Project X Zone (2012)

My first experience with Project X Zone was a pair of demos I downloaded from the Nintendo E-Shop. I was interested because of the myriad of characters I recognized, and also because I'm a pushover who can't resist a crossover between franchises I like. I can honestly say I thoroughly enjoyed the demo, and I made plans to buy the game one day.

Several years passed, and the game fell into the recesses of my memory. I never bought it until one fateful day in the December of 2017, when I saw a used copy of the game for sale for a cheap price. Remembering how much I enjoyed the demo, I eagerly purchased it. Now, a bit over a month later, I've beaten the game and am making plans to sell it to a pawn shop.

I wanted this game to be good, and it wasn't. But we'll start with the positives.

The game's character and sprite art is fantastic. That's undeniable. That's also probably one of the things which drew me in initially. The story begins and ends on a good note, which is actually really clever, because you hook the player in with a solid opening, and leave them thinking it wasn't so bad with a good ending. The combat is entertaining for a time, but gets old pretty fast because it has very little variety. The music is a bit of a mixed bag as most of it comes from different games, but the PXZ original songs were overall pretty decent. The characters, coming from great series, were almost all fantastic.

However, this game is just too flawed. Though the art is fantastic, I am not a fan of how over-sexualized almost every woman in the game is. Its distracting, annoying, and takes away from what is otherwise would have been a basically flawless art design. And though the story begins and ends positively, the entire middle (WHICH IS 90% OF THE GAME) is ridiculously repetitive and mundane. The majority of character dialogue is empty and pointless, doing an injustice to already-great characters.

As mentioned earlier, the combat gets old quick. There's not enough variety or freedom in the fight sections, and the strategy is basically non-existent. Its like a hack-and-slash, but in the format of a strategy game. It just does not work. It's boring and takes forever. Enemies aren't difficult, but feign difficulty by having huge health pools, meaning the difficulty curve is like the heart-monitor of a corpse - flat-lined and dead. Furthermore, the game outstays its welcome. Its just too long. I logged around 50 hours into it, and that was simply crushing my way through the main game. It is a whopping 41 chapters, of which maybe 5 are actually interesting. The rest are repetitive, fighting the same bosses and enemies with the same strategies and movesets.

I mentioned the music being a mixed bag, but most of it is actually pretty decent. However, you could have the greatest soundtrack ever given to a game and you still wouldn't be able to enjoy it because the music changes every time the character you're controlling changes (which is like 3-5 seconds). Also, the sound during combat is atrocious as you are bombarded with a roaring mass of Japanese voice actors all speaking at once because there's anywhere from 2-5 characters on screen and they all speak during each attack. Its almost unbearable (reminder that this game is 41 chapters with each one taking around an hour).

Finally, out of all the characters in the game, the only two who I can honestly say I disliked were the only PXZ originals: Kogoro and Mii. They were bland characters with boring designs and empty motivations. They were a waste of time, just like this game.

This game is like playing a bad, 50 hour long anime. Don't bother. 2/5.

P.S: I've heard Project X Zone 2 is better, but after this trainwreck, I'm not sure I want to even try it.