I played this game for so long and i really wanted to finish it but i just. can't. do it anymore.
To start with the positives, the game visually looks really neat. It has some of the best spritework i've ever seen and this adds into the attack animations, which are basically just the GBA Fire Emblem crit animations on super steroids. The gameplay itself is decent early on but obviously the best part about the game is the character interactions. While i had never played most of the games featured, the character interactions were still very fun to watch. The best pair in the game is Frank West/Hsien-Ko because they took the irony of this pairing and pumped it with amazing chemistry. It's great.
The character interactions kept me going even when the game started to slog. But by chapter 30, it was no longer a slog. It was Brawl lag. Because the chapter start dumping so much shit on to you that i could rarely complete chapters in one sitting. And this was the mid-game too but the late-game is just an entirely different beast. One map took me three days to clear because of how much there was on it. And there's more to it. Because everything that isn't items or standard attack uses up the universally shared XP meter, that meant i had to be very conservative with skills and specials. Heck, even countering wasn't always viable and all this added to the length. I only have 11 more chapters left but hearing that Ch.39 takes everything i hate about this game and multiples it, i just don't wanna anymore.
I hear Project X Zone 2 makes very significant improvements to the formula and pretty much invalidates this game. Perhaps that's true. I wanted to play it because i want to play every Monolith Soft game but as much as it hurts to say, i gotta say it: this is one of Monolith Soft's very few Ls.
To start with the positives, the game visually looks really neat. It has some of the best spritework i've ever seen and this adds into the attack animations, which are basically just the GBA Fire Emblem crit animations on super steroids. The gameplay itself is decent early on but obviously the best part about the game is the character interactions. While i had never played most of the games featured, the character interactions were still very fun to watch. The best pair in the game is Frank West/Hsien-Ko because they took the irony of this pairing and pumped it with amazing chemistry. It's great.
The character interactions kept me going even when the game started to slog. But by chapter 30, it was no longer a slog. It was Brawl lag. Because the chapter start dumping so much shit on to you that i could rarely complete chapters in one sitting. And this was the mid-game too but the late-game is just an entirely different beast. One map took me three days to clear because of how much there was on it. And there's more to it. Because everything that isn't items or standard attack uses up the universally shared XP meter, that meant i had to be very conservative with skills and specials. Heck, even countering wasn't always viable and all this added to the length. I only have 11 more chapters left but hearing that Ch.39 takes everything i hate about this game and multiples it, i just don't wanna anymore.
I hear Project X Zone 2 makes very significant improvements to the formula and pretty much invalidates this game. Perhaps that's true. I wanted to play it because i want to play every Monolith Soft game but as much as it hurts to say, i gotta say it: this is one of Monolith Soft's very few Ls.