For a cross-over of this scale and a game that will be out next month, X Edge (pronounce Cross Edge) seems to receive too little attention. Only Famitsu carries reports on Compile Heart’s latest RPG for the PS3 (Agarest Senki, of which the same development team is working on this title, was released last year). The latest promo video unfortunately didn’t help much as it reveals very little about the game. But since there are so little JRPG on PS3 these days, anything is worth playing. I decided to check out the two issues of Weekly Famitsu that has report on the game and see what to expect from the title that features famous characters from Gust, Capcom, NBGI, NIS and Idea Factory.

The Story

The story takes place in several “worlds”, Underworld and Illusion World were the two worlds revealed so far, characters from the Disgaea and Vampire Chronicle are in the former while the latter has Ar tonelico and Mana Khemia series’ characters. These worlds summon and trap souls from other worlds and must be freed in time to prevent the world they belong from disappearing. That’s right, you will have no Disgaea games in future if you don’t save the Overworld souls trapped here. This also explain why the characters of these series are helping out.

The Characters

The two main characters, Kannagi Yuto and Aiba Mikoto, are original characters that somehow landed on one of the worlds and realized from a young girl named Mei that souls from the other worlds were trapped here. With the help of other characters from other games that arrived here unexpectedly as well, they begins their journey to return the souls to their home worlds. Aiba appears to possess some soul detecting abilities but is losing it as she grows up.

Characters from other series making their appearance are:

Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia (Banpresto, now part of Namco Bandai Games)

Lyner Barsett, Aurica Nestmile, Shurelia and Misha Arsellec Lune

Shinseiki Genso: Spectral Souls (Idea Factory)

Mue

Blazing Souls (Idea Factory)

Zeros

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (Nippon Ichi Software)

Etna and Prinny

Mana Khemia 2: Ochita Gakuen to Renkinjutsushi Tachi (Gust)

Wuim, Liliane Vehlendorf and Rozeluxe Meitzen

Atelier Marie (Gust)

Marie

Vampire Chronicle (Capcom)

Lilith, Morrigan Aensland, Felicia and Demitri Maximoff.

Battle System

Battles are turn-based in X Edge with different skills custom assigned to the face buttons (like the Valkyrie Profile series). Players can launch as many skills attack as possible before the character’s AP depleted. Certain skill combination will launch a chain attack with bigger damages, the word “chain” will appears on skill that can be combined with the current skill to launch such attack.

The rewards for winning battle is “Form” that basically is armors that will increase the abilities of your characters. Female characters can also change their outfit with “Form”.

I’m still not very sure about this game, while the story is interesting enough and the reasons for crossover didn’t make me feel it’s forced, the worlds look plain from the trailer and with so many good characters, I’d expect a better looking game. One bad thing about the cross-over is possibly the price of the game, $80 (Play-Asia) isn’t cheap for a game (YesAsia seems to have it cheaper at $62.49).

Official Promo Video

Note: Higher res version, where the screens in this article are taken from, can be found at the official website.

Posted in News on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 10:15 am |
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