Project X Zone is a title that piqued my interest when it was first revealed. I followed every bit of news with guarded curiosity and the hope that the game might make it overseas some day. By the time the international release had been announced, this interest had developed into full-blown excitement. I’m a sucker for crossovers, fighting games, and RPGs. So when you combine the three concepts together, you get a formula that empties my wallet. Unfortunately, Project X Zone, despite its unique approach to the SRPG genre, falls well below expectation.
For those who aren’t acquainted, Project X Zone brings together popular characters from Sega, Namco Bandai, and Capcom in a SRPG setting where the aforementioned characters pulverize enemies with 100-hit combos. Seeing Dante, Ryu, Yuri, X, Ulala, Jin, and KOS-MOS share the battlefield together can be the stuff dreams are made of. Regrettably, Monolith Soft and Banpresto chose to exploit this premise while completely forgetting about substance. The end product turns out to be 90% fan service and 10% SRPG.
Plot
If you are looking for a game with a compelling narrative, you will have to look elsewhere. As with pretty much all crossover games, their plot tends to involve the all-too-familiar devices of alternate universes and/or time travel in an attempt to offer some explanation of how the characters have arrived at this particular junction.
As I mentioned in my review of Fire Emblem: Awakening, people are mostly drawn to the battle system in SRPGs and not the plot; Project X Zone is no exception. The first dozen or so chapters all feature your party being whisked away to different settings from the featured franchises via rifts as they try figure out how they got there while updating new allies on the current situation. Monolith and Banpresto didn’t really seem like they cared much for the plot either, but it comes across as really lazy work when you literally rehash the same format, chapter after chapter, for a significant portion of the game. Luckily, you can fast forward through the dialogue by pressing A while holding down the R button.
However, it’s not all bad. By acknowledging the game’s status as fan service, the gamer is treated to some humorous interaction between characters whom you would normally never see together, such as Vashyron (of Resonance of Fate fame) constantly ogling all the scantily-clad females or Frank West nonchalantly taking “erotica” pictures of said females.
Gameplay
Despite its awfully banal plot I was always prepared to write off the narrative aspect of Project X Zone due to the seemingly innovative battle system it was hawking. Alas, that turned out to be nearly as unsatisfying as a McDonalds mirage in the middle of a desert. Which is a shame because the concept truly had the potential to set itself apart from the crowd of SRPGs.
The format of the gameplay is dreadfully simple. No exploration, just chapter after chapter of a sizable chunk of dialogue to advance the plot followed by the battle. It’s fine in the beginning, but about half way through, the repetition starts to wear you down. In between chapters you’re given an intermission menu to allow you to check up on character stats, assign solo units, or equip weapons/accessories that you’ve obtained from battle. Unfortunately, if you’re the type who enjoys taking their time to optimize equipment and create tactics, there isn’t a ton of depth in here, a sentiment shared for the battle system as well.
Like most SRPGs, battles are fought on an isometric grid that you can zoom in/out or rotate using the d-pad. All units are deployed on the field at the beginning of the battle, unlike in games such as Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem where you have to choose which units will be on the battlefield. The characters fight in pre-defined pairs; for example, Ryu and Ken, X and Zero, Jin and Xiaoyu. Each unit can have a solo unit attached to them. These are essentially support characters who you can summon in battle to attack and offer passive and active skills. If two pair units are in close proximity to one another, the other pair can also be called in to support you during the fight, allowing for a maximum of five characters on-screen to dish out damage.
Apart from HP, the characters’ collective XP gauge (not to be confused with experience) is probably the single most important thing in the battle. XP is consumed to revive fallen characters (and no, there’s no permadeath), to use character skills (such as heal an ally, increase your range, nullify blocks, etc.), battle responses (these are options that can be used when you’re about to be attacked and allow you to either counter or defend), and super attacks. The gauge is filled up simply by attacking. For the astute observer, you can already tell that there isn’t a lot of strategy involved and the mantra to success is, “Attack! Attack! Attack!” It doesn’t help much that Project X Zone is quite an easy game to begin with (the only way to lose a battle is if a pre-specified unit is KOed or the entire party is down, but you’d have to be pretty irresponsible for that to happen); however, it’s disappointing to see that the entire battle system really boils down to how well you conserve and use the gauge. I’m not sure how or why but Monolith/Banpresto managed to take the strategy out of SRPG. Perhaps to accommodate newer players at the expense of RPG veterans.
Yet despite all of this, I would still be willing to overlook Project X Zone’s flaws if the fight mechanic had some depth to it. When I first saw videos of it in action, it seemed like the perfect mix. Most SRPGs give you a passive role as an observer once you choose a unit to attack, but Project X Zone allows you to directly affect the outcome of a fight rather than leave it to statistics and computations. The videos showed off these action-packed fights with characters pulling off ridiculous combos as they juggle opponents in mid-air, as if you were playing an SRPG version of Tekken. It was this fusion of the fighting game genre and SRPGs that had me all excited. I was expecting traditional directional inputs, like quarter-circle or half-circle movements, to reinforce the hybridization of the genres and create a highly technical battle system. Instead, gamers are treated to a grossly simplified system where combos are pulled off simply by pressing the A button or with any of the four directional inputs. You’re allowed to use these attacks a certain number of times during each fight and by using each attack once you’re able to gain a free, extra attack. All this does is add to the game’s ubiquitous theme of monotony, because after all, who doesn’t love free stuff? The one technical concept that I will give them credit for is having to time an attack precisely before the enemy touches the ground in order to score critical hits.
Visuals
If you were hoping that Project X Zone would make up for its conceptual shortcomings by blowing you away in the visual department, you might be slightly disappointed. Having played Shin Megami Tensei IV right before, the difference in the quality of the overall package and especially the presentation of the game is almost palpable. Visually, it almost looks as if it could be on the DS or the PSP. However, given the sheer number of characters packed in the game it is understandable that it would take considerably more time and effort. The sprites look nice and the animation during the super attacks are well done.
SRPGs visuals tend to benefit considerably by 3D. Unfortunately, Project X Zone’s use of the 3D slider offers nothing drastic nor does it accentuate the backdrop’s beauty, like Fire Emblem: Awakening does.
Audio
The audio, on the other hand, provides a nice trip down nostalgia lane. The soundtrack features theme music of the characters in the game when it’s their turn to attack. Other than this, the game features Japanese voice-overs that are fittingly done. If you’re disappointed by the absence of a dual-track audio or even just English voice-overs, considering that the game was hardly a candidate for localization when it was announced, I think most people would be fine with the audio option.
Conclusion
Admittedly, I’ve been quite cynical about Project X Zone in this review, but this frustration is born out of the fact that the concept behind the game could have been truly innovative; however, any potential was marred by poor (or lazy?) execution. It’s not as if it’s unplayable or anything but my main gripe is that it’s just gratuitous fan service masquerading as a mediocre SRPG when it could have been so much more. By now the 3DS’ library has grown large enough where your $40 can be spent better on an alternative purchase, such as the far superior SRPG experience found in Fire Emblem: Awakening. If you’re a fan of crossovers and the franchises represented in this game, Project X Zone is worth a look; but at the most it’s a rental.
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