Project X Zone Review

Project X Zone is the Ultimate crossover featuring Namco, Capcom and Sega characters, with the help of Monolith Soft (Makers of Xenosaga & Xenoblade) and a Japanese toy company for whatever reason. The game is a follow up to the previous game, Namco X Capcom that never shipped outside Japan.

Your main duo of the game stars as a detective who is a Ninjutsu master, Kogoro Tenzai and her student who is also a cheerleader named Mii Koryuji (Yes, her name is Mii) The game starts off with them outside Mii's home, until monsters have appeared, not knowing what was going on, the game puts you in the shoes of the fan favorite well known characters, once that is done, you return with the Kogoro & Mii while Chun Li & Morrigan appear in the area, they decided to work together and a foe appeared wanting to capture Mii, a trio wanting to capture Mii and harnes her 'Power' Drei Belanos & Eins Belanos and the one who is behind it all, Due Flabellum.

Then, you are off to a very long adventure. You will meet a whole bunch of familiar Namco and Capcom characters, not so much on Sega's familiar characters such as Sonic, Nights or Beat, but Sega published games that looks more serious that look more Japanese than anything. There are so many characters to list its amazing they were brought to the game, villains from these franchises return as bosses. The Chapter names reference a game in Capcom, Namco or Sega series.

Gameplay

The game plays like an RPG, but a fighting game as well, what I mean is that when you move your character to attack a certain enemy, you don't have a turn base style game, you are thrown in 2D and you have several attacks, these attacks can lead to juggling, ground bouncing and wall bouncing similar to Street Fighter, when you time your attacks just right when your opponent is about to hit the ground, you are rewarded by gaining critical hits, your damage color is yellow and you can hear a crowd yelling. So basically there is hype in the game, risk & reward, some attacks can also stun, poison or dizzy your opponent but having a low %, if you have an assist, or an ally near you, when you call for their aid and both of you hit the target at the same time, you'll enter a cross state, leaving your opponent in the same spot while it gets tenderized by your attacks. There is a XP meter that can be used in multiple ways, use it to counter, defend, full defend, revive. super moves, All characters have their own abilities including Assist characters like stat bonus for 1 turn, movement expansion, attack expansion, healing, juggle fixing, alot of things you can do that can hold up to 100XP but you can maximize it to 150 by using the cross attack.

Visuals

There isn't anything spectacular like Resident Evil Revelation style graphics, the environment is.....Not that impressive. What is impressive is the artwork, the Intro is done by Akira Amemiya, the director behind Gurren Lagann. Its very pleasing to see these characters brought back in a new game with different artists, the sprite animations capture the exact same move sets from what they originated from with no changes. The super moves are eye catching that you would want to save a replay of it. Also there is alot of fan service......Not kidding, almost all females have fanservice supers like pointing to their butt and then their face or have their breasts jiggle for no reason. I could do without it but its there for you creepy perverts out there.

Sound

I really love how they remixed every theme from a series, all of them are not left out. The origional soundtrack for the game is great, not very exiting but 3 or 5 tracks can make you exited.

Overall

This is a tough one, I both liked and disliked the game while playing 30 hours into it. Let me explain what I mean,

When you are thrown into battle, the game does not allow you to select your units on who can go first, it randomizes from top to bottom, your character that goes first most of the time is Zephyr while the last is Frank West.

There is no player or enemy turns, you have to face up to the randomized enemy units that half of the time do nothing because your characters are farther away.

There are so many enemies that spawn simply because you have 1 duo or assist that joins your battle, or a random boss shows up out of no where. This is the part were you grind, but it gets repetative facing the same generic grunt from a series over and over and over again.

Bosses get reused. You killed Aya-Me? Get use to seeing her revived 5 times in a row in 20 chapters, you think you killed that human bunny thing? He's back in 3 or 4 more chapters. Worried that you only have to focus on facing 1 boss? No they'll spawn Seth, Phantom, Vile, and Nemesis at the same time. By the Way Aya-Me is back did you miss her?

The story is ALL OVER THE PLACE! They are trying to capture Mii and stop the heroes, when a boss shows up, they say they he or she is going to stop you, when you beat them, they simply say "Darn! This is too much, I need to retreat" Then the heroes of the series ask "Wait! Tell me what you are planning!" or "Wait! How are you even alive! We stopped you in ________!" Their response is always "Ah Ah Ah, I can't reveal that answer, you just have to play more chapters to find out why."

These irritated me so much, its not a bad game by all means its just not really well executed or any thought on their decisions. I still had alot of fun doing those supers and seeing games from other series communicate like the cast of Resonance of Fate chatting with Lady from Devil May Cry in a battle. Its only meant for certain gamers not all. I'm still glad we got it in the West so thank you Namco & Hadara for localizing it.

Also if you want to get the game simply because X from Mega Man X is in it........Good luck playing 20 chapters.

Project X Zone gets a 7 out of 10.