Project X Zone

Do you remember that time, back in the 80s, when He-Man, and the Thundercats teamed up with the Autobots to defend the Ghostbusters offices from a spider that lived under the garden shed? This is the basic premise of Project X Zone. If I’m honest I find the prospect of a strategy RPG starring characters from a huge array of Namco, Capcom & Sega properties a little hard to process. It just sounds a little too good to be true, and to a degree it is.

Project X Zone sees groups of characters from different game franchises on a dimension-hopping adventure. The goodies fight the baddies and occasionally the baddies switch sides. While the conversations between battles are often nonsense they do serve as an excellent fan-service delivery mechanism. From what I can tell, if characters have met in any previous crossover title such Marvel Vs Capcom, Street Fighter X Tekken, Namco X Capcom, etc. then they will already be acquainted in this game. Similarly some unrelated games appear to exist in the same world, and in the case of the single player JRPG/MMO simulator .hack, the virtual game within that game is know to characters from other worlds because they play it.

The heroes and villains you meet along the way are as confused as you.

Mass crossover games generally work best in fighting games, where the standard Worlds Collide narrative is no more ridiculous than the genre standard. The story in Project X Zone uses that standard as its template. The heroes and villains you meet along the way are as confused as you but by the time you’ve given up caring about the reason for all this dimension hopping you’ll find yourself craving more and more of the simple but extremely rewarding combat.

Each chapter starts out with a selection of paired up heroes entering a battle area and having a bit of a chat before some monsters appear. These monsters are also pulled from various franchises and are often mixed up and disparate from their surroundings. Hero pairs are fixed but can have a solo assisting character assigned to them. In addition, adjacent pairs can also be chosen as further assisting units.

I’ll give an example of a typical encounter to try and ease your furrowed brow. Ryu and Ken are partners and I have assigned Space Channel 5‘s Ulala as their solo assist. When in combat range of a Nemesis from Resident Evil they start their attack. Because they are also standing adjacent to the paired unit of Yuri and Estelle from Tales of Vesperia they will act as their paired assist. Each pair will unlock up to five attacks that are selected with a single button press modified with the d-pad. The attack will play out once triggered and will continue until you have used up all your attacks for the encounter. The trick to winning is the order and the timing of your attacks. Keeping the enemy juggled will raise your combo meter, earn you more experience, and potentially cause more damage. Assist attacks can be triggered at any time in tandem with these standard attacks and can result in up to five characters wailing on a single enemy at once. Topping this off is your Cross Meter that charges as damage is dealt. Once full you can unleash a powerful dual screen-filling Cross Attack.

This level of detail and control over the turn-based combat is the real beauty of the game. Testing out which attacks and units work well in pairs and unleashing a ballet of attacks is extremely rewarding and a joy to watch. It feels as though the game has been made simply to delight fans of the included franchises. The attention to detail and beautifully animated sprites work perfectly together and manage to retain their individual styles while not seeming out of place when joined in combat.