Even Hollywood is susceptible to this trend with movies such as Freddy versus Jason, King Kong versus Godzilla and Alien versus Predator. Literally thousands of pages of fanfiction are written each day where people come up with their dream crossovers, mixing together movies and shows like Supernatural with Harry Potter. The reason I referenced fanfiction in the opening paragraph is due to the very nature of the game. I like the way that the companion or team-up system works and some of the combinations of characters certainly work better than others, but at the same time Project X Zone 2 never quite reaches the tactical depth and development of series such as Disgaea or Fire Emblem. The character development is certainly better than the first game, but there is also still ample room for improvement. While the on-screen animations might look a little different from one character to another, you really never get an option to truly customise your characters and that can leave you with a sense of ‘sameness’ after a while. While these elements work quite well, I have to admit that there were times I wish the progression system for my characters offered better flexibility. Greater variety and more responsive controls than in the first game take this unique system and make it even more enjoyable than before. You have to develop a sort of rhythm in juggling characters and knowing when to sprinkle in your special moves (especially handy during boss battles). While on offence, you move about the screen and choose your enemies to attack in turn-based fashion, but there is an element of action/fighting game mechanics at play as you combine the directional pad with button presses in an effort to string together powerful combos and team strikes. Your special move points are not just used for flashy offensive strikes, but things like defending and even counter attacking. You have turn-based combat that leverages special skills, combination attacks and flanking tactics as you manoeuvre a variety of characters about a grid-based map.Īspects of the strategy that help to set this title apart from other strategy/RPG hybrids is the way you play defence and the way you string moves together on offence. The original Project X Zone did some neat things with the strategy genre, and by and large the sequel here takes most of its cues from the original. There is very little I would consider ‘new’ in this game, over what we saw in its predecessor. Related reading: You can read Nick’s review of the first entry in the series here. To that end, the sequel gets more things right than the original game, and the end result is a tactical experience that was hard to put down due to a good mix of mechanics and enjoyable fanservice. It tries to pull in lots of different elements and place them in a singular framework. Project X Zone is not unlike a crossover fanfiction.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |