Well I've been playing Cross Edge at home and participating in the discussion of Cross Edge for the last couple of weeks. I haven't seen anyone with an 'un-official' or even official review yet. So I'm taking the liberty to write up my own review of Cross Edge. Feel free to add your own comments. Hopefully this will persuade others to pick it up.

Graphics: 8/10 I'm not a graphics gamer and I know that Cross Edge's graphics are no where near that of the bulk of your PS3 games. The characters and enemies all show up in battle as Sprites

  as you can see in the picture. But the conversation screen pictures look like this:  Very beautifully drawn and rendered in my opinion. The text is easy to read on any type of screen. The colors are beautiful and bright (as most JRPGs are.) A great tribute to late PS1 RPGs.

Gameplay: 10/10 I've seen the comments that combat is complicated, but I haven't found it to be. Combat is fully old school turn based (not the active turn based that Final Fantasy is known for). You choose which of your characters go when, and you have Action Points. Every action from switching out characters, moving characters around the grid, using items or abilities cost a set amount of AP. Each character has a different amount and accessories/armor change increase/decrease these amounts. You can also 'store' up to twice the base amount of AP. Some abilities will chain with others and should you do enough damage for an overbreak you can get some of the AP back. (It sounds more complicated than it actually is.) Many combos can be done in different ways. If you pay attention to the damage you are doing, you can in essence choose which character will hit the 'overbreak' to get back AP. You have several characters to choose from, each with their own abilities and combo chains. Some can chain with their own attacks, making them one man armies.

While combat is in essence 'random encounters' you can actually go into combat at any time. Simply press the R1 button when on the field or in a dungeon to initiate battle. This is quite useful for farming synthesis items, xp, tp and ep.

The next part of the gameplay is item synthesizing. You can create new weapons, armor, accessories and items. Every weapon, armor and accessory can be 'enhanced' with EP. These enhancements can increase damage, defense or other stats. To further boost your items you can combine (or composite) items from battle into your armor, weapons and accessories. You have to purchase or find the various synth recipe items before you can create. To obtain items for synthing you have to kill enemies. If you should manage to overkill an enemy you will always earn at least 1 item (generally the more rare item) from the kill. This level of 'complexity' allows you to pump up your characters in the way that suits you the best.

As you level up you obtain bonus points that can be used to level up any of your base stats however you want. As you kill enemies and free souls, you can earn bonus points called Party Points. These points are in a 'pool' and can be used on any character for any stat. Also, as you free souls you can unlock costumes for your characters. These costumes can enhance your party members (or sometimes lower stats). As you fulfill various 'title' requirements, you can receive money, items and bonus points. With so many things to do and so many ways to customize your characters, it's really hard to get bored.

One last side note about gameplay: You can play on Easy, Normal or Hard. If you play on Hard and beat the game, everything but your levels will transfer to a new game +. I'm not sure how much carries over from the other two difficulties. I can tell you that playing on Hard, is actually Hard. The game can be as easy and simple as you want, or it can be complex and fascinating.

Story: 9/10 As the story unfolds you learn that someone or something is collecting souls from various worlds and using them to create a new world. Team up with characters from several different games like Nippon Ichi Software's Disgaea and Capcom's Darkstalker as you go about freeing souls. By freeing the souls you find, and beating the various bad guys, you will eventually be able to return to your own worlds. A very unique story line and the humor is great.

Replay:7/10 I'm not sure how many times I'll replay this game, but it's definately worth at least a second time through. There are a lot of titles and costumes to unlock. Many of which can only be unlocked while playing on Hard. There is a lot to do for those gamers who enjoy getting 100% out of their games. 

DLC: 9/10 The usefulness of the DLC is debateable, but all of it so far has been free. Some of it really is useful and some of it came late for me.  For a full blown look at all the various goodies available for download check out LokeSTL's thread Cross Edge - Complete DLC Schedule. He has everything listed from dates they will be available to the items included. Some of the DLC does include bonus dungeons. More areas, more items, free. What's there not to like about it?

Online: There is no online multiplayer for Cross Edge. 

Final Thoughts: Overall I give Cross Edge an 8.6/10 score. I was hesitant to pick up Cross Edge at first because the game didn't really look all that interesting and I felt it was more suited to either the PSP or the PS2. However I picked it up and have not regretted my purchase at all. The story is great, the music is enjoyable, the voice acting is good (and I generally don't mention voice acting) the characters are cool, plenty of humor (Especially with Felicity, Morrigan and a blue penguin with wooden legs. Sneaky dood!) and a throw back of the higest calibur honoring the old school RPGs that many of us have been itching for. I hope this review is helpful to everyone. Thank you for reading it.

My Reviews and Guide-{Sacred 2}--{LittleBigPlanet (PSP)}-- {Dragon Age: Origins}-- {Cross Edge}----{FFVIII-- A Beginner's Guide to RPGs

Finally, somebody nails it.  Good review PapaWarlock, glad to see an actual RPG gamer write one up. 

Get your Portable ID!

Thanks Papa, I think this should be helpful for a lot of people curious about the game.  A couple of things I would add:

Your right that the gameplay isnt overly complicated or hard to learn, it is however very deep.  Meaning, you can get more out of it the farther you want to utilize it/the more you want to learn about it.  For example, I have started to memorize just how much of the break bar each of my characters attacks will deplete, so I can plan out who will get the "overbreak".  This means I have greater control over who gets their AP back.  Things like this make it a very deep system, especially when combined with the synthesizing and upgrading.  Like you said, not complicated per say, but very deep and with multiple layers if you really want to get into it.

With the Replay, you may not want to replay the game, but theres plenty of stuff to do to perfect it to 100%, especially with the multiple titles.  Youll get your moneys worth out of this game (especially at 50$, which was sort of a nice little treat for me, I expected to pay full price for it, so getting it for cheaper was a nice surprise.)

I like the fact that they support it with a lot of DLC.  Thanks again to Loke for his list of release dates.  Looking at the packages, you will notice that several of them are bonus dungeons, which will add a bit more to do to the game.  And so far, its all FREE.  Apart from Burnout Paradise, how many developers really support the game after release with FREE content?  My thanks to you guys behind Cross Edge, its a pleasure to support you.

I think the music is worth mentioning as well.  My girlfriend, who really isnt into anything with an animeish style (in fact I had to make her promise she wouldnt be judgemental before I bought the game) has mentioned that she really likes the music in the game (she hears it when she walks through the living room or when shes in the bathroom).  Its the only positive thing shes said about the game, (yes, shes been judging me despite her promise... she berated me about Morrigan's clothes).  The music is great, upbeat and catchy, like the game itself.  It strikes a perfect harmony with the charming and upbeat sprites. 

Finally, the game has a real charm to it.  The sprites are vivid and bright, beautiful in their own Eye popping way.  The humor in the game is top notch jRPG humor.  I leave you with this quote from an exploding penguin with stick legs:

"Sneaky dood... stealthy dood... crunchy dood... wait, thats not right!"

Thanks again to you PapaWarlock for the review.

Playstation lover, RPG enthusiast, and Coors Light aficionado.

Hmm, great review...maybe I dismissed this game too early. I did purchase it, however I only made it to about the 2 hour mark before I decided I really wasn't liking it too much. I've even contemplated selling it >_>. I was looking forward to this game, although wasn't expecting a whole lot considering its a hybrid with a bunch of different companies involved.  I mainly enjoyed the Ar Tonelico and Disgaea series so I suppose that's what attracted me to this. Once I actually got into the game I really didn't care too much for the battle system nor really where the story seems to be going. But I digress...maybe I should give it another go.

Nice review PapaWarlock.

Nice review, so this is what you been playing lately. A sweet game made by Nis I really want to play myself. Game play looks pretty sweet, something new to try out.

To be honest, this and Disgaea 3 are the best RPG games the PS3 has to me. I own Disgaea 3 waiting for Nis to give us trophies and will purchase Cross Edge in the future.

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Schobeleth wrote:
Awesome review, I think you finally pushed me off the fence and convinced me to buy it I was very hesitant from IGN's apparent bad review, I've seen a lot of praise and I was interested before it was even released, I'm gonna pick it up soon

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Playstation lover, RPG enthusiast, and Coors Light aficionado.

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Tex75455 wrote:

Thanks Papa, I think this should be helpful for a lot of people curious about the game.  A couple of things I would add:

 

Your right that the gameplay isnt overly complicated or hard to learn, it is however very deep.  Meaning, you can get more out of it the farther you want to utilize it/the more you want to learn about it.  For example, I have started to memorize just how much of the break bar each of my characters attacks will deplete, so I can plan out who will get the "overbreak".  This means I have greater control over who gets their AP back.  Things like this make it a very deep system, especially when combined with the synthesizing and upgrading.  Like you said, not complicated per say, but very deep and with multiple layers if you really want to get into it.

 

Finally, the game has a real charm to it.  The sprites are vivid and bright, beautiful in their own Eye popping way.  The humor in the game is top notch jRPG humor.  I leave you with this quote from an exploding penguin with stick legs:

 

"Sneaky dood... stealthy dood... crunchy dood... wait, thats not right!"

 

Thanks again to you PapaWarlock for the review.

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As with everything else, you always realize there was more you should've added. I'll revise the review later this evening and add some of the extra stuff. Thank you.

My Reviews and Guide-{Sacred 2}--{LittleBigPlanet (PSP)}-- {Dragon Age: Origins}-- {Cross Edge}----{FFVIII-- A Beginner's Guide to RPGs