All that the demo allows players do is to realise that it is the characters that are what this game will live and die by. The demo only gives players the one level to work though, and in that time it’s not even close to enough to get a proper feel for the game’s combat system or how the larger plot works together. It might not be cohesive, but it’s certainly exciting as a fan of the franchises to watch these franchises team up to lay the smackdown on some nondescript enemies. For instance, when each character has his or her new turn the music also changes to match the franchise they’re pulled from. In fact, the game doesn’t even try and be cohesive, which seems to be a wise decision. Here is a game that features some very basic visuals, very basic combat structure and a plot that cannot possibly be cohesive since it involves the worlds of Space Channel 5 and Street Fighter together. And it’s the characters that people remember from those original games that are the entirety of this game. We’re talking about over 200 characters in total, such is the scale of the game.

For people who aren’t aware of the game, it takes characters from a huge number of SEGA, Capcom and Bandai Namco franchises and throws them together into conflict with other famous names. But fundamentally most of those games are good quality games, and when they’re not (Mario Sports Mix, for instance), they don’t tend to be engaging games despite the license.īut Project X Zone, based entirely on the demo and what I’ve seen and read of the game, manages to get away with being a reasonably average tactics RPG by virtue of its characters. We’ve seen character crossovers before in popular games, of course – Nintendo are experts at it, with franchises such as Smash Brothers, Mario Sports and Fortune Street (Boom Street for the US) all resting heavily on an assortment of Nintendo characters coming together to share in an activity for gamers to enjoy.

Useless name aside, this is a game worth paying attention to because it perfectly demonstrates the value of the clever application of characters in building a compelling game experience. Last week a demo popped on to the 3DS eShop download store for Project X Zone.

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