CrossCode (2018)

Man, I really wanna love this game because it feels so nice to play, but the game is way too difficult even with the difficulty scaled down, and that's after spending hours grinding this week.

I can tolerate grinding if there's a strong story driving the story forward, but I'm several hours in, now in the first big dungeon, and the plot is going nowhere. If Sword Art Online is a poor imitation of .hack, then the story of this one is somehow a poor imitation of SAO. Like I get where it's trying to go, but it's so SLOW.

I'm probably gonna bounce in this one, I'm kind of getting frustrated and fed up. I hate games that waste my time.

Going into the final dungeon. This game is batshit crazy, hands down the toughest game I've played in so long. I LOVE the brain-breaking puzzles, and finding treasure chest and platforming around and exploring while smashing bad guys and plants is so satisfying.

I recommend this to people who truly enjoy brain-teasers. The bosses are hard enough - but you quickly figure out that the real challenge lay with the obtuse puzzles that will have you scratching your head for hours!

Anyway, I did some gear upgrading and what-not, power-leveled up a bit, and so far about a half an hour into the final dungeon, I've been destroying everything in my path with reckless abandon. Putting on gear with HP Regen was a really good idea.

A friend gifted me this, and I've been putting a pretty good amount of time into it. It's been a nice time so far.

I was a bit wary at first of the fact that the game's story is set in an MMO, yet one of the things that surprised me is just how well the game seems to understand the ways in which an MMO can be comfy. For example, in Autumn's Rise, the first real non-town area of the game, you encounter this guy just hanging out by some water:

As you talk to him, he continues, saying:

I've gotten way past Autumn's Rise already, but it's still my favorite area. So I come back here to relax when I'm getting frustrated with the game.

It's a simple statement, yet it makes me feel strangely nostalgic. It brings me back to the first MMO I ever played. There were times when my friends and I, when we weren't grinding, questing, or PvPing, we'd just go back to the starter areas to chill. We'd just sit there, and chat a bit, and look out on the landscape.

Those are happy memories for me, and I'm glad to be reminded of them.

Been at the endgame for about 3 days now. Alternating between grinding out some arena runs, trying to explore all of the areas, nab all the chests, get all the hidden items and buy the "Boosters" to make the enemies more difficult, etc.

I have to say, my build is absolute shit. One thing that I've noticed throughout my 40 hour playthrough so far is that I never have great gear. The vendors have good gear, but it always requires some insane amount of items that I just don't have. And I attack EVERY bush I see, like lady at the Brazilian waxing place.

An excellent quality of life update would be the ability to flag crafting items that you need, and a quick reference of where to find those items. What constantly ends up happening is I need item A and item B, but I forget which shrubs I should be targeting to find them. So, I have to keep opening menu > Records > Botanist > R button over to the correct area > scroll down, etc etc etc. It's exhausting and I just get distracted and forget what I was even looking for.

I'm doing so little damage at this point that the arena battles take ages, and I get cut down pretty fast. I'm mostly spec'd as a Brawler so maybe that's normal, maybe I need higher defense? I just can't get any good gear.

Currently level 56 and my gear level average is 49. Far too low.

I can't accurately portray how happy this game has made me in my 35 hours so far. I never play games for this long without getting to the point of "when is this going to end?" Although it also helps that I don't have a lot of games in my queue.

I just got to the final chapter, and reached that incredible point in RPGs where you can cross the "point of no return" and hit the endgame, or level up, get the perfect gear setup, etc. Luckily, CrossCode provides several options for getting ready for the endgame (as CrossCode itself takes place inside of an MMORPG), including an Arena, which has all kinds of awards like better gear.

I am excited to finish this game, but only in the sense that I'm going to be wrapping up a huge journey I've been on for about two months now. There's some DLC from what I understand and as of this writing, I'm still planning on partaking.

Well guys, I am an idiot. Yesterday I posted about how frustrating CrossCode was getting (specifically, the boss of the second dungeon). Turns out, I had an entire Circuit and 28 POINTS to assign to upgrades, including a huge increase in defense, melee attack, HEAT RESISTANCE (the idiot throws fire at you and I kept getting burned status) and OH YEAH a 30% increase in Elemental cooldown, which allows you to use your ice spell without it running out of energy. So basically all the things I needed to beat the boss, I had on me the whole time, just never activated it.

In other words, I was playing Solitaire with half a deck. Assigned my points and beat the boss in 4 minutes on the first try. Can't believe what a goofball I am.

Anyway, on to the next area!

I finally made it to the boss of the second dungeon, the Faj'ro Temple. This game is no joke. I've also come to realize I cannot play this game unless I am absolutely sober - the puzzles and the battles in this dungeon require laser precision and focus. No joke, I had two beers last night during the Super Bowl, tried playing afterwards, and I just couldn't pull off the complex controller maneuvers to get through these puzzles.

Seriously! Check out this gameplay vid @ about 13:00

Here's another part that just about sent me into a ragequit no less than a dozen times @ 39:30:

You need to correctly angle your ice shots to go through that little machine, while the enemy number steadily increases, and actually get more difficult to the point they're shooting laser beams at you. If you die at any time, you start over completely. This was a really rough one.

Anyway, so I'm stuck at the final boss currently, although I think I need to do a quick level grind so I can get a boost to my ice spells.

I need to spread these temples across multiple days, because I actually feel a slow but sure build-up of stress as I play. The warnings I received were legit.

Played CrossCode for 3 hours straight last night. This is going to be quite a ride - I'm getting some vibes back to a mobile game from ages ago called "Zenonia", not to mention all the beautiful SNES games from a bygone era. Such a fun game, really looking forward to playing this more.

I also really like the puzzles, looking forward to getting into the next dungeon.

really good game from what i can remember. a lot of things to accomplish, many of them hard enough to scratch that egotistical itch we all have, but also completely optional for those of us who have no itch except io.

i don't remember exactly why i stopped playing, but i have vague memories of it starting to get too hard for me, especially the bosses. i did tune down the combat difficulty and that was better, but my interest in the rest of the game fizzled out still. the fact that i can only remember two characters probably says something about that lol. but whether that's my problem or boring design on the dev's side, i can't rightfully say, not having played past the first half and all. maybe next time's the charm!