CrossCode has an excellent foundation for its gameplay, but is plagued by issues both big and small that prevent the game from ever taking full advantage of its strengths.
The combat is, at its core, both simple in terms of its basic functions while still delivering a very satisfying experience when pitched against the right enemies. Many of the boss fights are a genuine 10/10 in my book (almost all of them revolving around just the basic combat mechanics) but these only make up a small portion of the total game. Most of your time will be spent on the game's weaker aspects.
Navigation throughout the world is frustrated by the game's terrible depth perception, unnecessarily large size, and deliberately unhelpful map (which intentionally obscures information to force more interaction with the game's awful platforming). But just blazing through the world to get straight to the bosses is a terrible strategy because of how heavily the game relies on stats (derived from character level and equipment) rather than player skill alone, meaning even an excellent player will have to engage with a good deal of non-required content lest they wish to get bogged down in fights against enemies that can kill in one hit while barely receiving any damage in return. And once the exploration is dealt with and you're ready to take on the next boss with all your newfound gear, the temples leading up to them drag on for so long that it physically exhausted me to do them in one sitting.
Broadly speaking, while CrossCode has an excellent foundation and many isolated moments where it reaches 10/10 territory, there is some awful stuff in between those points that make the overall experience a very rough one at times. It feels like the game could have been cut down significantly and come out better as a result, but the game's systems just aren't built in a way where skipping the non-essential content is a viable path forward. CrossCode's flaws are too deeply embedded within the game for avoiding them to be a realistic option.
While I still enjoyed my time with the game overall and I'd still recommend it to most people, I can't bring myself to ignore the game's many flaws either. CrossCode can be a rough experience at times, but its still one worth getting through for the fantastic things it achieves along the way.
The combat is, at its core, both simple in terms of its basic functions while still delivering a very satisfying experience when pitched against the right enemies. Many of the boss fights are a genuine 10/10 in my book (almost all of them revolving around just the basic combat mechanics) but these only make up a small portion of the total game. Most of your time will be spent on the game's weaker aspects.
Navigation throughout the world is frustrated by the game's terrible depth perception, unnecessarily large size, and deliberately unhelpful map (which intentionally obscures information to force more interaction with the game's awful platforming). But just blazing through the world to get straight to the bosses is a terrible strategy because of how heavily the game relies on stats (derived from character level and equipment) rather than player skill alone, meaning even an excellent player will have to engage with a good deal of non-required content lest they wish to get bogged down in fights against enemies that can kill in one hit while barely receiving any damage in return. And once the exploration is dealt with and you're ready to take on the next boss with all your newfound gear, the temples leading up to them drag on for so long that it physically exhausted me to do them in one sitting.
Broadly speaking, while CrossCode has an excellent foundation and many isolated moments where it reaches 10/10 territory, there is some awful stuff in between those points that make the overall experience a very rough one at times. It feels like the game could have been cut down significantly and come out better as a result, but the game's systems just aren't built in a way where skipping the non-essential content is a viable path forward. CrossCode's flaws are too deeply embedded within the game for avoiding them to be a realistic option.
While I still enjoyed my time with the game overall and I'd still recommend it to most people, I can't bring myself to ignore the game's many flaws either. CrossCode can be a rough experience at times, but its still one worth getting through for the fantastic things it achieves along the way.