2.5/5 ★ – AvatarAang's review of CrossCode.

I'm very mixed on the game. I really enjoyed the game up to the second dungeon. The characters are great, expressive, and well-written. The world is really intriguing from a sci-fi perspective, as it is a game-within-a-game. The music is great and I look forward to every new area to hear the next song (Bergen Pass is my favorite so far!). I have heard many people bring up Crosscode as a Zelda-like, but I disagree. It is more similar to Secret of Mana for the SNES. And that isn't a bad thing! For many hours, I felt like it was what Secret of Mana wanted to be but executed much better. And it does have Zelda-esque dungeons. But all the amazing presentation in the world cannot cover up how miserable the gameplay becomes. It takes a while to creep up, but by the second dungeon (the desert one) the flaws in the level design become very apparent and the game stops being fun. Imagine a Zelda dungeon in which every room has not one brain-bending puzzle, but THREE. And these puzzles are timed, and they require quick reflexes and perfect execution. Now on top of that, every dungeon has nine/ten rooms per floor, and three-five floors per dungeon. And on top of all of that, every puzzle is a combination of block puzzles and the Seed Shooter from Zelda's Oracle of Ages, which you have to aim in certain directions to ricochet off of walls. It's just...too much! Every dungeon becomes a huge multi-hour grind of room after room, puzzle after puzzle. The nail in the coffin for me is that the game expects you to level grind. The whole game is themed on an MMO, which is awesome, except in order to be authentic they included necessary level grinding and side quests between main story progression. I fought everything I came across but avoided side quests and was underleveled throughout the game. The point where I had to quit, at least for now, was Autumn Fall where, after slogging through the second dungeon and pulling my hair out at the boss, I discovered that all my attacks did marginal damage to the regular enemies in the new area. I can't do it anymore, guys. This is a game I really enjoyed for a period and want to love. But it is one of those games where the game design is so flawed that I can't.