Crosscode is itself set in a fictional video game called Crossworlds. A fully immersive VR MMORPG, whose players are tasked with exploring a mysterious world called Shadoon. They fight enemies, take on quests, and band together with other players to tackle daunting raids. However, all is not well within this ground-breaking MMO world. Something that becomes abundantly clear as our protagonist enters the picture.
We take control of Lea. An amnesiac girl who is a sentient Crossworlds avatar, created in a lab by a kindly scientist for unknown reasons. An attempt at tutorializing the mechanics is then rudely interrupted when strangers invade the facility, looking to steal her away. Lea is then artificially added into Crossworlds, where she must pretend to be a regular player. Working towards the game's objectives, while in actuality helping your creator achieve his goals from within the game.
As someone who loves MMO games despite no longer having the time for them, I loved this angle. Crosscode does a wonderful job at simulating the appeals of an MMO with none of the frustrations. Its world is a series of monster-infested fields connecting towns that act as quest hubs. These quests regularly take the form of simplistic tasks like slaying monsters, acquiring certain reagents, or finding (hidden) objects and people out in the world. While you're doing so, Crosscode has fake players journeying alongside you. Some as actual NPCs you can talk to, but most just happen to be doing their own things. They're traveling, platforming, or idling in safe spots. It makes the world feel alive. Like people are actually playing this supposed MMO.
As Lea you follow the main plot thread of Crossworlds. This takes you on a journey through its world with the aim of tackling key quests and a series of mainline dungeons. Though you're of course free to do as many side-quests as you please. Along the way you make friends that can become helpful party members and steadily unravel the mystery of why Lea was made.
Lea is a so-called Spheromancer. A hybrid class that can rapidly string together combos in close range, but then also seamlessly switch to fighting at range with powerful projectiles. Combat feels powerful and frenetic. Your attacks come out fast while you dodge between foes and evade their attacks. Yet it's also tactical. Crosscode is very quick with teaching you that just wailing on enemies is not going to work. A lot of foes are either immune to straightforward damage or have powerful counters that can break through your combos. You have to learn how to exploit weak points. Or to wait for an enemy to do certain moves that you can counter to "break" them, leaving them vulnerable. This only gets more complicated as you unlock various elemental attacks further into the story.
A feature that I got addicted to is chaining combat encounters. By getting into lots of fights in quick succession or bigger fights with more enemies, you fill up a meter that grades your current combat level. The higher this grade, the rarer and more frequent loot drops from enemies become. Loot that you can then trade with vendors for powerful equipment or which might be necessary for quests. It incentivizes you to play risky. Especially because you don't automatically heal while in a chain, so you have less leeway the longer you keep going for.
Its dungeons are something else entirely, though. Rather than taking inspiration from MMO raids, the dungeons you have to clear are more Zelda-inspired. They're elaborate temples with puzzle rooms that push your understanding of the game's mechanic. While also introducing new tools into your arsenal that you are then immediately challenged to experiment with.
It's a fine mix of gameplay styles and ideas that comes together very nicely. I had a great time working through Crosscode. On busy days I'd fire it up to start tackling some quests or go back to earlier areas to grab collectibles I couldn't access before. When I had time, I'd tackle a mainline quest or spend an evening working through one of the dungeons.
With that said, it's difficulty can get too spicy at times. Even if you stay on top of managing your armor and weapon upgrades, even if you diligently level up, combat remains extremely risky. Enemies can whittle down your health so quickly while their gimmicks can make fighting them an ordeal every time. In some areas I'd avoid almost every fight I could because it was just that hard. Like you'd have these samurai bugs that dodge almost every attack while hitting me for a third of my health bar each time. Those hits can combo into each other. I'd start a fight with them and be down to the final stretch of my health bar seconds later.
Other gameplay features are not exempt either. I likened the dungeons to those of the top-down Zelda titles, yet those of Crosscode are much, much harder. You got enormous rooms filled with puzzle props scattered across multiple elevations. It's a challenge figuring out what you're supposed to do, let alone how you then achieve that. Often these puzzles are then also time-sensitive or require that you reset their elements with each attempt at solving them. This design then bleeds over into the exploration, with later areas requiring you to solve elaborate platforming and physics puzzles to reach (optional) treasures. With the limited jumping controls being what they are, this frequently meant having to take elaborate (multi-screen) detours to get back to a position from which I could retry a timed platforming puzzle for the 8th time.
Not gonna lie, Crosscode is a game of many little frustrations like that. The high difficulty combined with design choices that feel like they're wasting your time can often make the game exasperating to play. We haven't even talked about the quests that make you replay the whole thing if you mess up a single part of them. Or the annoying grind for crafting materials.
There were times where I contemplated giving up on the game. Yet what kept me hooked on it were its story and characters. Lea is such a lovable protagonist first and foremost. Her being largely mute means she has to communicate through expressions and gestures, which really grows on you. She is excitable and kind, but with a cheeky side to her as well. She looks smug when people praise her achievements, gets mad when situations are complicated, and there are sad moments sprinkled throughout the story as well. Lea may be a lass of few words, but I really grew to care for her and wanted to see her story resolved.
Her relations with party members became an engrossing part of that. From the moment you enter Crossworlds proper, you end up in a team with Emilie. A short-tempered Frenchie who loves nothing more than to kick ass, but who also has the brains to navigate Crossworld's puzzles. Adventuring alongside Emilie was an absolute joy. She does a great job at helping in combat and has a lot of dialogue to comment on things that happen during those adventures. A lot of which are unique, one-off lines or special banter that changes depending on who else is in the party. It just felt so right to have Emilie there. To the point that it felt genuinely sad whenever she wasn't available.
Lea's other friends are also great. Ctron is a mage who is a little too concerned with the realism factor of the game, Apollo is a bombastic, overcompetitive guy that keeps trying to fight you, and there's a rich supporting cast as well. Characters that help out indirectly instead of partying up with you. Whose relationships with Lea develop a great deal over the course of the game.
The actual plot isn't always the most original, I admit. Several of its developments are easy to predict well ahead of time, often leaning on familiar tropes. But it has a strong emotional core in Lea and her friends that is explored very well. Crosscode takes time out of the adventure for the characters to share moments with each other, to express themselves. That combined with the story's other appeals—comedy, excitement, joy, etc—made Crosscode's story incredibly touching. It resonated so strongly with me that I scarcely noticed that I put 60 hours into it. Even if at times the combat or a puzzle or a bad quest could drag the experience down.
Crosscode is not a game for everyone. Though its fake MMO setting, cool artstyle, and endearing characters are major draws for the game, they hide a challenging experience that takes serious commitment to beat. Its puzzle dungeons are deviously hard and the difficulty of combat ramps up to a point that is admittedly not even fun anymore. It's also a very long game with a wealth of optional content on top.
I had a wonderful time with Crosscode myself. I loved the story, the gameplay, the quests, the setting, and so much else. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't occasionally piss me off as well. Every time a hard quest made me repeat too much content between attempts. Every time I had to manually reset an entire puzzle or stumbled at the end of a long platforming segment. There are many games that I stopped playing for much smaller frustrations. So it says a lot about Crosscode's qualities that it made me want to push on regardless.
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