I’m honestly shocked that it’s not more popular, it stands alongside the greatest indie games of all time in my opinion.
Gameplay is a perfect blend of fast paced, tough as nails combat, lengthy and challenging puzzle dungeons, and rich, emotional storytelling. The music and visuals are dialed in perfectly as well.
To be clear the game is hard hard, but, it does have assist and accessibility features built in, including stuff like slowing down some of the time sensitive puzzles.
The game is currently 70% off on steam (only $6!), so at that price I encourage everyone to play it. Runtime is probably like 40 hours for the base story. My 100% run is over 100 hours including the dlc
I need to try this again. I really wanted to get into it but I bounced off it after about 8-10 hours. I seem to remember feeling it was a bit grindy and dragged in places. I played on PS4 then PS5 and don't recall tweaking the assist mode. Will need to look at that again. I'm getting a bit long in the tooth and have mild arthritis so don't have the dexterity I used to have in my 20s - assist modes are great for this. I wish more developers would include them rather than insisting on one level of difficulty. Some of us already have an in-built hard mode!
In terms of grinding, there is a little bit for sure. Both for XP and also for loot drops.
The thing is though, and I never really see this talked about anywhere online for some reason, “grinding” in this game actually has a really incredible system built around it.
Your health regenerates between combat encounters, but it’s actually possible to sprint through the open world zones and chain groups of enemies together without leaving combat. As you do this, your “rank” increases.
When you reach S rank, first of all, the music and visuals go nuts haha. Extremely satisfying. But it also increases the drop rate for rate items as long as you maintain it, and it also decreases the respawn rate of enemies (which massively increases the rate you can earn XP)
It’s fun to figure out a route that lets you reach S rank, and then it’s fun to try and maintain it as long as you can before you absolutely need to break out of combat to heal. I found that one or two sessions of this between the main towns was more than enough to stay ahead of the xp curve/farm items for armor.
And the assist mode is great too, in addition to slowing down a few things in the game there’s a damage slider that lets you drop enemy damage down to 20%. So if it would feel better for your hands, you could simply lower the damage down to 80% or so instead of grinding for armor to achieve the same effect. Can also reduce the frequency of enemy attacks if dodging/blocking too often is an issue.
Anyway sorry, I could gush for hours about CrossCode. It’s entirely valid too if the game isn’t for you in the end! I love the pacing, but you really need to buy-in to each aspect of the game to fully enjoy it I think. Some reviewers love the combat but think the puzzles drag, others love the puzzles but think the story sections drag. If you love all three, then CrossCode will almost certainly be your favorite game I think
Thanks for the in depth comment. It's great and much appreciated. I'll definitely go back to it. Currently about 2/3rds through a playthrough of FF6, so once that's done I'll get back to Cross Code!
CrossCode 100%
I’m honestly shocked that it’s not more popular, it stands alongside the greatest indie games of all time in my opinion.
Gameplay is a perfect blend of fast paced, tough as nails combat, lengthy and challenging puzzle dungeons, and rich, emotional storytelling. The music and visuals are dialed in perfectly as well.
To be clear the game is hard hard, but, it does have assist and accessibility features built in, including stuff like slowing down some of the time sensitive puzzles.
The game is currently 70% off on steam (only $6!), so at that price I encourage everyone to play it. Runtime is probably like 40 hours for the base story. My 100% run is over 100 hours including the dlc
I need to try this again. I really wanted to get into it but I bounced off it after about 8-10 hours. I seem to remember feeling it was a bit grindy and dragged in places. I played on PS4 then PS5 and don't recall tweaking the assist mode. Will need to look at that again. I'm getting a bit long in the tooth and have mild arthritis so don't have the dexterity I used to have in my 20s - assist modes are great for this. I wish more developers would include them rather than insisting on one level of difficulty. Some of us already have an in-built hard mode!
In terms of grinding, there is a little bit for sure. Both for XP and also for loot drops.
The thing is though, and I never really see this talked about anywhere online for some reason, “grinding” in this game actually has a really incredible system built around it.
Your health regenerates between combat encounters, but it’s actually possible to sprint through the open world zones and chain groups of enemies together without leaving combat. As you do this, your “rank” increases.
When you reach S rank, first of all, the music and visuals go nuts haha. Extremely satisfying. But it also increases the drop rate for rate items as long as you maintain it, and it also decreases the respawn rate of enemies (which massively increases the rate you can earn XP)
It’s fun to figure out a route that lets you reach S rank, and then it’s fun to try and maintain it as long as you can before you absolutely need to break out of combat to heal. I found that one or two sessions of this between the main towns was more than enough to stay ahead of the xp curve/farm items for armor.
And the assist mode is great too, in addition to slowing down a few things in the game there’s a damage slider that lets you drop enemy damage down to 20%. So if it would feel better for your hands, you could simply lower the damage down to 80% or so instead of grinding for armor to achieve the same effect. Can also reduce the frequency of enemy attacks if dodging/blocking too often is an issue.
Anyway sorry, I could gush for hours about CrossCode. It’s entirely valid too if the game isn’t for you in the end! I love the pacing, but you really need to buy-in to each aspect of the game to fully enjoy it I think. Some reviewers love the combat but think the puzzles drag, others love the puzzles but think the story sections drag. If you love all three, then CrossCode will almost certainly be your favorite game I think
Thanks for the in depth comment. It's great and much appreciated. I'll definitely go back to it. Currently about 2/3rds through a playthrough of FF6, so once that's done I'll get back to Cross Code!