In a decision that seems directly geared towards appealing to that certain subset of fans of Japanese media, the entire game's voice acting is left in its original Japanese. Even as someone who plays a hell of a lot of these games, as a European there were still a considerable number of them - among them God Eater, Yumeria, Shining Force EXA, Valkyria Chronicles 3, Super Robot Wars OG and, of course, Namco X Capcom - that I have no experience with.įans, though, will have a lot to appreciate here. This is all great and fine if you're the type of person who has been gaming for decades and is familiar with most of the featured games but if you're a casual gamer who was prompted to try, say, the recent Fire Emblem: Awakening and acquired a taste for strategy RPGs for their 3DS as a result, Project X Zone becomes a hard sell due to its vast amount of esoteric content. The localization is peppered with knowing winks to gaming references as well, and so much of the game is engineered towards fan service. Though the game does elucidate on the characters and concepts (such as named organizations and countries) of Project X Zone in a handy "Crosspedia", the game still banks on the player knowing most of the references being thrown their way. It goes without saying that this immense attention to detail will drive away and draw in a crowd of people in equal measure. Odder still is that The World occasionally bleeds over to Gain Ground: a futuristic combat simulator that was the basis for an old Sega Arcade game of the same name. hack in which quite a lot of the game takes place. The game also finds a lot of uses for virtual worlds as well: Those like The World MMO of. There's also characters from alternative futures and pasts, such as Mega Man X and Tron Bonne (who are from entirely separate continuities but appear to be cognizant of one another) to represent "what may be" and the Sakura Wars quartet from a steam-driven 1920s and the Nameless Squad of Valkyria Chronicles' fake-WW2 to represent "what might have been". As premises go it's a very flimsy reason to get a whole bunch of different characters from different universes together, but it's interesting just how intertwined a lot of them are: While you have fantasy outliers like Shining Force EXA and Tales of Vesperia that need to hop onto the nearest magical means of crossing worlds, there are also a few universes closer to home like the various demon realms that Sir Arthur (he of Ghouls 'n Ghosts fame), the Darkstalkers posse and Dante and Lady of Devil May Cry inhabit. The general story of Project X Zone is that the scion of a powerful Japanese clan and her freelance ninja bodyguard/tutor discover that the secret treasure her family has dedicated themselves to protecting is suddenly stolen one day by a flamboyantly dressed organization calling themselves the Oros Phlox, and due to the item's dimension-hopping capabilities various universes are soon dragged into the fray with each of its heroes banding together to make sense of everything and halt Oros Phlox's plans. What's perhaps even odder is that this all has a precedent in Monolith Soft's earlier Namco X Capcom: a similarly-themed Strategy RPG for the PS2 that was sadly never localized for the US and European markets. The concentrated efforts of Banpresto (creators of the Super Robot Wars games, among other often anime-influenced titles) and Monolith Soft (Nintendo RPG developers extraordinaire) to combine three publishing empires' worth of franchises and characters in a Strategy RPG akin to something like Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea sounds like quite the elevator pitch when you see it all written out like that. Project X Zone is definitely a curious beast.
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