About two weeks ago I got Cross Edge for the PS3, still hasn’t been released in PAL territory so this is the American version (yeah I’m naughty). Didn’t pay to much attention to it at first, was to busy shooting zombies/ganados on Resi 5 
but now I’m playing it with full attention. This game is targeted at a very specific audience and its not those that are all for JRPGs because some of these JRPG fans will not enjoy this game, I see it almost like a Gundam game which is target specifically at Gundam fans, so this is targeted at those that like titles like Disgaea. You won’t see great graphics here because this looks like a PS2 title and the price itself does not lie, its 10 to 20€/$ cheaper than your average game, the story is a bit weird but the amount of known characters and the conversations between them are hilarious at some points. The menus are complex, the fights can be a bit hard but if you play it on easy its really a “walk in the park”. The strongest point in the game for me is definitely the soundtrack, I’m a sucker for soundtracks like this ^_^ , the anime designs are amazing, and again the characters from Darkstalkers interacting with the ones from nippon ichi Disgaea is funny (search for the scene when Etna meets Morrigan). Again be very careful when you purchase this game, unless you are a fan of turn base SRPGs stay away from this.
And of course this game presents us with the original voices in Japanese which is amazing, listening to Etna arguing with Prinny is a must. As I mentioned in the past I normally can identify pretty quickly known Japanese voice actors and so I managed to pinpoint Rina Satou on the character Mikoto Aiba (original character), she’s known for her role of Haruka on the Minami-ke series and of course Etna wouldn’t be possible without Tomoe Hanba.
The opening is not as “animeish” like Atelier Iris, Ar tonelico, Persona and other known games, but the music stays on your mind.
So far this is my favorite theme from the game, the battle theme.
One funny thing about this game is that the developers were kind enough to put costumes on it so that we can dress the characters in various forms, its not only fan service but these costumes give nice attributes (not on appealing physical ones), these are not the only costumes, there are way way more because of the “buttload” of characters, unfortunately thats one of the points I don’t like on these sort of games, loads of characters to develop and train.
What? It’s already released?
Damn… I must’ve totally missed that.
Got the Japanese version though. But it would be nice to understand what’s going on. Looks like I have to pick up the game nao. D:
So, it’s like Chaos Wars but with better voices? It’s not I’m not curious, despite not owning a PS3, but I don’t think crossovers work that well without some measure of flash. Super Robot Wars has it but does Cross Edge? I am curious though. Darn lack of a PS3.
@De-JaY: the game was launched in the States on May 26th if I’m not wrong. The PAL version will be released on August 28th.
@Amon: Was watching some videos of Chaos Wars and it has nothing similar to this game, the combat system is totally different. The combat system of cross edge is very weird but once you get to used to it it’s pretty funny. The crossovers between “worlds” is really between worlds, which means they all came from their own worlds and are stuck on this special one (and I’m spoiling here). The game as I mentioned is weird and is not liked by everyone, you really need a big open mind about this game
I’m also currently playing this one, the japanese version tho (bought last year but haven’t played it until now lol)..
Currently I’m on 3-3 map, with party of Mew, Etna, Shurelia and Orika. Training Marie to replace Shurelia atm, so I can do some EX combination
The costumes from the DLC are nicer than the normal ones, you can see some moe fetish there and got higher stat, lol
If you like this game, I suggest you to get agarest senki (will get English release somewhere this September). The menu, town, upgrading system, and look and feel are similar, but the battle system & story in Agarest are way better
Perhaps my biggest flaw on these games with loads of characters is that I want to have them all at the same lvl at the same time. Currently my characters are with lvl 9 and I’m getting my butt kicked before entering the second dungeon -__- , I’m having problems with those fire and ice elementals since they stay very far away and only Mikoto and Marie and do some medium damage to them without using the Ex Skills
I assume you are on map 2-1 now right? I remember that place, I have orika as my strongest character at that time, and her fire attack is useless against those fire elementals…
you may need to grind a litle bit. gather some TP and buy one 150-200TP weapon for one of your character to make things easier…
my tip is: use orika! because she can heal
also if you leveled her fire spells, you’ll get wind spells (perfect for those fire and ice elementals hahaha)
and don’t bother to level everyone at early stage.. just focus on the 4 that you use…
I really should pick this up, being the Etna fanatic that I am.
This is a great game!!!
A lot of reviewers panned this game hard!!!
Saying it’s bad and stuff like that. Well, graphic wise, I do agree it is like PS2 graphics, but graphics aren’t everything.
I also do agree that this game targets specific fans, mostly the fans of Atlus games and such…
Still, I love this game!!!
I was driven nuts by this game. I had no choice but to get rid of it.
I like Disgaea, and Darkstalkers, but that’s about the extent of it.
It’s pretty incredible that within the first 2hrs of the game, your party grows from 1 member to 9 members.
I also didn’t like how they threw the entire combat system at you right from the get-go, yet lock out most of it. The controls frustrated me, and the worst was the range limitations. Sometimes I’d get a good combo going, and can’t complete it because my character happens to be one square out of range.
Some of the stuff seemed complicated for the sake of being complicated (fan-service).
Honestly, if they had streamlined the system and made it less complicated, it would have been excellent.
What really erked me was the complete lack of balance. You regen your health after every battle, which is fine. It seems that your party is capable of lasting through it. But when you go into dungeons, that capability is suddenly gone for no apparent reason? Enemies that were easy to kill outside suddenly become impossible to beat from the onslaught of them. Grinding alleviates this problem, but then you become horribly over-leveled for boss fights. The other option was to spam healing every turn while in a dungeon, but that became repetitive and no fun.
Playing on easy mode got rid of this huge design flaw, and made the boss fights more intense and interesting, but the lack of story and comedy failed to keep me gripped. Kinda sucks when the first 3 hours of the game is a rehash of Marie’s terrible alchemist skills. If I want humor, I think I’ll go play the real Disgaea games.
In the end, I did not appreciate the lack of balance, lack of a coherent story and the overly complicated bloat.