Over the past several years there have been 2 kinds of crossover games: fighting games and RPGs. Most people are familiar with fighting game crossover’s such as Marvel vs Capcom or Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. However, a recent trend is to have crossover RPG games. Titles such as Chaos Wars and Namco x Capcom never made much of a ripple because they were either never released in the US region or they were a low-budget Gamestop-only title. Cross Edge for the PS3 changes most of that. For once, a crossover RPG has the availability for a mainstream audience to notice its presence.
Cross Edge is published by NIS, who is better known for their Disgaea series. The game features similar 2D sprites with HD backgrounds. Many people will see a PS3 RPG and expect everything to be beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, the 2D sprites are pretty cool, but they are not on the scale of something like BlazBlue 2d HD sprites. The allure of this game is with its gameplay and item-creation.
The gameplay is fairly standard turnbased RPG similar to Evolution where the party is on a grid, and each member takes turn. Cross Edge uses an AP system similar to Xenogears to determine how many attacks you can choose per turn. On a similar note, it also seems to take some tips from Eternal Sonata by having a timer in which all may choose to attack. When the timer ends, it doesn’t mean your turn is over – just that the attack is over. All the damage and combos done during that attack chain is tallied up. Similar to recent Final Fantasy entries, you’ll get bonus items for doing more than the necessary amount of damage to defeat the enemy. This sort of mechanic adds an extra edge to the gameplay, because it makes you want to use strategy to win more efficiently.
Since part of the crossover is Atelier Marie and Mana-Khemia, there is a focus on alchemy and item creation. Like most games, you can beef up your weapons and synthesize new ones. However, you need alchemy books in order to learn the specifics for certain item creation. You also have to fully upgrade certain weapons so that they turn into compounding materials for you to use. The interface for item creation isn’t overwhelming, but something about it seems like a nuisance. Perhaps this is just personal preference, as I am not exactly keen on item creation. I feel that weapon upgrading and weapon compounding (adding new items to weapons for added stats) are fairly enjoyable to use.
The storyline is a bit weird, but that’s to be expected for a crossover game. It makes almost as much sense as Kingdom Hearts’ explanation for different characters. In Cross Edge you are in thrown into a random world. You come to find out there are three worlds: magic world, fantasy world, and demon world. For some reason you get to keep your body, but many have lost theirs and appear only as souls. You must traverse the world map hitting the square button searching for souls. The more souls you collect the more costumes you get, the more items you get, and the more story you progress.
I know little about the costumes as this IS a “First Impressions” post after all. However, from what I’ve gathered you can gain extra costumes for you characters. Changing costumes can affect your stats, and female characters you get to watch change costumes. I suppose you must think this is the pinnacle of this game. You would be right!
Cross Edge was developed in part by Capcom, Namco-Bandai, Gust, Idea Factory, and Nippon Ichi. It features characters from Darkstalkers, Disgaea, Ar Tornelico, Atelier Marie, Spectral Souls, and Mana-Khemia 2. I’m not familiar with most of the characters that aren’t Disgaea or Darkstalkers, and sometimes it interferes with the storyline because the characters show idiosyncracies that only mean something to those who have played the games that featured them.
Cross Edge is a fairly fun game. If you’re wanting a new RPG for your Playstation 3, I suggest picking it up. It has its share of minor annoyances, but it’s also $10 less than most Playstation 3 games.
