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Picked up this up on the Switch. It's a great game! It can chug a little bit at times, and aiming with the joycons can be a bit of a hassle (especially when you need to work at really long range), but overall I'm having a blast and I hope more people discover this.
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# ? Jul 16, 2020 05:04 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 20:02 |
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This is perhaps my favorite indie game in the last decade. Everything about its design just screams love and appreciation for SNES-era ARPGs, while being incredibly polished for modern gaming sensibilies. It's always irked me that it never seems to get the recognition it deserves compared to other highly acclaimed indie titles. I hope with the wider audience that changes.
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# ? Jul 16, 2020 05:18 |
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I just finished the game! The fact that there's clearly an important epilogue leaves a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth but it was still really good. Did anyone else get huge Trails in the Sky vibes from CrossCode? I felt that a lot going in. The most important thing about the story is Lea, and it prioritizes showing Lea's personality, emotions and actions above everything else. It's a style that works really well in an RPG, I think, because you spend so much time with the character. Lea is also very expressive in a way that reminded me of the Trails cast (especially Estelle and Joshua, the protagonist and deuteragonist).
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 15:58 |
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I've just started a new game on Steam for the first time since I beat this last January, have they not added post-game story yet?
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 16:28 |
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Finally passed my old PC save on my Switch and unlocked all of the elements. Love this game, so glad it's on Switch, can't wait for the patch that fixes performance.kidcoelacanth posted:I've just started a new game on Steam for the first time since I beat this last January, have they not added post-game story yet? No, there's NG+ and then there's an upcoming paid DLC in a new area.
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 16:41 |
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EVGA Longoria posted:Finally passed my old PC save on my Switch and unlocked all of the elements. Love this game, so glad it's on Switch, can't wait for the patch that fixes performance. Dang it!
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# ? Jul 18, 2020 16:50 |
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Welp, made it to what I assume is the final boss, got halfway through to what I think is a form change.... and then the game crashed. Afraid to see how far back the auto save is.
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# ? Jul 21, 2020 19:25 |
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You should be fine. CrossCode autosaves at room transitions so you're probably right before the final boss.
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# ? Jul 21, 2020 22:38 |
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I discovered, and then bought, and then pretty much fell in love with, and then beat, this game. God drat. I know it's technically a 2018 release but this is now my current frontronner for GotY 2020, although admittedly that's kind of by default because there's basically been nothing else of note beyond FFVII-R. Good year for JRPG throwbacks one way or the other, I guess. I absolutely adore the conceit of this setting and its metatext-as-text routine it has going on everywhere. I like to say that games tell the stories of their own development, and a game like this, the way this game is, built up over years of episodic early access releases, is absolutely fascinating to me. You can practically feel the devs' priorities shifting as you move through the chapters. I love that this game manages to make the almost inevitable snark about MMO-informed quest design actually land, even though frequently there's not really much difference between the design ethos of CrossCode and, say, Borderlands (another game that attempts this kind of humour, poorly). There's a bunch of fetch quests as you'd expect/fear but the game is snappy enough minute to minute and throws enough items at you that these aren't really much of a consideration, and they seem to have at least some restraint as to when they choose to just end rather than throwing you more and more objectives. The only quest that I thought really dragged on was the hunt for the Infinite Spiral Drill, and that was, like, kind of the point of all that, it's for a souped-up endgame weapon and they're gonna make you work for it, but in the meantime you get to see Lea and friends be all "seriously?" every time definitely not Simon reveals some other world-spanning treck they have to do. They do fly a little close to the fire sometimes, like the optional boss DO_NOT_USE being legitimately kind of an awful fight, or Sergei personally chiming in to observe that Gautham might have gone a little overboard with the final puzzle room, but on the whole I think they about nailed it. I am in awe at this game's density. I mean god drat, I was warned that every screen had like two or three secrets on it but actually working my way through all these meticulously laid-out vertically rich dimensional-maze-like overworlds was something else entirely. There's this intensity to the whole production that I'm more used to seeing in a PlatinumGames final boss than JRPG level design, it's just, like, man, whoever laid all this out was going super hard, the whole time, absolutely zero chill, full power at all times always. Honestly it was exhausting just to navigate the overworld at times, because there just kept on being things to have to try and find, paths to try and unravel, weird seemingly out-of-the-way ledges to reach, around every corner, across every map. You know what this kind of design is? It's Golden Sun except how I remember it from back in the years when I played it as an idiot teenager with no real appreciation of the nuances of any of it, rather than the complete design wreck it actually was; it's laborious and painstaking and did I mention dense, but there's an elegance to its layout that makes it considerably less painful than it seems like it could have been. It made me seriously resent the handful of times something was non-obviously bound to a quest, because for most of this stuff the diligence in keeping everything grounded to jumping puzzles rather than more overt metroidvania tendencies was admirable; there's very little in the way of gating that I noticed except for all the wave jumps in Gaia's Garden. I did, like others, quickly come to broadly dislike the use of perspective given all the jumping puzzles. I think the art team dropped the ball on not breaking out more design tricks to help you gauge height differentials at a glance, although I did appreciate that you could use the aiming dots' shadows to get a feel for drops. It's just... I don't know, I feel like this is the kind of thing that artists can design around. If I were for some reason doing this kind of game design I would have had a topography viewer quick-bound to a button at all times, just show the entire scene in banded false colours, or put an elevation measurement on the seeker senses, or something. I was overall quite impressed by the puzzles. They're involved in a way that I wouldn't usually associate with RPG puzzles, they have a decent lateral element to them, like, they feel inspired, like something out of an actual puzzle game, except also perfectly tuned to the pacing you'd expect out of an RPG rather than something you can be stuck on for hours like in actual puzzle games. Some honest-to-god epiphany simulators in this thing. Even in the overworld hunting down chests, half the time it winds up with you in this almost Tony Hawk's Pro Skater-like mindset of needing to stop looking at the scenery and start analysing everything as routes, a trick I don't think I've ever seen a game in this artstyle manage to pull off, and putting a lot of full 3D games to shame frankly. I thought the combat was okay. I like the build variety, and the Lv 3 arts felt suitably climactic. I'm not the biggest fan of how combat arts are input, I dunno, I found myself completely forgetting that dash and guard arts existed and half the time I'd mean to do a melee art and accidentally do the ranged art instead. I don't know what I would have preferred instead, although I did like that you can choose to prioritise certain arts in your builds. I don't know why they made it so irritating to get resets. Just, let people respec, man. You'll let people literally turn damage down to 0, why won't you let them respec? I think the dungeon races were an absolutely baffling design decision. I know that overall they count for basically nothing, but still, man, what the christ were they thinking, making a race out of these intricate, involved, laborious, and secret-laden puzzle dungeons? Who decided that what every player would love to hear after beating one of these, is that they should've done it faster? I like that they made some lemonade out of this thing with Apollo, but they could easily have done that by having Apollo be the only race, although admittedly it wouldn't be in character for him to propose such a thing so maybe - look, all I'm saying is that this was all very weird, right? I think the map screen is bad for not showing you even the broadest topography of the rooms and for not showing you your precise location, and I think chests should have been taggable with Analysis and automatically stamped and unstamped rather than managed manually. I'm extremely pleased to have heard personally from someone who worked on the port that they deliberately chose to forego adding PSN/Xbox achievements for completionism, even though that must have semed like a very obvious decision what with the game already having its own internal Trophy system. Apparently, they really hate dumb grindy trophies; men after my own heart one and all. I think having some for a couple of the questlines wouldn't have been bad - like, I don't think it's such a bad thing to have Trophies that lead people to capital C Content, mostly - but I have to admire their awareness of how System Trophies are fairly lovely in their design a lot of the time. I'm also a huge fan of how they also made One Punch a Real Trophy. I can't believe there still isn't an Epilogue yet, although I gather the port was kind of an ordeal for them so that probably ate a lot of time. I keep hearing about a New Game Plus where you can spend Trophy Points like it's a Tales game but I've got the Good Ending and I haven't seen that yet so I don't know what's up - maybe it's just not out on console. I thought the Arena bored me to tears, and the way it's scored is basically a demonstration of how much the game's combat kind of breaks down after a point - like, that in and of itself isn't really a criticism, it's all completely fine on balance and in context, but the arena specifically feels just kinda lovely in a way the entire rest of the game doesn't, because of its context. Game's veeeeery buggy; random crashes seemingly every hour or two. Managed to perma-softlock my file in Rhombus Square and had to load up a prior. Took me three attempts to get through the credits. There's still an item you can't hover over, and one room that never loads. I loved the characters, generally. All of them, even Apollo, but especially Emilie, and a bunch of the recurring NPCs, like the one who keeps freaking out about the high-up post-dungeon areas, or the one who sits on tables. I also had to appreciate that they managed to make Sidwell in any way multidimensional; they showed that he was entirely capable of empathy and compassion even while he was being a complete monster to Shizuka and co. If anything, the fact that he cared at all for Lea goes to show that what he did to the Evotars was done in complete appreciation of their humanity and not just out of a sense that they were "just" machines. He's not a cartoonish sociopath, he's deliberately suspending his functioning conscience for profit and arguably therefore more of a villian. I'm fascinated by the fact that he bothered to patch things up between Emilie and Lea after the raid; he didn't have to do that. The reference game is AAA+. In conclusion, I'm always going on about how I love games where the developers' love for their work shines through, and this is absolutely one of those games. It's got that love in buckets. It's saturated with love. The people who made this absolutely loving live for this poo poo. These people did what they did and made what they made for the love of videogames, they did what they had to to see the production through, because putting together the experience and seeing people engage with it and love it is what makes it all worthwhile and there's that whole "games tell the stories of their own development" again.
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# ? Jul 23, 2020 20:09 |
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The dungeon races are not actually hard if you've been through them once. On your first try, yeah you're not going to succeed because you don't know the layout. Or even if you had a walkthrough you'd have to split your attention between the game itself and the guide on your second monitor. But if you replay those dungeons on NG+ or just a separate file you can hop, shoot, and punch through the obstacles in a jiffy. And either way they're not meant to be this involved thing that really requires mastery, but rather just an encouraging competition between friends. If you get 5-0 a few lines of dialogue change and you get a cute achievement, nothing more. The arena on the other hand is just wrongheaded from the start. It's just...completely orthogonal to the main combat loop. In the base game combat is, as you said, not terribly nuanced and you're rewarded for doing whatever it takes to survive. Didn't take a scratch? Here, have some XP and money. Had to stall things out and rely on your grab-bag of healing techniques? Here, have the same amount of XP and money. And then you get to the arena, which scores you on being "stylish" and which penalizes you on engaging with central bits of the gameplay. If this were a character action game you'd rightly be wondering who put Devil May Cry in your Ninja Gaiden. What are you playing on that makes the game prone to crashing? I've never had issues on PC but if you're on console then maybe the port has some growing pains.
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# ? Jul 23, 2020 23:39 |
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Well, today I learned that the dungeon races are actually races and not just set dialogue.
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# ? Jul 23, 2020 23:42 |
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kidcoelacanth posted:Well, today I learned that the dungeon races are actually races and not just set dialogue. For each race you need to complete a plot dungeon or some part of it in a set amount of time. Like I said, tricky to beat on a first run but lots easier on subsequent runs.
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# ? Jul 24, 2020 00:01 |
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Lea's smug face is pretty great.
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# ? Jul 24, 2020 00:36 |
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Yeah, I know these things aren't exactly calling for speedrun tech and ultimately they count for very little, I'm just saying, framing these dungeons, with their content, in this game, as a race, is a very strange design decision regardless of how well it does or doesn't work in practice. I'm playing on PS4, and as I think has come up this game is made in HTML5 and JS and ported into C++ somehow so I can kind of imagine the whole thing segfaulting every other minute.
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# ? Jul 24, 2020 00:37 |
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Yeah the ports are very very crashy. I stopped trying to use the encyclopedia stuff because that was almost guaranteed to crash me. In game crashes were rarer, but I still had 3 or 4 through my entire run.
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# ? Jul 24, 2020 00:48 |
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Fedule posted:Yeah, I know these things aren't exactly calling for speedrun tech and ultimately they count for very little, I'm just saying, framing these dungeons, with their content, in this game, as a race, is a very strange design decision regardless of how well it does or doesn't work in practice. I always just took it completely as a character building thing rather than any actual mechanic, which I think makes sense in the context of the game. I really enjoy the story and characters, it's the main reason I'm dying for the epilogue.
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# ? Jul 24, 2020 01:31 |
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Fedule posted:Yeah, I know these things aren't exactly calling for speedrun tech and ultimately they count for very little, I'm just saying, framing these dungeons, with their content, in this game, as a race, is a very strange design decision regardless of how well it does or doesn't work in practice. I think it's difficult in general for small developers to do sufficient testing on consoles. My understanding is that the patch was written a few days ago for most of the crash issues, but that it takes awhile for it to go from "written" to "actually on the console." I've seen the same thing with some other small indie games, too. I imagine the game will be stable and maybe even have consistent performance in a month or two. And yeah game owns. I have some complaints; as everyone mentions, the verticality is often difficult to parse. It's tough to care about side-quests when they're fictional even to Lea and company; the only one I remember really liking was the one with the birds in the skyscraper, in which other players report somehow successfully conducting a hostage negotiation... with the birds. And I thought the pacing was a bit stop-and-go. But the characterization was excellent; anybody with a soul will wind up caring a lot about Lea by the time the game ends.
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# ? Jul 24, 2020 03:45 |
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Gonna revive this thread to say that this game plays like it was made specifically for me. I saved just before the Raid and I'm really excited to see what's up with this event.
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# ? Jan 19, 2021 17:38 |
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Oh hell yeah if we're bringing this thread back it means there are now two places on the forums where this emote has any relevance:
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# ? Jan 19, 2021 17:44 |
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Poque posted:Gonna revive this thread to say that this game plays like it was made specifically for me. I saved just before the Raid and I'm really excited to see what's up with this event.
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# ? Jan 19, 2021 17:54 |
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Holler if I jumped in the wrong thread or anything, I saw an earlier reference to a second thread but this was the one that came up first for me. I found Maroon Valley INCREDIBLY satisfying - ended up getting all of the chests there (aside from one that I have marked for when I get a future key). A lot of backtracking between areas to find my starting point for different things, but the design was really well thought out. Almost all of the puzzle solutions feel really elegant, but in some of the larger outdoor areas, I'll hit the switches with long throws that feel like I'm activating them by accident. I assume it's the puzzle design but who knows!
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# ? Jan 19, 2021 18:19 |
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Well that sure hosed me up good!
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# ? Jan 20, 2021 07:29 |
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drat, both the Shock and Wave dungeons were a ton of fun. It was nice that they were smaller than either of the first two big dungeons. I felt like I flew through both of them - especially the underwater one - but didn't end up winning either dungeon race. Oh well. The slow projectile puzzles are ridiculous. Time to go golden chest hunting.
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# ? Jan 24, 2021 21:19 |
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Finished up last night and drat, what a ride. Really enjoyed this game. It drove me crazy at times, but overall it really worked for me. I want to go back in and collect a few more easy trophies for my Trophy Point stockpile. Anybody know if spending Trophy Points to make a New Game + removes those permanently from your points pool?
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# ? Feb 5, 2021 17:35 |
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Poque posted:Finished up last night and drat, what a ride. Really enjoyed this game. It drove me crazy at times, but overall it really worked for me. I want to go back in and collect a few more easy trophies for my Trophy Point stockpile. I'm pretty sure they don't, it's the same pool every time you start a new game +. I haven't thought about doing a new game+ but some of the options produce some pretty hilarious dialogue.
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# ? Feb 5, 2021 17:40 |
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You keep the points.
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# ? Feb 5, 2021 17:45 |
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Excellent. I went back in and got the last few achievements I reasonably thought I could get on this playthrough, then re-saved at the end. When I replay, I think I might try to do a full defensive build. I hardly ever used my shield in this run, but it seems like it could be fun with a bunch of Guard Arts and a huge Pin Body build.
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# ? Feb 8, 2021 18:26 |
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God, guard builds are one of the easiest ways to just completely break everything. Solid Guard is a straight damage reduction percentage. Pin Body can completely remove the need to attack sometimes. The fun part of Pin Body builds is that it's proportional to damage received, so it actually pays more to have less defence if you really want to push that.
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# ? Feb 8, 2021 18:34 |
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Post game DLC out Feb 26th! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apoLeE7VZkU I'm hype
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# ? Feb 17, 2021 12:43 |
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hype hype hype hype hype I hope the new dungeon is so goddamn convoluted, I hope there are chests that require round trips through every screen. E: Okay, time to scrutinise the trailer. Putting this in spoiler tags just for consideration. Schneider in the party! This finally completes the party class lineup. Maybe we'll finally get a name for the Triblader's single exclusive combat art. (Maybe there'll be lots more of that stuff). More duels! I guess we finally get to fight Apollo at full power, insofar as that's in any way different from fighting Shizuka. I hope we eventually get to have an Ultimate Showdown with his original account. As I hoped, it looks like CrossWorlds is finally coming out of early access... which I find weird, but I guess it was inevitable as an appropriate context for a big new chapter. I can't help but notice C'tron hanging around during all this. That seems like it's gonna go some kind of a way. I hope there are bouncyball puzzles that make Gautham's big dumb ultimate puzzle room capstone look like Zelda puzzles. Anyway, I look forward to the epilogue's final scene, where Lea's speech sync is finally fixed, and she prepares for a grand emotional event with the First Scholars, walks up to the board, just says "Lea." and walks out, smash cut to credits. Fedule fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Feb 17, 2021 |
# ? Feb 17, 2021 12:53 |
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Yesssssssss
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# ? Feb 17, 2021 14:45 |
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CrossCode DLC finally revealed AND Legend of Mana announced for Switch on the same day? Love to see my favorite indie game and favorite series that inspired it both having good news. https://twitter.com/RadicalFishGame/status/1361993799002710016
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# ? Feb 18, 2021 03:47 |
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Finished the main story of the DLC. If you love how much the dungeons do not gently caress around in this game you will LOVE Ku'lero Temple. Holy moly I should not have tried to do that in one sitting. Best part was Lea and Shizuka going into the credits DMC style.
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# ? Feb 27, 2021 06:39 |
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I was pleasantly surprised to see the game actively dunking on Reize. How many games has he backed at this point to shoehorn in his OC?Fedule posted:I hope there are bouncyball puzzles that make Gautham's big dumb ultimate puzzle room capstone look like Zelda puzzles.
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# ? Feb 27, 2021 14:40 |
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NGDBSS posted:I was pleasantly surprised to see the game actively dunking on Reize. How many games has he backed at this point to shoehorn in his OC? What's this guy's deal anyway? I've played three games that had Reize in it now, including this one. Is it just one of those "I have more money than sense" kinda things? Anyways, I'm in the final dungeon right now, but I had to take a break the second I saw those triangle pillars from the wave dungeon, because I just can't deal with them right now. I also like what they did with the final Apollo duel by giving him a fake out melee dash and a bait trap move when he's in range mode. It honestly made me use other combat arts other than the melee ones. Combat Lobster fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Mar 1, 2021 |
# ? Mar 1, 2021 02:31 |
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Combat Lobster posted:What's this guy's deal anyway? I've played three games that had Reize in it now, including this one. Is it just one of those "I have more money than sense" kinda things? I'm surprised you're not using Ether Snipe on Apollo whenever you have an opening. Even with no bouncing it's great for shredding anything you can lock onto.
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# ? Mar 1, 2021 04:02 |
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NGDBSS posted:I'm surprised you're not using Ether Snipe on Apollo whenever you have an opening. Even with no bouncing it's great for shredding anything you can lock onto. I'm not used to fighting Apollo with ranged attacks. In the main game, I just stalled till he came at me with a melee charge and I just counter him into dust. Combat Lobster fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Mar 1, 2021 |
# ? Mar 1, 2021 04:28 |
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The DLC dungeon is my new favorite dungeon. It feels so much like what I loved about Temple Mine; I love it... Except for the boss. gently caress the boss, it's a giant pain in the rear end.
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# ? Mar 1, 2021 05:34 |
I think what I love the most and what makes me the most sad about Crosscode is that it is exactly what I want out of an MMO
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# ? Mar 1, 2021 05:39 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 20:02 |
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Man, the final boss of the dlc is no joke. I’m pretty sure I’m at level including gear wise and it wrecked me. Generally haven’t had toooo much trouble with the combat either. Anyone have some tips? I’m not against just using a slider in games, but given I haven’t the whole game up to now I’d rather not.
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# ? Mar 4, 2021 23:15 |