Despite not using my Nintendo 3DS very much, I do really like it, I just have difficulties finding games I really want to play on it. Well over a year ago I saw Project X Zone 2: Brave New World in GameStop, I checked out the back of the box, liked the style, and the idea of playing a game with a multitude of characters from different game series. I went home checked out a little more about it, and then finally decided to buy it. It has taken me a long time to finish the game, but I finally got there, so here's my review of Project X Zone 2: Brave New World.
Who loves peanut butter?! I really love it, it's tasty and works well in chocolate, biscuits, cakes, doughnuts, and sandwiches. One of my favorite ways to enjoy it is between two slices of bread, sometime I might even toast the bread depending on my mood. Throw in a large mug of milk, and I feel like happy little kid again. Admittedly it's rather simple, but it is great comfort food. Playing Project X Zone 2: Brave New World I found myself asking was this a simple tasty sandwich with milk or was it just simple?
Story
The game takes characters from Capcom, Sega, and Bandai and has them working together to help stop the destructions of their worlds. The mission is simple, stop the bad guys summoning an ultimate evil. There are characters from: Resident Evil, Megaman, Strider, Darkstalkers, Virtua Fighter, Resonance of Fate, Streets of Rage, God Eater 2, Tekken, Soul Caliber V, and .hack// to name just a few. The characters are mostly arranged into teams of two, my favorites were Xiaomu/Reiji, Phoenix Wright/Maya, Kiru/Majima, Dante/Vergil, and Sheath/Saya.
The story, while good feels a little more complicated at times than it needs to be, but for the most part, this wasn't really an issue for me as there was so much great dialogue between the characters. There are jokes about other games, nods to the player, plenty of sexual innuendos, and just generally funny conversations. The only thing that initially threw me off were some of the in-jokes, that you would only fully appreciate if you had played all the games the characters were from, but as time went on it just made me want to go out and play those games. Overall though, a good story, with lots of fun dialogue.
Visuals
Handheld games sometimes suffer from poor visuals, this is certainly not the case with Project X Zone 2: Brave New World. When you are organising your characters on the field of battle they are in a chibi/8-bit style which looks really good, the designers picked a style that suited the 3DS perfectly. The conversations between characters are displayed well and gave a really dynamic feel, unlike some games that can feel quite static during dialogue sequences. The animation sequences when pulling off a special attack look fantastic, and I never grew tired of seeing them. One of the coolest things for me was the Dragonturtle MK 1, a mobile base that contains absolutely everything, including a games room!
Overall I can't fault the visuals in the game, for me I really like when game designers push a console to its limits, but without overstepping and creating a visual mess. I kept this section rather short, not due to laziness but more because one of the best parts of the game is the visuals themselves and didn't want to spoil anything.
Music
Being honest I don't think I have ever listened to a single video game soundtrack that contained such a colossal number of composers, arrangers, performers, and lyricists. To have such a talented number of artists working on one game is amazing, and while sometimes 'too many cooks spoil the broth' this certainly not one of those times. To me, music is just as important a part of a game as the story, visuals and the gameplay itself, if you don't feel the same way you may want to skip this section. Below is a list of all the people who helped create the soundtrack:
Chikayo Fukuda, a Japanese composer, lyricist, and arranger, her works include: .hack// and, Naruto TV Series, along with the video games Asura's Wrath and LieN.
Yuki Kajiru, a Japanese composer, she is also part of a duo with Chiaki Ishikawa called See-Saw, and another with Yuuka Nanri called FictionJunction. She has worked on a number of anime series including: Kubikiri Cycle, Sword Art Online, Reservoir Chronicle: Tsubasa and Noir.
Yoko Shimomura, a Japanese composer, lyricist, arranger, and performer, her works include: Street Fighter 2, Kingdom Hearts, and Xenoblade.
Masami Ueda, a Japanese composer, and arranger, he has worked on a number of video game series including: Biohazard Series, Devil May Cry Series, and Bayonetta 2.
Thomas Parisch, a German composer, and arranger, his works include: Resident Evil 6 Biohazard
and the anime series Prison School.
Laurent Zilani, a French composer, and arranger who worked on Resident Evil 6 Biohazard.
Kinuyo Yamashita, a Japanese composer, and arranger, who has featured on Video Games Live along with having worked on Castlevania 20th Anniversary Music Collection and Megaman X3.
Maskazu Sugimori, a Japanese composer, and arranger who has worked on a number of awesome video game titles including Ghost Trick, Vanquish, and the Gyakuten Saiban series (Phoneix Wright Ace Attorney).
Kohei Tanaka, a Japanese composer, arranger, and performer who has worked a number of anime series, and games including Sakura Wars, One Piece Music & Song Collection, Hayate The Combat Butler, Sega Saturn History: Saturn Was Young, and Gravity Rush 2.
Hidenori Shoji, a Japanese composer, arranger, lyricist, and performer whose works includes Yakuza 3, Code of the Joker and Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed.
Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, Japanese composer, arranger, performer, lyricist and programmer who has worked on a number of video game titles including Outrun, Virtua Fighter 1, 2, Virtua Fighter Kids,
Burning Rangers, and Shenmue.
Yuzo Koshiro, a Japanese composer, arranger, lyricist and performer who has worked on both video games and anime including Bare Knuckle (Streets of Rage), Perfect Collection Ys Heaven's Sanctuary, 7th Dragon, and Misty Blue.
Rio Hamamoto, a Japanese composer, arranger, and performer who has worked on a number of video game titles including Soulcalibur 2, Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, Tekken 7 and Ace Combat Assault Horizon.
Akhiro Namba, a Japanese composer, performer, and lyricist who worked on the God Eater Series.
Hiroyuki Kawada, a Japanese composer, and arranger whose works include Tekken 3, The Legend Of Valkyrie, and Beep Special Project.
Takuya Hanaoka, a Japanese composer and arranger who worked on the first Project X Zone, along with Shining Force Resurrection of The Dark Dragon, and Super Robot Wars.
The soundtrack contains eighty-six tracks and over fours hours of music. It is really good, I wanted to buy a physical copy of the soundtrack, but I had to settle for a digital download. There are so many great tracks, my favorites include:
Brave New World
Objection! 2001
You Will Know Our Names
Funk Goes On
Pressing Pursuit
Stair Of Time
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Opening
Burning
Volcanic Rim Stage - Oceania
Theme Of Ryu
Gentle Hands
Ride On Sea
Feast of the Damned
New World Project
Evil Profusion
Faster Than A Howling Wind
Accelerating Chaos
Ship Battle
Sega Saturn - Shiro
Vengeful Beauty
Angels With Burning Hearts
Engage The Enemy
Gameplay
Onto the peanut butter that makes up this sandwich! The game is best described as tactical, turn-based, roleplaying game. The game is not timed so you have all the time you need to plan before attacking. Once you make your move you will go into a classic fighting game view which has you pulling off simple combos to do the most damage to an enemy. In most cases you will have two characters working together on screen to defeat one enemy, it might sound unbalanced but it actually works perfectly especially considering the health bar of some enemies. If you are in close proximity to other characters you can call on them for help which can use to carry out powerful cross attacks. Once your XP bar builds up high enough you can pull over powerful attacks that will kill a lot of enemies, and in other cases severely damage them. Then onto the enemies turn, this times things play out a little different, when an enemy tries to attack you can defend, full defend or counter them. Of course, this is only possible if you have enough XP, and even if you do some enemies are able to ignore this. This, for the most part, is how the game plays out, with the exception of a fewer protect your territory missions.
At the end of each mission, you can spend some time shopping for weapons, equipment, and items, arranging your teams, and leveling up your characters. This is a big part of the game, as you can decide which moves to level up, in the early stages I put a lot of focus on improving the character basic attacks, and later focussed on their special attacks. Overall I found the system simple, and fun to use.
The game itself also has another element, skills. These can be used before moving a character, some of them allow you to move more spaces, enhance the attack, and defense of characters, along with a multitude of others. The strange thing is with the exception of the last few missions I didn't need to use them. I only died half a dozen times in the game, so overall I felt they were kind of unnecessary.
Most missions went okay with the exception of the last one, it took me a few tries to complete, and in the end, it took me over three hours to finish.
Overall some really good, fun gameplay with little to complain about.
Final Thoughts
So after over fifty hours how did I feel? A mixture of happy, and sad. Happy because after a long time of playing I finally finished it, but sad because I finished it. The story might be overly complicated at times, but the visuals were great, and I really like the gameplay. I am sad it's over but I had a great time with it, and might even play it again in the future. This one gets a solid 4 out of 5
As you can see below I have a new addition to my review, it's a happy monkey, created by my better half - thanks, Nolls. If I liked a game you will see him, if I the game was meh or didn't like a game you will see one of his friends.
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