CrossCode: A New Home DLC (2020) [Switch] critique

“Lea!”
-Lea, CrossCode

Billed as a retro-inspired, 2D Action RPG game, CrossCode takes influences from classic 16-bit titles, such as Chrono Trigger and Yoshi’s Island, and modern games like Xenoblade Chronicles. The game was developed by Radical Fish Games and published by Deck13 and was first introduced as a crowdfunded project on Indiegogo back in 2011. Following a three-year beta period, the game was released on PC in 2018. Console versions soon followed in 2020 and 2021. A post-game DLC, titled A New Home, was released on February 26, 2021. This critique is based on the Nintendo Switch version released in 2020.

Despite its inspirations, CrossCode manages to weave intense, Action-RPG content together with a heartfelt story of identity, disability and what it means to be alive. Today’s critique will examine those themes and point out aspects of the game that make it stand out against past innovations.

In The Dark of Shadoon

CrossCode takes place in the distant future, in which humanity has taken to the stars using Quantum Porting. Quantum Porting is a technology used to transport matter and information instantly between two points, as defined in the game. Over the past millennium and a half, humans explored and colonized several habitable planets and moons. One company, Instantaiment Inc., terraformed a small moon orbiting a gas giant and created a live MMORPG called CrossWorlds. That moon, called Shadoon, is the setting for CrossCode.

Shadoon is a habitable moon consisting of a large, crescent-shaped land mass surrounded by water. In CrossWorlds, players call the landmass either by its official name – the Playground – or its nickname, the Croissant. The moon’s regional climate is very diverse. Autumn’s Rise and Autumn’s Fall, located on opposing sides of Rookie Harbour – the first town in the game – are locked in a perpetual state of autumn. Bergen Trail is a mountainous, snowy region that contains the first dungeon: the Temple Mine. Maroon Valley is an arid desert with a remarkable oasis, a product of an enormous tree growing in that region. 

Gaia’s Garden is a lush rainforest with a fungal infestation creeping in from the northeast. At the far end of the forest is an immense tree where the guardian of the forest resides. The city there – Basin Keep – is a metropolis surrounded by perpetual rainfall. Gaia’s Garden is unique as it holds three different dungeons. Sapphire Ridge is the MMO’s final area, located on the dark side of the moon. It’s a craggy, rural area covered in an eternal night that holds the MMO’s final temple. Vermillion Wastelands is a hidden, off-limits area on the darkest side of the moon where many plot revelations come to light.

A New Home introduces two new areas. The Azure Archipelago is a beach/sea-themed location which holds the key to the final temple. Ku’lero Temple is on an island away from the Crescent where CrossWorlds’ official final challenge resides.

An MMORPG In The Real World?

CrossCode centres around the game CrossWorlds, developed by Instantainment Inc. What sets CrossWorlds apart from other MMO games is that it’s played on a physical plane and not through a screen. The trick behind this is twofold. Instant Matter is the first, defined as a low-density material that can be easily created and formed by a remote system. All non-static elements of the game, including players, monsters, NPCs and even structures are built off of Instant Matter. 

Instant Matter is the key to creating an MMO in a real-world setting. The objects created have little to no effect on real objects of solid mass due to their light and unstable nature. Furthermore, the remote system can reform Instant Matter objects instantaneously so long as the system persists. This is evident within the game as players can destroy many objects that later reform after time passes.

CrossCode and Avatars

The second trick is the Cross Gear device, used to connect a human to the world of CrossWorlds. Using Quantum Porting, humans connected to it can control their Avatar, or in-game character, with near-zero input lag. As the device synchronizes a person’s senses to the device and the game itself, the Cross Gear allows players to totally immerse themselves into CrossWorlds. The technology behind that is the titular CrossCode.

The CrossCode is the heart of the Avatar control module within the Cross Gear and was developed by Satoshi – one of the key characters of CrossCode. The CrossCode allows players to control their Avatars like their own bodies by analyzing their neural oscillations through a neural network. Think of it like the same system used in James Cameron’s Avatar film series. 

Like most bleeding-edge technology, the Cross Gear and CrossCode system is highly experimental and contains issues. The most prominent is Speech Desynchronization, which prevents players from speaking within the game. Interference between the gear and the Avatar on Shadoon causes this inconvenient and detrimental issue.

So, What Is CrossWorlds?

CrossWorlds tasks players (called Seekers) to explore Shadoon and uncover the secrets of the Track of The Ancients. CrossCode’s lore states that the Track is a 10,000-year-old, self-sufficient parkour game that played a large part in Ancient society. Players select one of five classes with each representing one of five Virtues according to the game’s lore. The five classes and Virtues are Triblader (Strength), Quadroguard (Endurance), Pentafist (Agility), Hexacast (Wisdom) and Spheromancer (Balance).

CrossWorlds demands that each Seeker collects four elements related to the Virtues of Strength, Endurance, Agility and Wisdom. Seekers will then use the elements to traverse through several temples and reveal the secrets around the Track and the Ancients themselves.

On its surface, CrossWorlds sounds like a standard MMORPG. However, the game is only a backdrop for a much larger-scale plot revolving around Satoshi’s miraculous CrossCode technology.

One Girl’s Journey Through CrossWorlds

The game starts with an introductory scene where a woman named Shizuka makes her way to a secluded mansion. After breaking through its defenses, she approaches a figure sitting at a computer desk in a darkened room. The man is her brother, Satoshi, who is dying from congenital heart failure. Despite Shizuka’s urges for him to stop, Satoshi declares that it’s too late for him. He finishes whatever he was working on and promptly dies in his sister’s arms.

The perspective then switches to Lea, the main, playable character in CrossCode. She is an amnesiac Spheromancer who is unable to log out of the game properly. She meets Sergey, the software engineer responsible for her awakening. He tells her that she awoke on a cargo ship operated by humans working on Shadoon. Sergey then tells Lea that she is in a game called CrossWorlds. It’s his hope that by playing through CrossWorlds, Lea can regain her memories of her previous life which she can use to leave the game. 

Lea has unfortunately lost the ability to speak due to Speech Desynchronization – a common issue with the Cross Gear. Sergey, who guides Lea throughout CrossCode, alleviates this by hard-coding certain words into her matrix so that she can communicate. Beyond that, Lea uses facial expressions and gestures to get her point across. She’s characterized as a friendly, competitive person who enjoys the game. She’s also not a fan of the decorative horns that Sergey added to her head.

The Game Within A Game

Radical Fish Games did a remarkable job of getting players to forget that they are playing a game within a game. CrossWorlds is a fully fleshed-out MMO that feels engaging and immersive. Despite it being a single-player game, being able to contact, interact and form parties with NPC’s with them lends well to the MMO illusion. 

Over time, Lea befriends many NPC’s on her journey. Her first is Emilie or Emilenator, a Pentafist who becomes her friendly rival and temple racing buddy. She also meets a fellow Spheromancer in Apollo, who regularly challenges her to duels, and his pal Joern. In Rookie Harbour, Lea meets Lukas, a veteran player and an acquaintance of Emilie’s. He eventually invites both of them to join his guild, the First Scholars. Lea then befriends Hiln, Beowulf, Buggy and finally, C’Tron or Tronny, who is also a new member. These characters, along with Sergey, form the basis of Lea’s network within the game. The player can contact these characters at any time through the Direct Link option in the menu. They can also form a party of three with certain characters through Direct Link as well.

The Action RPG elements, side quests and crafting mechanics in CrossWorlds also make it easy for players to forget that there’s a story within. I’ll discuss these in detail later in the critique.

CrossWorlds Combat 101

CrossCode’s combat system is straightforward and easy to pick up. Players use the left analog stick to control Lea. She can perform a three-hit melee combo by pressing R or Y.  Lea can also hop across ledges by approaching and running off of them. This is useful for closing in on distant enemies or giving yourself space by claiming the high ground. Pressing L while moving executes a twirling dash which players can chain up to three times. The dash is highly useful for evading attacks. Lea can put up a guard by pressing L while stationary or by pressing B. The guard greatly reduces the damage taken, but taking enough damage will cause it to break.

Pressing R while holding the right stick in any direction causes Lea to throw a Virtual Ricochet Projectile or VRP (read: balls). Players can use VRPs both as a ranged attack and as a way to solve puzzles. Lea’s shots will be erratic if you press R and tilt the right stick at the same time. Her aim sharpens if you hold the stick in position before pressing the button. If you hold the stick for a long period of time without shooting, a red reticle appears. Pressing R here unleashes a charged shot, which can ricochet off of walls up to four times. Charged shots, both elemental and non, are crucial for solving the many puzzles within CrossWorlds.

Lea can unleash special techniques called Combat Arts by hitting the ZR button. There are four types of Combat Arts. Pressing ZR alone uses a melee tech. Aiming with the right stick and pressing ZR yields a ranged tech. Pressing ZR in the middle of a dash performs a dash tech. Finally, throwing up a guard and pressing ZR reveals a guard tech. Each tech consumes SP, which charges up by landing attacks on enemies. Lea can use level two and three techs by holding ZR to cycle to them. Note that you’ll need to both learn the tech and have the required SP to use it. CrossCode gives players 4 SP to start and can be upgraded to a max of 12 (16 in the DLC).

CrossWorld Puzzles

The puzzle mechanics make up the other half of CrossCode. Taking inspiration from the Zelda series, Lea must solve various puzzles using a combination of jumps, ricochet shots, block manipulation and elemental-based gimmicks. Some puzzles have unorthodox ways of solving them, which greatly reminds me of Alundra – another Zelda clone with a difficult puzzle setup.

A common puzzle element involves shooting a charged shot at a directional gate. These spherical gates redirect your shots in the direction shown and are generally featured alongside several ricochet pillars and a barrier. Pillars need to be hit sequentially in order to lower the barrier. In addition, there are also gates that slow and speed up your shot. Timing is everything when it comes to solving most of these puzzles.

There are also special elemental torches which are first found in the Faj’ro Temple. When hit with an elemental-charged shot, the torch will transfer the shot to the upper level in the direction it originated from. Conversely, if it’s hit from the upper level, the shot will be sent to the lower.

The game eases players into the puzzle mechanics by giving them a few simple rooms to practice. Afterwards, the puzzle difficulty ramps up by forcing players to apply what they’ve learned and think outside of the box. Later challenges incorporate elements from previous dungeons. Solving these puzzles will test players to their limits. CrossCode has the option to adjust the puzzle timing to give you more time to solve them. Although in the DLC dungeons, this works against your favour, as you need to be extremely precise to beat them. Increasing the timing only works against you in these challenges.

The Elements

Part of a Seeker’s objective in CrossWorlds is to gather the four elements. They are Heat, Ice, Wave, and Shock, and they are each associated with one of the four Virtues mentioned above. Heat represents Strength, Cold represents Endurance, Shock represents Agility, and Wave represents Wisdom. 

Putting elemental pressure on enemies for long enough inflicts a status effect associated with that element. Heat inflicts the Burn status, which causes the target’s HP to drop rapidly. Attacking enough with the Cold element inflicts Chill. It slows down the target and their actions for a period of time. When hit enough with the Shock element, targets become afflicted with the Jolt status. This occasionally stuns and deals damage to the target relative to their attack strength. The final affliction is Mark, caused by the Wave element. Ranged attacks deal 50% more damage to a Mark-afflicted target.

Lea doesn’t get unlimited use of elements, however. Using any of the four elements increases the Overload gauge, a rhombus-shaped gauge at the top left-hand corner of the screen. As the gauge fills, the screen flashes red, indicating that Lea is approaching the Overload threshold. Prolonged use then leads to Overload, preventing Lea from using elements until the gauge empties. However, by switching back to the base/neutral element before Overload, the Overload gauge decreases rapidly. Players must therefore strategically manage element use, lest they be unable to use them during critical moments in a fight.

Side Quests and Experience

Players gain experience in CrossCode in one of two ways. The first and most straightforward is through fighting enemies in the overworld. The amount of experience awarded depends on the enemy fought. Level differences between yourself and your enemy also factor into the amount awarded. As players level up, the amount they earn reduces until it reaches one EXP per enemy. Realistically, players can complete the base game by level 55 while the DLC content will need you to be at level 70. From that point on, grinding to level 99 will take hours and hours of eliminating thousands of Hedgehags to accomplish.

The second method involves taking up the numerous side quests that exist within CrossCode. Unlike the first method, EXP gained from quests does not scale down as much at higher levels. Some quests even offer level-independent sums of EXP to ensure players can still complete the quest even when missed the first time around. In fact, the best way to level up consistently at the beginning of the game is to complete the side quests available in each area before progressing onward. Most quests consist of fetching something for someone, but some require you to fight tougher variants of enemies found in the field.

Every 1000 EXP grants a level up, which increases your stats and grants you a Circuit Point (CP) to spend on the Circuit Tree.

Short Circuits

Customization occurs within the Circuit system. As players level up, they accrue CP which they can use to purchase skills or stat bonuses in the Circuit tree. Aside from the base or non-elemental Circuit, each element has its own Circuit tree. Players accumulate CP for all trees but the trees are only unlocked when the associated element is obtained.

Lea’s class – the Spheromancer – has no unique specializations, unlike the other four classes. Instead, her class allows for superior customization options. Players can use the Circuit tree to tailor Lea’s stats and Combat Arts to fit with their playstyles. On the Circuit tree, this corresponds to her being able to choose between two variants of each of the four Combat Arts. You can even switch between the variants without having to spend additional CP to do so. Bear in mind, you can only activate one variant at a time. 

In combat, Lea’s selected element augments her base stats, so it’s important to spend CP wisely. CrossCode does provide ways for players to respec all of their CP, however. After each major dungeon, Lea obtains a Circuit Breaker item. Using this at a terminal in Rookie Harbour (the starting town in the game) allows Lea to reclaim her spent CP. It’s great if you made a mistake in your allocation or if you want to try a different build altogether.

Gear Up

A common refrain in CrossCode is the need to update your gear as you level up. All equipment has levels associated with them. It indicates to players what equipment is appropriate for the current location in the story. The equipment screen shows your current equipment (Head, Left/Right Arms, Torso, Legs), your stats and modifiers, and an indicator that shows if your current loadout is appropriate for your level. If the indicator is green, it means your gear level exceeds your current level, which is good. If it’s white, it means it matches your current level and may indicate that you should look for upgraded gear. Orange or Red indicators signal that it’s time to look for new gear because you’ll have problems taking on future enemies with the loadout.

Modifiers grant bonus passive abilities to Lea depending on the equipment she’s wearing. A Pin Body modifier, for instance, reflects the damage that hits her shield up to a certain percentage. Bullseye increases ranged attack damage. Flash Step increases the invincibility frames while dashing, and so on. Some types of gear offer secret modifiers that increase drop rate, grant an extra dash or even grant an additional buff slot.

You can pick up normal, unmodified gear in shops around the major towns of Shadoon. Picking up the best gear with modifiers attached, on the other hand, requires you to do a bit of trading.

In A New Home, players can pick up Ascension Gear. This special type of gear matches your level. So, the gear that you wear becomes stronger as you level up. This way, you can focus on loading up on your favourite modifiers without sacrificing gear stats.

You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Picnic Basket

Lea can eat food items to restore health or grant temporary passive buffs. Sandwiches are your primary source of healing. You can purchase regular and Hi-Sandwiches at shops. You’ll have to make trades to obtain the higher healing sandwiches, but they are worth it for the amount of HP restored. 

Certain foods offer buffs that can help turn the tides of battle. Teas offer HP regeneration up to certain percentages. Foods like steak or chili dogs increase attack or defense, and so on. Lea can consume up to two buff-granting foods at a time, and three with the Appetite modifier.

Tying into the copious amounts of references within the game, the food here makes reference to pop culture. Chili Dogs, for instance, are a hedgehog’s best friend as described in the game. One of my favourite laugh-out-loud food items is Guacamole Toast. Not only is the item description hilarious (“Taste the suffering of entire generations in every bite.”), but it grants huge status buffs while sacrificing earning potential. Meaning you can kick butt, but you won’t earn any money for your efforts. Just like in real life!

Quick, Menu!

The Quick Menu offers convenient access to common commands with a push of a button. In the Switch’s case, you can access it by pressing ZL. Along with selecting items, you can also check your surroundings and view enemy stats, and points of interest. You can also manage your party and open the map.

Out of battle, players can use items freely without suffering from cooldown. In battle, however, players will have to deal with a cooldown period before they can use the next item. Furthermore, enemies can interrupt the eating process. Thankfully, if interrupted, you can try again instantly without worrying about the cooldown. Having a Leaf Bracer modifier prevents enemies from interrupting you when you’re healing. (Yes, that’s a Kingdom Hearts reference.)

Selecting the party option on the Quick Menu allows you to modify your party members’ behaviour. You can set them to prioritize offense, defense or let them do their own thing.

Lastly, you can fast-travel to Landmarks by accessing the Map from the Quick Menu. It’s incredibly useful for travelling to different locations of the same place to hunt and farm items from the flora and fauna.

Flora and Fauna

CrossCode’s numerous creatures and plants are instrumental in attaining the best equipment and items available. They drop various materials that are required to make trades in and around Shadoon. Plants come in different grades – Alpha, Beta and Omega – and different types can be found in different sections of the same area. These differences also affect the items dropped by breaking them. So, for instance, in the Maroon Desert area, you can find dried cactuses in the drier, sandy sections of the area. But, in the oasis area, you find water-filled versions of the same cactus that drop a different set of items! 

As for the fauna, as Lea and her party members fight on the field, a Battle Rank gauge is on the top right of the screen. This gauge appears as you chain fights with enemies. Your Battle Rank increases as you defeat more enemies without breaking the chain (either by letting the gauge expire or entering a story event). Drop rates increase with your rank, and some items only drop at a certain ranking.

The Encyclopedia within the main menu shows what each plant and animal drops, along with their drop rates and at what ranks enemies will drop items. Bear in mind you’ll have to fight a certain number of a specific foe or collect a certain number of drops from a plant to gain this information. This tool is nonetheless vital for vendor trading.

I’ve Come to Bargain!

So, you’ve raided chests, looted the remains of the trail of carcasses in your wake and extracted resources from the numerous flora within the game. What do you do with all this stuff? Well, you trade it in for better gear and items so that you can continue the cycle, of course!

While it’s not vitally necessary to complete the game, trading allows you to obtain the best gear and items available. Each town and rest area has a vendor with whom you can trade items. Items like Fruit and Spice Sets are base materials for getting better healing items, while items like Junk, Refined or Epic Metal are needed for better gear. Some gear trades require a piece of gear that you got on a previous trade. So, in a sense, you’re upgrading that particular piece of gear. It’s helpful if you favour a particular set of modifiers associated with that particular gear.

Speaking of modifiers, aside from chests, trades are the only places where you’ll pick up gear with modifiers attached to them. It does take a little work on your end, but the rewards outweigh the grind.

Are You Really Stuck In A Game?

*Plot spoilers from this point on!*

CrossCode’s plot is similar to that of .hack//SIGN, an anime based on the .hack// video games released in the early-00s. In the series, Tsukasa is a player who similarly is trapped in an MMO game with short-term memory loss. Together with his friends, he sets off on a quest to figure out why he is unable to log out. However, the similarities end there.

On the way to the second element, Sergey informs Lea that her real body is in a coma, which is the same circumstance Tsukasa is in. As distressing as it sounds, that isn’t even the truth of the matter. During a raid event with her guild, the Blue Avatar accosts Lea and transports her to an off-limits area within the Bergen Mountains. Overpowering her, the Blue Avatar captures Lea and sends her to the Vermillion Wastelands. Trapped along with her fellow guild member, Lukas, she undertakes several nonsensical missions while trying to find a way to escape. 

A few days later, Shizuka busts her way into Lea’s prison, violently confronts her and reveals a startling and shocking truth. Lea isn’t in a coma. In fact, she isn’t real at all.

Evotars

Lea is what’s known in CrossCode as an Evotar – a highly advanced, AI copy of a player’s Avatar. In Lea’s case, she is the first Evotar in which Shizuka forms her basis. Satoshi’s CrossCode technology advanced to the point where it can copy a person’s neural network, compile it and install it into a blank Avatar.

Evotars have the capacity to think and behave like human beings. At first, they remember nothing of their previous lives, but their memories begin to return as time passes. We see evidence of this in Lea’s dreams when she logs out of the game. Evotars start to behave erratically when confronted with their origins, resulting in severe malfunctions. Lea barely avoids this fate thanks in part to Lukas while staying in the Vermilion Wastelands. At the end of her ordeal in the off-limits area, she comes to terms with what she is.

After a prolonged apology for deceiving her, Sergey reveals that Satoshi, his sister Shizuka, and a third individual, Gautham, were friends of his at Instantainment Inc. Those three left when the company wouldn’t support the Evotar initiative. The engineer deduces that someone on the outside is bankrolling the Evotar development for a sinister purpose. The plot then focuses on finding Satoshi’s last-known whereabouts, tracking down Shizuka and Gautham and discovering who’s responsible for supporting the Evotar project outside of Instantainment. When Lea and Sergey finally enter the Old Hideout from the beginning of the game, they learn that Satoshi turned himself into an Evotar after his death to continue his work. 

Game Breaking 

Some of the more humorous moments in CrossCode are when the game subtly reminds you that you’re playing a game within a game. A little finagling from your software engineer friend can easily break CrossWorlds, usually with hilarious results.

One of the best moments in CrossCode is when some serious hacking occurs during Chapter 7, in the Vermillion Wastelands. At a certain point in the chapter, Lea and Lukas enter the Vermillion Tower together with the aim to use it as a way to escape and return to CrossWorlds proper. However, the Tower is instanced. Each player has their own version of the same dungeon, a marvelous feat of quantum mechanics. To circumvent that, Sergey hacks into the game’s code and provides Lea with a way to jump instances by breaking the walls in between them. But this is only the start.

Just as she and Lukas are about to escape, the Blue Avatar, who had been tracking down Lea since the beginning of the game, sics a giant snail boss on her. This thing has an unfathomable amount of HP – roughly 1.6 x 10^20! In order to get around this particular annoyance, Sergey and Lea employ the power of mathematics (specifically, the power of two) to increase her attack stat by absorbing modified slug enemies. Maxing at about 4096 times her original attack stat, Lea then dishes out a ridiculous amount of damage that would even make a Disgaea character blush. Lea and Sergey repeat this trick during the final boss fights against The Creator: an ultimate experience that encompasses everything about CrossCode’s mechanics, including hacking the very code that makes up the game.

A New Home

Toward the end of the story, Lea’s fate can go one of two ways. The bad ending has Lea and her fellow Evotars permanently removed from CrossWorlds. Players obtain the true ending by speaking to a prominent Instantainment shareholder in Rhombus Square. Here, he performs a Turing Test on Lea to determine how advanced her AI is. If successful, he backs the push to include Evotars into the game. 

In the DLC, Lea and the Evotars have carved out a new existence within CrossWorlds while Instantainement figures out a use for them. They have their own town called Homesteadt and Evotar Satoshi has become a sort of mayor of the town. Only a small subset of players – those close to Lea – have access to the town.

A New Home adds four new chapters that help to tie loose ends left over from the original game. Players are also introduced to an Evotar version of Lukas, called Luke to differentiate from his original. Storylines in the DLC revolve around Luke’s handling of being nothing more than AI, the final major dungeon in CrossWorlds and a sequel announcement and the whereabouts of Benedict Sidwell – a major antagonist of CrossCode. C’tron plays an integral part in determining his location, as he is an Evotar of Sidwell himself.

Meaning of Life

CrossCode’s jaunty and fun-filled world belies questions of what it means to be alive. Lea’s focus through her adventure was finding a way out of CrossWorlds. But things come to an abrupt halt when she discovers that there’s no way out of the game. As an Evotar, she has no human body to return to when she logs off. The game contains herself, her entire existence. She doesn’t exist outside of it. That revelation in the Vermillion Wastelands nearly breaks her to her core. She nearly delves into severe and total depression if not for Lukas. 

Not knowing that he is also an Evotar himself, Lukas is able to convince Lea that even if she was stuck in CrossWorlds, there are still things to do that would be meaningful. Even though she’s nothing more than data in a shell, her experiences and feelings matter. He supports her and reminds her that she still has people that care about her. And it would be those same people that would band together with her at the end of the game to free the Evotars, despite her being nothing more than AI.

At the end of A New Home, Instantainment has revealed the existence of Evotars and given them jobs. As a game tester, Lea joins Shizuka (whom she considers a sister due to their shared bond). She also enters into a relationship with Luke.

A Creator Obsessed

*t/w: Suicide*

Gautham, the third member of the secret Evotar project consisting of himself, Shizuka and Satoshi, is an interesting character to explore. Gautham is a former level and gameplay designer at Instantainment. He is also a creative zealot who yearns to create the ultimate experience for CrossWorlds players. Seeing Evotars as a way to further refine his designs, he tags along with Shizuka and Satoshi after Sidwell offers to fund the Evotar initiative behind Instantainment’s back.

In CrossWorlds, he controls The Designer AKA the Blue Avatar, a player character with god-like superuser abilities. In his first appearance, he is drawn to Lea’s location due to her being an Avatar outside of the Playground. By observing her fighting style, he recognizes Lea as Shizuka’s Evotar and sets out to capture her, as she threatens the Evotar initiative. Later on, Gautham realizes that Lea could be the key to the Ultimate Experience he so longed to design. At the end of the game, Lea conquers both the massive Vermillion Dungeon and the final boss fight against The Creator, thus fulfilling his desires.

Gautham wakes up from his stupor once Lea triumphs. Appearing in front of Lea without his avatar, he explains that he went with Sidwell’s ideal so that he could have free reign on designing player experiences. Over time, he numbs himself to the atrocities Sidwell was enacting on Evotars to gain their Avatar’s personal information. Now free, he faces the effects of his actions and, unable to live with himself, commits suicide to both Lea and Sergey’s collective horror.

References, Ahoy!

Despite taking place a few thousand years in the future, CrossCode makes numerous callbacks and references to 80s, 90s, 2000 and 2010 pop culture. One of the earliest examples is when you have to fight a speedy blue Hedgehag in a quest that’s eerily similar to Sonic the Hedgehog. It even drops a Gold Ring and a couple of Chili Dogs as a reward! Some other items of interest include a Masterball (Pokemon), Golden Triangles (Legend of Zelda) and the Blue Shell (Mario Kart).

There’s even a quest line in the main story that references the anime Tenga Toppen Gurren Lagen. You first trade items to obtain a Core Driller and then keep trading upwards until you meet a mysterious old man in Basin Keep and make a trade for the Galaxy Spiral Drill. He drops a book which starts a new quest leading to the creation of an Infinity Spiral Drill, which is as ridiculously awesome as it sounds.

The truly eagle-eyed will spot the subtle references peppered within the game. Lea’s level-up pose is a reference to the pose in Terranigma. One of Emilie’s Combat Arts, Faucon Poing, directly translates from French to Falcon Punch. In Basin Keep’s Corner Mall, the stairs leading to the third floor occupied by Umbrella Inc. are blocked off due to some sort of outbreak. The list can go on and on from here.

Wait, Those Achievements Are Actually Worth Something?!

Yes indeed! Everything from attacking a certain number of times to filling out bestiaries, to facing ultra-rare bosses grants you Trophy Points. These are carried over and used to purchase modifiers for a New Game + file. Players unlock New Game + when they first reach Meta-Space at the end of the main game

In New Game +, players can purchase modifiers to drastically change the experience in CrossCode. Firstly, you can carry over things from a previous save, such as levels, equipment, trades and elements. You can also modify the rate at which you earn experience, money and drops. By far, the most exciting options are the combat modifiers. Sergey Hax adds a 4096 or 212 multiplier to her base attack. Prepare to Hi! makes Lea die to any single hit. Witch Time and Devil Trigger (callbacks to Bayonetta and Devil May Cry) slow time after a perfect dash and eliminates SP cost for Combat Arts respectively. Players can enable further modifiers that affect enemy behaviour, set limits on Lea or affect the field behaviour. Examples include adding ice physics to all surfaces or using landmarks only to recover health or teleport outside of battle.

These mods affect character dialogue when you start a new game. In particular, enabling Sergey Hax turns Lea into a bloodthirsty W.M.D. NPCs and party members will regularly comment about how absurd her damage output is. It makes for an enjoyable replay.

The Most Charming Silent Protagonist

Lea follows in the footsteps of other notable silent protagonists, like Crono from Chrono Trigger and Link from the Legend of Zelda. Radical Fish differentiates Lea from the others thanks to the clever use of expressions and gestures. Lea isn’t the first to use expression as a form of communication. Crono did the same throughout Chrono Trigger, after all. However, Radical Fish put a lot of effort into using sprite art facial expressions to convey Lea’s feelings about a variety of things. Her most well-known and beloved expression is her smug face.

What sets her further apart is the fact that her inability to communicate is not entirely her fault. As the first Evotar, her coding was highly experimental. Satoshi and the others couldn’t quite get the communication module working before they placed her into the CrossCode server as a part of Satoshi’s overall plan to overthrow Sidwell. By the time Sergey recovered her code, Satoshi and the others managed to fix the speech problem for Evotars.  Attempting the same fix on Lea risked irreparable damage to her base code. This left Lea unable to speak, but still able to communicate through pre-programmed words and through limited gestures. On the flip side, Lea attentively listens to her friends as they talk about their various problems in the real world and empathizes with them.

At the end of A New Home, Sergey completes an invention for Lea called the Lea Board. Programmed with thousands and thousands of words, Lea could generate sentences and finally communicate with her friends and family. Instantainment also erected a statue of her in Homesteadt to honour the AI girl who had captured the hearts and minds of the millions who played CrossWorlds.

The 8-Bit Review

Visuals: 8/10

The sprite work is some of the best and brightest I’ve seen. Visually, it reminds me a lot of Chrono Trigger. Battle effects and animations for the elemental skills are also striking and exciting to watch. Character sprites and portraits are charming. CrossCode does suffer some lag when there’s too much happening on screen and there are framerate drops in a few environmental areas.

Audio: 9/10

The game’s music is mellow and inviting to get into. During story and exploration stints, warm synths and pads contrast nicely with soft percussion. A non-invasive bassline brings the entire ensemble together in a nice, cozy package. Battle music, on the other hand, is what you would expect. The music is punchy and designed to fire up the tension as you engage in the Action-RPG elements of the game. By far, the song that defines the game is Lea’s theme, titled “Lea!” It perfectly encapsulates Lea’s innocent, playful and curious nature in the game, which makes her all the more endearing. Variations of this theme also reflect her emotional and mental state at critical plot junctures, such as the revelation that she’s an AI program.

Sound production and effects are well done. I had no trouble discerning between the music and the various shots, slashes and explosions during intense action. The sound of a VRP launching and then reflecting off walls was oddly satisfying to hear. 

Gameplay: 8/10

CrossCode was initially made with a mouse and keyboard setup in mind. To that end, Radical Fish went with a two-stick control scheme. The left stick controls Lea and the right stick handles VRP aiming. Shoulder buttons and face buttons can both execute actions. Players can remap buttons in options. Controls feel tight and precise when battling and while doing puzzles. Aiming the ricochet projectiles to solve certain puzzles, however, is maddening at times. Luckily, these are fair and few in between. The quick menu is a nice touch, allowing easy access to commonly used options. 

Narrative: 9/10

You can’t beat a heartfelt story of a girl trying to find herself, only to discover she’s AI. What starts as a lighthearted affair turns into discussions of what it means to be alive. The game also explores the implications of using brainwave scanning technology to breach player privacy. We also see what happens when an obsession with one’s craft goes beyond what’s acceptable, as exemplified by Gautham. CrossCode melds these narratives together into a cohesive, easy-to-digest package, while also adding a lot of humour and a fair deal of references to prevent it from getting too serious.

Replayability: 10/10

CrossCode offers a multitude of replayability options. Players can participate in the Battle Arena in Rhombus Square to earn prizes. They can also undertake the numerous quests and minigames available and even face off against their fellow party members in PvP matches. By far, the strongest replayability factor in CrossCode is the New Game + mode. Using Trophy Points to modify the game’s behaviour allows players a near infinite amount of replayability options, from challenging to cheesing and everything in between. 

Challenge: 8/10

CrossCode’s difficulty overall is very balanced. However, there is a small difficulty spike at the beginning if one chooses not to do the optional side quests before moving to the next area. Players can adjust the combat difficulties and puzzle timings at any time in the game to make for an easier experience. Adjusting the puzzle timing works against you if you’re playing the DLC, though. 

Uniqueness: 8/10

CrossCode is billed as a game inspired by classic 16-bit games. If one looks at each individual component – gameplay, visuals, audio, etc. – you can say that they are derivative from many earlier works. However, blend them together with narratives about meaning, obsession and the role AI plays within interactive mediums and you have an experience that feels fresh and novel.

Personal: 10/10

CrossCode has become one of my top games of 2022. I’ve played this title the most on my Switch this year. I adore this game and Lea has become one of my favourite RPG protagonists. The story is gripping and compelling, the action left me on the edge of my seat and the characters felt relatable.

Aggregate Score: 8.8

Ryan Cheddi – our friendly, neighbourhood caffeine addict – is a man of many talents: an engineer, a gaming historian, a fiction writer and a streamer. He is also a self-avowed Sonic the Hedgehog fan. You can check out his cool beans at his site – Games with Coffee – or find him on Twitter as @GameswCoffee, and Instagram as @games_with_coffee. He streams on Twitch, also as GamesWithCoffee.