Project X Zone’s Crossover Cast Does the Heavy Lifting

Project X Zone asks a lot before it gives anything back. The crossover tactical role-playing game shipped for the Nintendo 3DS, developed by Monolith Soft and published by Namco Bandai Games. It pulls sixty playable characters from three Japanese companies — Namco Bandai, Capcom and Sega — and drops them onto grid-based maps lifted from the games they came from.

That cast is the whole pitch. It is also, too often, the whole game.

Trailer, via IGDBcom.

Mii Kouryuji and the Portalstone

The story opens with a theft. Mii Kouryuji, latest descendant of the Kouryuji clan, loses the Portalstone, an heirloom her family has guarded across generations. She hires private detective Kogoro Tenzai, her tutor, to help find it.

The year is 20XX AD. Portals are opening between worlds, and the people who fall through them are the roster. Heroes affected by the rifts team up with Mii and Kogoro; villains take advantage of the chaos the collapsing rifts cause.

It is a serviceable frame for a crossover and not much more. The source material itself concedes the point: reviews of Project X Zone criticized its confusing storyline. That tracks. When your cast is drawn from three companies’ worth of separate continuities, the plot has to work as a delivery system rather than a story. Project X Zone never pretends otherwise for long.

The Cross Active Battle System

Combat is where the game earns its keep. The Cross Active Battle System has you press the A button in combination with the Circle Pad to chain up to five basic attack combos.

Two systems sit on top of that. Support Attack lets you call a nearby ally in for help. Cross Hit freezes the target in place while multiple units attack at once. Land your next hit just before the target hits the ground after the first, and you get a Critical Hit.

Damage feeds the Cross Power gauge, which pays for special attacks and defensive moves on the map. Cross Hits can push that gauge to 150%.

Unlike Namco × Capcom, units can move freely within their range on the field map, with no penalty for accessing treasure chests or destructible objects prior to attacking.

That freedom matters more than it sounds. In the predecessor, Namco × Capcom, movement was tighter. Here you can wander your range, crack open a chest or smash an object, and still attack. It removes a tax that tactical games usually charge and lets you play the map instead of the menu.

Pair Units, Solo Units and 15 Save Slots

Each friendly unit is a Pair Unit: two characters fighting as one. A third character, the Solo Unit, can be added for once-per-battle assistance. You switch between units to build different tactical combinations.

The Pair Unit structure is the smartest thing Project X Zone does. It forces the crossover to mean something mechanically. You are not just picking a fighter; you are picking a relationship, and the game’s cast is deep enough that the combinations stay interesting longer than the maps do.

The housekeeping is generous, at least. Project X Zone includes 15 save game slots. You can record a save during intermissions, plus a quick save file and a soft reset command.

Where the Grid Runs Out

The problem is repetition. Criticism of Project X Zone landed on its repetitive gameplay, and once you have run the Cross Active Battle System for a few hours, you have seen it. Five-hit combos, Support Attacks, Cross Hits, Critical Hits, gauge management. The systems interlock cleanly. They also stop surprising you.

Grid-based stages drawn from the crossover titles are a nice idea that wears thin. The locations are fan service, not design. A map from one game’s world plays much like a map from another’s, and the roster’s variety does not translate into scenario variety.

The overseas versions shipped with the same character roster as the original Japanese release. That is the right call, and it means there is no version of this game with a better or worse cast. Sixty playable characters is the offer everywhere.

What the Crossover Is Worth

Project X Zone sits in an odd place. It is a follow-up to Namco × Capcom, and it improves on that game in the ways that matter most: free movement, no penalty for grabbing treasure before you strike, and a Pair Unit system that makes the roster do real work. It also spawned a sequel, Project X Zone 2, which reached Japan in November 2015 and North America and Europe in February 2016.

So the formula held. That is the tell. A game gets a sequel when its bones are sound, and these bones are sound. The Cross Active Battle System is a genuine tactical engine, and the 150% Cross Power ceiling gives skilled play somewhere to go.

But sound bones are not the same as a good time across a full campaign. The storyline is confusing by the admission of the reviews that covered it, and the gameplay is repetitive by the same admission. Those are not small complaints in a genre that lives on the second and third act, when a tactical game has to keep escalating.

Here is the honest read. Project X Zone is a roster with a game attached, and the roster is the reason to play it. If sixty characters from Namco Bandai, Capcom and Sega fighting on grids sounds like the point, the game delivers that and asks little else of you. If you need the tactics to keep evolving, the grid runs out well before the credits.

The 15 save slots and the soft reset are a quiet confession. The game knows you will put it down and come back. It is built for that rhythm, in pieces, a few maps at a time.

Project X Zone is a solid crossover and a thin tactics game, and the crossover is what carries it.

crossover games · Monolith Soft · Namco Bandai · Nintendo 3DS · Project X Zone · tactical RPG