In that way, as well as some of the artistic design, it is strongly reminiscent of Secret of Mana. Wandering around the CrossWorld is fairly open, with large discrete sections of the map having multiple exits into differing sections. The world traversal is somewhere between Zelda and Secret of Mana. This is particularly true when it comes to dungeon and world design. To make the disjointed pace even more apparent, the last half of the world story seems a little rushed as compared to the first half. Granted, you do learn a whole lot about what is actually going on with Lea and the game world during that time, but it is far from a smooth transition. It halts the game world story entirely and goes on for at least an hour too long.
The only other issue I have with the story is the giant digression that happens midway through the game. But because they are trying to do both things, even that dialogue tries to work on both a narrative and meta-narrative level. As you would expect with an MMORPG, even a faux one, there is a whole lot of optional dialogue that can help flesh out the world. Each element is good in their own right, but never quite reaches the level of great. One of my minor complaints about CrossCode is that it tries to do so many things with the story that none of them end up being as fleshed out as they could be. If these multiple layers of story sound like a whole lot to take on in one game, you are not wrong. The story within the world of CrossCode is trope-heavy but still interesting. I was a little surprised that we didn’t cover the game at the time of release, but now is a great time to cast some more light on it, especially with the recent release of the major 1.1 update. I don’t personally speedrun the game, but I have played through it casually twice and have watched at least a dozen speedruns. As someone who is fairly involved in the speedrunning community I like to keep up with hot new entries, and CrossCode has had one of the most active running communities for a new game not developed by FromSoftware (shout outs to The Messenger community as well). What finally convinced me to jump in was watching speedruns of the game. But I had to hold off due to time commitments. And the pixel design definitely did nothing to dissuade me, reminding me of the fantastic Cosmic Star Heroine. The Action-RPG combat style combined with an MMORPG story had me intrigued. While I was too busy to play it at the time of release, it was a game that had my immediate interest. I’m happy to finally be able to review CrossCode for Operation Rainfall. Deck13, WhisperGames, DANGEN Entertainment, Mayflower Entertainment
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