is very straightforward here and is quite predictable in its plot twists. The story as a whole isn't anything special and even forgettable days after completing the game. With that said, I was never bored with what was presented and never expected anything more based on the tone of the game. Expect a lot of lighthearted banter with some serious moments every now and then.
The one notable standout with its story presentation is having two character stories available. You pick one story at the start and watch their perspective on the conflict.
At times, the stories will cross over with each other. The crossovers are not frequent however which I did found disappointing considering it was one of the main standout feature.
Each character story has two routes with a single dialogue option that determines the split which occurs at some point in the story. Keep in mind that the dialogue choice isn't available until clearing the first playthrough with that character so you have very little choice to decide which path you want.
I was also disappointed that there's a lot of overlap between both characters' second paths especially when there isn't a lot of story paths to begin with.
CHARACTERS
Much like the story, the characters here aren't anything special either. The main playable characters are generally likable, but they don't have any real character development or growth for the most part. The game quickly glosses over a lot of character backgrounds and doesn't spend time on fleshing them out. I did enjoyed their various banter and dialogues however.
Unsurprisingly, supporting characters and antagonists are shallow and lack much depth. Villains don't leave much of an impression with very predictable motives.
There are a few supporting side characters that do have intriguing backgrounds, but their characters aren't explored much either due to the lack of substantial screentime.
MUSIC AND SOUND DIRECTION
Cross Tails' soundtrack is similar to what I have experienced in some of their games including their Mercenaries SRPGs. The songs fit the event scenes, the battle tracks are decent and overall, pleasant to listen to. Although, there aren't any songs here that I would like to listen to outside of the game. They didn't leave much of an impression otherwise. It's also lacking in the number of tracks so there is a lot of repeated songs throughout.
GRAPHICS AND ART DIRECTION
Rideon's games have never been strong in the graphics or art department. Their Mercenaries series and their prior ones published by Kemco are quite lacking in visual appeal. Cross Tails however, is probably their best looking game to date which isn't a difficult bar to surpass. The colors are vibrant and the environment textures are decent in general. In place of their usual character sprites, they opted for 3D character models instead. The textures on them are decent as well.
With all that said, the game still isn't that impressive looking compared to what's out there. The in-game character models lack a lot of variety in details so that many of the units (even the unique ones) look very similar and hard to distinguish at times. To makes matters worse, the in-battle character portraits look generic and nearly the same as well. I often have to highlight the cursor over a unit and check their name to recognize who they were. I would've preferred the sprites instead even if they have looked quite generic as well in the past. Cross Tails is sadly a very low budget game so expect the graphics to reflect it.
For me, the highlight are the character portraits used during dialogue and cutscenes. They look quite nice and have various expressions.
COMBAT
Customization and combat is where Cross Tails shine. At its core, the combat shares a lot of mechanics found in many other games in the genre which isn't anything new, but it's executed well. Elevation, distance, side/rear damage, and accuracy are the universal SRPG mechanics that all need to be considered when planning strategies and actions.
Some of the more less universal mechanics include MP regen each turn, Aggro, and Guts. Many of the skills in the game further boost such effects and in the case of MP regen, there are also equipment that affect the amount recovered. These mechanics further add an additional layer of strategy to the combat. The ability to employ traps onto the battlefield is another unique mechanic that I haven't seen often in these type of games.
Character turns are decided by a visible turn order with the fastest units at the top of the order. There's also a universal turn system where one main turn ends when all units have acted. This is mostly important for battles with win/lose on specific turn conditions.
The combat mechanics are solid overall and fun. I could've used more different victory conditions though since most of them are either wipe out everybody or defeat a specific boss. At least some of the lose conditions are varied such as keeping certain characters alive or clearing before a specific turn.
DIFFICULTY OPTIONS
Cross Tails has various difficulty options which can be tailored to individuals seeking different experiences with the game. Easy provides you with a number of benefits. At the standard normal difficulty, the game is fairly straightforward with not a lot of deep strategy required to clear most battles. You still have to be careful at times however.
The Hard and Maniac provide decent challenges that not only increase the enemies' base stats by a large amount, but can provide them with more advantageous effects like increased critical chance modifier. Maniac in particular gives enemies full starting MP at the beginning of battle so they can spam all of their abilities right away and you gain less EXP when using skills. KO'd allies also need to be revived quicker before they retreat from the battle. On the plus side, enemy drops are increased to provide some other incentive in playing the mode other than just for the challenge. Difficulty can be switched at anytime outside of battle.
Other than the difficulty options, the special post game battles provide a decent challenge with powerful enemies and bosses.
BATTLE MAPS
Battle maps have decent variety throughout the game. There are many straightforward maps where the areas are mostly flat, but there's also a good amount where elevation presents a large obstacle to complete. These are mostly seen in towns, fortresses, castles, and mountains.
Surprisingly, the game doesn't make much use of water obstacles. There's only a few maps where water is present and it's rarely the optimal path to take. The game could use some more map variety with such obstacles, but overall, it's not too bad.
CHARACTER STATS AND CUSTOMIZATION
Unlike Rideon's Mercenaries games where each character has a class and they can branch out to other set ones unique to their own, Cross Tails makes use of a class system that allows more freedom to change to any of the generic classes. In addition, each character essentially has 3 classes that can be used at a time, the unique, main and subclass.
Unique classes can't be changed and is tied to the specific character (generics get one of the generic unique classes based on their race). The main class determines the equipment type the character can equip along with the move and jump stat. The subclass is mostly used to gain access to the specific class skills during battle. Both the main and subclass influence the overall character stats.
Generic classes are unlocked by reaching specific class level threshold from Class Points obtained. Some classes require a combination of two classes unlocked and at a certain level.
There's a lot of fun to be had with the class customization and combinations. Active skills (attacks and spells) are tied directly to classes so they must be equip as either main or sub to use them during battle. Passive skills from the classes can be used regardless if the class is equipped or not. The caveat is that the Passive skills have to be equipped in one of the limited Passive skill slots.
Every class has a skill tree and it only requires money to unlock new skills. Some skills can be further upgraded with additional money as well.
The system gives you a lot of room to experiment and be creative with character builds. Want to make a dual wielding ninja white priest? You can do that! There's 24 generic classes and 10 unique classes in the game that you can use so there's a lot of opportunity to be creative.
The classes and skills aren't the end of the customization. Cross Tails also has the Faith system which is borrowed from Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom. Each character can equip one Faith where they will worship a specific god. These gods don't play any role in the story whatsoever and can be freely changed at any time. A specific faith provides additional benefits ranging from fixed stat boosts to various helpful effects.
Additionally, equipment can be enhanced and special stones can be inserted to provide special passive effects. Unique gold equipment that you can obtain will already come installed with some effects already.
In conjunction with skills and effects, Cross Tail has decent depth with its stats and related effects. Other than the common stats, they also have some unique ones like MP Recovery%, Critical Chance%, and Guard%. Then there's the element resistances/weakness and status abnormality resistance.
The combination of all these elements allows you to create different character builds to your liking. There's a strong degree of customization allowed here.
My main issue with these customization is that the highest tier of classes take a long time to unlock. Most won't be unlocked until near the end of the story so that limits on the experimentation you can really do for most of the game.
WORLD MAP
Cross Tails use a world map where you can travel to different destinations. They are mostly there for visual purposes since going to a location other than the next story destination doesn't do anything.
On the World Map, you can instantly access the shop and the blacksmith. You can also repeat generic maps as Free Battles from there too for easy grinding. The Free Battle Maps use the same story ones except the enemy types, positioning and win conditions are all changed. Generic chests return to their original positions and can be reopened for generic items. The unique gold ones return and can be opened if missed during the story battle. If already opened, the treasure doesn't respawn.
Battle Strategy can be adjusted here or during the deployment phase in battle. These further affect battle effects by influencing either stats, effects or providing bonuses to exp/gold/class exp obtained.
You can also hire generic party members here too.
NEW GAME PLUS AND SUBSEQUENT PLAYTHROUGHS
This game fortunately has a New Game Plus option to alleviate a repetitive 2nd playthrough for the other character ending. You keep every item obtained including equipment and money. However, character levels reset back to the original defaults including class unlocks and levels. The level reset can be annoying if you spent a lot of time investing in character classes and skills on the first playthrough. Fortunately, the second playthrough will still be a lot faster with the equipment carryover and skipping scenes prior to the story branch.
You also get accessed to the special post game fights that are available at the start in the Free Battle list. Although you won't be able to complete them until end game regardless.
It's important to note that character stories do not share anything between each other. That means each character save file is independent of each other. When clearing Felix's story for the first time, it automatically does a new game plus in his story without any option to hop right over to start Shaimaa's story with the equipment already obtained from Felix's playthrough.
FINAL REMARKS
There's a lot to be fun with Cross Tails even if its story isn't deep. The characters lack a lot of depth and development, but they are serviceable to keep me interested in seeing how things unfold. It also has decent replay value with multiple stories and multiple paths. It only takes about 15-20 hours to clear the first playthrough and 5-10 hours for the subsequent NG+ playthrough. It's not too long to see both endings for a character story, but it can be pretty lengthy if going for the same with the second character story.
The meat of the game however is in the deep and flexible customization. On the lower difficulties, Cross Tails is great for beginners to the SRPG genre and the higher difficulties are great for veterans that like a challenge.
Unfortunately, there's just isn't much to do in the game other than continue with the Main Story or repeat Free Battles to grind. There aren't any sidequests or side activities here. The most notable side content are the optional difficult Free Battles on NG+.