Hi, Lea, Hi! CrossCode! Bye!

[JBear]

Some of those final dungeon puzzles had me STUMPED. One of the earlier ones (the shock/frost one on the first floor, I think?) took me easily at least an hour to figure out, which, once I realized the solution I felt sorta dumb, but also not really because they were fuckin hard. I'm pretty certain at least one of them I did "wrong", because there was a bunch of stuff laying around that I didn't even utilize.

Similar experience here, although I don't think I actually succeeded in doing any of them wrong (although that certainly didn't stop me from trying):

Even 70 hours into this game, I'm apparently not above banging my head against a puzzle for 20 minutes, only to realize that I'm doing things the wrong way. It happened twice in the final dungeon. >_< (The puzzles in this game are aces.)

For me, the one I spent the most time trying to brute force was the one where the game wants you to shoot an ice disc around a 90 corner by using a charged wave shot to penetrate the wall above it. The other one was the exact one you detail above, which I did eventually figure out how to do correctly:

Spoiler: Puzzle solution

First, to free the block, you just walk up and knock the bomb south-east with a normal shot, then use a fire shot to send it to the right and break the rocks. Then you solve the rest of the puzzle my moving the teleport block to the far west portal, hitting the bomb to the right with a normal shot so that it lands on the block, and then teleporting the block around so that it's next to rocks when the bomb explodes.

 

[chady]

I just finished this! It was definitely worth 3 weeks of my free time, and I'll happily play whatever DLC they release for it on PS4.

The puzzles in the final dungeon were devious, but I'm pretty sure I solved them all in the intended fashion. I almost always struggled with the ones that involved shooting a large wave ball through walls, because I would always forget that I could do that.

 

[SabreCat]

I just started playing this, as the next in my casual list of "RPGs available on Xbox Game Pass that look interesting".

I must say, this is the most adorable, clever, expressive take on the "silent protagonist" trope I've ever encountered.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I finally came back and played some more of this game! Spent some time romping through the jungle before meeting back up with Émilie and Tronny and running the lightning element dungeon. I have to say, I was honestly pretty touched by the reunion with Émilie. The writing in this game really works for me and I find myself really caring about the characters - hell, even Apollo isn't completely without his merits. Anyway, the lightning dungeon was generally fun, although there are times when I feel like the game's puzzles ask an awful lot of the player. The final room before the boss fight was some straight-up kaizo shit, having to guide the charged ball through a somewhat long series of maneuvers to open the door. I didn't have a lot of trouble with the boss, which I was happy about, because I'm often a little underleveled and I sometimes find the combat to be a little punishing. Now it's time to see what's in the temple on the right side - so far it looks like it's the mysterious power station that was supposedly the source of the evil black kitties that were infesting the alien village. I'm curious to see if this part ends up being as long as the lightning temple was, because running three dungeons back to back seems like kind of a lot.

 

[SabreCat]

Haha! Managed to trip a bug that locked up my autosave in cutscene limbo:

EDIT: Hmm, Twitch highlight embed causing trouble?

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/797813455

for a manual URL to visit.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Oh wow, they really do give you two back-to-back element dungeons, huh? I guess that means the story is about to kick into high gear, and I am here for it.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Man, every boss in this game is like 25% harder than I want it to be. After taking down Sephisloth on my 5th try, I'm now inside the great stonking tree where I have to fight Man Cat the cat man. As with basically every boss fight, there is a pattern to be followed three times that gets harder with each go around. What that means in practice is that I always die right at the end when the damage starts piling on too quickly for me to heal, then I have to replay the easy parts of the fight again, which feel pretty rote compared to the hard part. None of the fights so far has completely stumped me, so I haven't been too tempted to change the difficulty level, but they all ask a little more effort from me than I generally want to make. I don't mind the battles with smaller enemies so much, since those tend to be short even when they're difficult, but I kind of dread entering boss arenas. It's too bad, because I really like the story and world of this game and I'd like to see more of them, but the boss fights are kind of sapping my motivation. I have to force myself to sit down and play, so progress has been pretty slow lately. Putting three temples back-to-back-to-back is also a little iffy on the pacing front, IMO.

 

[Kalir]

I have to wonder if I specced wrong and there's ways to just completely delete entire healthbars.

 

[SabreCat]

I'm not quite that far along, but my #1 a-ha about surviving boss fights was realizing that changing elemental modes affects your defense as well as your offense. A viewer on stream further pointed out that you can change elemental modes from the radial menu, which pauses the action, giving a slight breather when you need to change things up. I was getting absolutely wrecked by the giant ice robot and the fire moth until I got into the habit of switching to the same element as the boss uses (or neutral) when I wasn't actively swinging with its weakness.

 

[DFalcon]

I got this in the Steam winter sale and just finished it. To avoid burying the lede, I had a lot of fun.

Generally I agree with the criticisms above. I wouldn't normally call myself great at action games, but even for that it seemed like I was beating my head against some of those bosses and long fight sequences for pretty long, and having to work all the way through to the pattern I was having trouble with was annoying. (This was particularly painful when I would reliably get through one bar of ape, all three bars of whale, then get killed by post-whale ape, though I think I hit it to some degree on just about every boss.)

Making consumables take time to use and get canceled if you get hit during that time also felt pretty punitive - especially for the buffs, am I really going to use the one breathing space I have in a cycle to get +10% stats? Or give up my chance to attack, drawing things out even further? Lea taking a moment to eat is cute and thematic and all, but that was a pain.

With that out of my system, I reiterate it was a lot of fun. Puzzles and exploration were very inventive and engaging, story was great, everyone should play.

 

[DFalcon]

I would also like to thank @JBear for the mention of end-game easter eggs it didn't occur to me to check for. Laser bridge! Best bridge!

 

[JBear]

Looks good, but I don't know if I've been away from the game too long at this point to want to dip back in or not. I guess we'll see!

 

[q 3]

How much money could they make by adding the DLC, Let Lea say Fuck

 

[StriderDL]

I was really hot on this game but then I got to the jungle and it just is so....noisy. Like my brain gets locked up trying to look for the spots to jump up but it's all so busy. It's causing me to feel a bit burned out.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I loved the start of this game, but honestly it’s just a little too demanding of the player in every aspect. Exploration, combat and puzzles all take a lot of effort, and there are times when I wish I could just coast a little. I’ve been stalled just past the jungle area for a while now, and I keep meaning to go back, but I have a hard time motivating myself. The story and characters are great, and I’d really like to see how things end up playing out!

 

[MrBlarney]

Meanwhile, on my end, I decided to pick up an endgame save last night to reacquaint myself with the game mechanics before deciding if I should buy the DLC now or not. I end up playing almost four hours just mashing buttons, farming rare materials, and finding treasures that I had missed my first time through the game. It's kind of surprising, since I don't think I really did much grinding or excessive treasure hunting in my original playthrough. Once I'm done with all of my gear upgrading, I'll probably replay the end of the final chapter and go straight into the DLC. Even though there'll probably be some gear in the new content that'll quickly obsolete what I'm currently putting together.

 

[StriderDL]

I pushed on to Sapphire Ridge, but I had to put it down. Those bugs are murdering me and I do not have the patience right now to learn how to fight them. Honestly I don't know that I'll come back.

 

[Cyrael]

Started this up a few nights ago! It is incredibly charming and cute and I love the writing.

The gameplay though has already gotten less fun in Chapter 3. I struggle with the platforming/jumping aspects quite a bit and already a lot of the quests are 'find these uncommon/rare drops for me'.... which like, I get it's supposed to be an MMO. Breezing past enemies has already put me at a lower level than I think they expect me to be so I feel like I might need to grind it out a bit to survive.

I'm going to give it another night to see if it clicks better, but there are already too many games to play to keep with it if I am not enjoying it.

 

[Aeonus]

There's a "Accessibility" page in the Options that contains sliders to reduce damage, enemy attack frequency, and slow down timing puzzles.
I for one found the game more enjoyable when I turned them down a bit, and recommend anyone thinking about putting the game down due to its difficulty try messing with those first before giving up.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I should maybe try the reduce damage one, I honestly hate how quickly Lea can die during battles. Maybe if I effectively have 25% more HP I'll find it easier to breeze through? I'm definitely not interested in min-maxing, I just want to see the rest of the story (and I think I can handle the puzzles, even if they are pretty hard).

 

[q 3]

I literally almost quit the game on the very final puzzle until I gave in and slowed puzzle speeds to 80%, which did the trick. Couldn't have been happier with that decision! (But seriously, all the puzzles and platforming segments that require you to start over from the beginning if you mess up once are pretty bad. I'd take a "rewind 2 seconds" ability over any of the other difficulty options.)

 

[JBear]

I really liked all of the big elaborate Rube Goldberg puzzle rooms, and that one was my favourite.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Well over a year after starting, and with several breaks along the way, I finally finished CrossCode! And I got the bad ending =[ =[ =[. Overall, I think I stand by my earlier comments: this game is incredible in a lot of ways, but it also asks more of the player than most people will want to give it. Combat is extremely challenging, the puzzles are total mindbenders, there are tons of elemental interactions that you have to remember how to use and the gear system is a little overwhelming. In the end, I wound up turning the combat damage way down and even slowed the puzzle speed for the last couple rooms, because I really wanted to see how the story ended and I was out of patience for the difficult boss fights and complex puzzles. Despite my gripes, the story and characters were so completely endearing that this game will always have a special place in my heart, even though I’ll never have the patience to play it again.

That said, I do apparently have one important quest to go back and check out, plus there’s the DLC that just dropped. Has anyone tried it out? I kind of need to see where the story goes from here, so I might just load it up before my flight home on Tuesday.

 

[narcodis]

I played thru the game on the Switch so I haven't been able to check out the DLC yet. Though I am looking forward to it, CrossCode is one of my favs that I've played in the past several years.

 

[MrBlarney]

By "DLC that just dropped", I'm going to assume you mean the extra chapters past the base game's final boss found in the A New Home DLC released earlier this year. True to what I mentioned earlier in the thread, I replayed the finale of the base game before moving on to the DLC. I quite enjoyed the DLC, but it's worth mentioning that it's really just more of the same base CrossCode gameplay. There's nothing in there that really changes it up, but if you enjoyed the flow of combat and puzzles (both in the traditional dungeon sense, and the environmental navigation sort), then there's also nothing in the DLC that will detract from your enjoyment of the added content.

If your main appeal to CrossCode is the characters and story, they do get additional development and resolution. But a big part of the DLC is in the combat and the expansive final dungeon. The final boss is a very tough test; it took me quite a few tries to beat, and I exited the dungeon to upgrade my equipment as well. For the best equipment, you can expect to do some grinding of enemies and environment objects in order to get the required drops. So if your main appeal to the game is the characters and story, the value of the DLC becomes a bit more marginal.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Well I decided to get the DLC anyway, even though I was only really interested in the character/story aspects of it. I played through the first 3-4 hours on my trip home last week, and even if I stop there I think it will have been worth the purchase just to get a proper ending to the story. The main game leaves things at a pretty unsatisfying point IMO, and the first hour or so of the DLC kind of feels like it should have been included all along. After that, it starts to branch out a bit into subjects that I think are worth exploring, but which stand apart from the main story a little more.

Without spoiling the specifics, the DLC adds a new area that I have enjoyed exploring, along with some sidequests that are a little more varied than the ones you get in the main game. I haven't gotten to the (supposedly massive) new dungeon, and honestly it might be some time before I do, since I mostly seem to play this game when I'm on public transit of some kind. Story-wise, if you would like to know more about lingering questions such as the secret lives of evotars or what the heck happened to C'tron, then you'll be happy with where this goes. If you thought the main game's ending cut things off a little abruptly and would just like to get a better sense of closure, then maybe watch a playthrough of the first hour or so and call it a day.

 

[FelixSH]

I started playing this. The first positive impression was, that the artstyle reminds me a lot of Megadrive games, and due to this being a sci-fi RPG, it reminds me of Phantasy Star IV (which I now want to play, and actually beat). It looks beautiful, and feels very fluid, in motion.

I've reached the hub town, and went out into the western area for a bit, just three screens to do two of the quests, for now. It just takes time to look around the city, talk to everyone and read all the encyclopedia entries.

I'm still not too comfortable with the controls - simply running around and hitting stuff is fine, but I really have to think about shooting and blocking (and completely forgot that I even could dodge). I hope the combat doesn't get too hard? With multiple enemies, it seems a bit confusing too, so much stuff going on.

Definitely looking forward to playing more. Love the puzzles.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I’m going to warn you right now that the combat actually does get pretty hard. The game also has some decently robust difficulty sliders, so you can choose to make the combat easier without adjusting puzzle difficulty and vice versa. Toward the end of the game, I dropped the damage dealt by enemies down, which made things a lot more enjoyable. The default difficulty is quite hard and assumes you’ll be very proficient with all the moves by the late game. Shouldn’t be too obnoxious for the first half, though, even at default settings.

 

[FelixSH]

Thanks, I will try to learn how to actually fight effectively. If I'm too bad at it (might be, the controls simply are more complicated, tham is generally comfortable for me), I'll turn down the difficulty.

 

[FelixSH]

Now that I'm home again regularly, I want to actually play this game. Playing it feels good, but the giant fields are a bit exhausting. I'm always unsure, if I found everything and got everywhere. I did find a pretty nice sword (plus a cave nearby, with not much in it but monsters), so exploration is the correct thing to do, I'm just a bit overwhelmed by the size of the maps.

Still bad at combat, I constantly forget that I can dodge, and only sometimes remember my shield. Hopefully, I will get better at this.

I would ask, if the sidequests are worth doing, but I'm doing them anyway. Simply can't ignore them, at least for now. But it seems like, with enough exploration, they will be solved as a sideproduct of the exploration, so doesn't seem like a problem.

Edit: After dying a few times, I finally killed Sonic. Love the silly, little references in this game. I think it already made me better, because I actually used my dodge move.

Also, I finally understand the thread title. Took me long enough.