Project X Zone

Though actual gameplay is on the lower end, witty writing and impressive visual variety ensure your time spent with the crossover strategy RPG is memorable.

Project X Zone is a decent turn based strategy game, in which the recognizable characters obviously are the most it’s got going for it. That’s also its biggest issue: if you’re not familiar with games such as The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, then many parts of the game aren’t appealing to you anymore, or even not understandable at all. If you do know characters like Hsien-Ko, KOS-MOS and Kurt Irving, this point of critique doesn’t apply to you.

It is bound to have its critics then, but when you get to see Darkstalkers’ Morrigan fighting alongside Ghost and Goblin’s Arthur and a grandfather-clock, salt and pepper-shaker tossing Dynamite Cop, it’s almost impossible to stop yourself falling just a little bit in love with the whole affair.

Capcom, Namco and Sega deliver a new world record in pure fan service. Although the strategy parts and fighting could be better, this is still well worth your time and highly recommended for old school gamers.

I desperately wanted to like Project X Zone. It does a lot of things right, even if it doesn't do them as well as other titles in the same genre. The translation is solid, the presentation is good, and the gameplay seems like it could be interesting. Alas, the game ends up being too tedious.

Project X Zone is a great game if you’re a fan of the Namco Bandai, Capcom, or Sega characters included in it.

Project X Zone is a crazy japanese cocktail where characters from a huge number of popular games interact in funny ways. Its gameplay is interesting at the beginning but loses appeal after a few hours, the final experience anyway is good enough. If you love japanese games, just buy it and be happy.

An enjoyable self-homage with excellent 2D graphics and superb soundtrack, making a fun use of the dozens of historic characters from Sega, Capcom and Namco Bandai. However, it´s too long and repetitive, overstaying its welcome at some points.

Project X Zone brings together more than 200 characters from various Namco Bandai, Capcom, and Sega properties—and then proceeds to have them engage in some of the most tedious, drawn-out battles in strategy-RPG history. Yes, it’s great fun in short bursts, but the game rarely lets you experience combat that way, unfortunately.

Despite the lack of depth and the repetition of combat, Project X Zone follows through as a tactical, humorous, preposterous romp through the best hits of video games. Even if you find the combat system strange, the streak of character cameos and the ridiculous number of hits that rack up with every battle will make any hardcore fan smile with appreciation. And if you're anything like me, that's hard to do.

It's a credit to the strength of the iconic stature of the characters that seeing their bafflingly scripted journey to its end becomes an unavoidable errand.

Project X Zone successfully delivers on the fan service and flashy battles, but it falls short in the strategy department. It’s a fun game to play in small intervals, but it’s a lengthy proposition clocking it at around 40-50 hours to complete.

Project X Zone forgot to put the 'tactical' and 'strategy' in tactical turn-based strategy. It lacks depth, which is a shame for a game that could've scored big. It also isn't challenging varied enough, but the great characters manage to alleviate some of those issues.

It's primarily the strength of its cast and its presentation, not the strength of its gameplay, that sustains you through the many long hours of this quest.

Project X Zone had me excited when I saw the list of characters from 27 different franchises from Capcom, SEGA, and Namco Bandai and after I witnessed the epic trailers that surfaced before its release. Unfortunately, I wasn't as happy with the game as I'd hoped. With such a diverse cast of characters, personalities, and environments, it's a shame the gameplay feels so generic (both as a tactics RPG and as a miniature fighting game mimic).

It’s not easy to dislike Project X Zone, not only for its popular characters but also because it can be fun if played in small amounts, maybe a chapter a day.

Unfortunately, while its combat is initially exciting, the enjoyment doesn’t hold up after multiple chapters of the same gameplay.

Project X Zone reunites characters from Sega, Capcom and Namco in a tactical RPG that stands out for its simplicity and sense of humor.

It’s the videogame equivalent of a firework show: you’ll marvel at the pyrotechnics, but while your eyes and ears are in for a treat, there’s little here to engage your brain.

It certainly has its moments, particularly for those well-versed in gaming history, but ends up sabotaged by an insane lack of variety.

When Project X Zone arrived, I was eager and immediately threw it into my 3DS expecting a glorious time. When at last I finished it over seventy hours later, my stance had become a mixed bag.

Beneath the hysterical presentation, the frantic battle segments and the skittish storyline, then, Project X Zone is a thin game. The emphasis on fighting game reactions in the battle segments should appeal to genre fans, but these are too simplistic for genuine expression or mastery. Likewise, the tactical elements of positioning and unit movement on the battlefield lack urgency and true significance. The result is a humorous curio, perhaps, but one without the underlying game to adequately serve its stars.

It embraces and relishes in the legacies and identities of the companies, characters, and worlds it encompasses. If you don't know or care about a lot of the cast, then this will do nothing for you. For others, engaging with characters from the unlocalized Valkyria Chronicles 3, or seeing Tron Bonne after the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3, will hold a unique significance. Project X Zone may be a poor strategy game, but it will still be a very special experience for many.

If the game's plentiful supply of scenarios offered more variety and the gameplay required a little more thought, Project X Zone could compete with the very best. As it stands, however, Project X Zone is overshadowed by superior alternatives.

Not a particularly good game in its own right, but an enjoyably outrageous mash-up between three of Japanese gaming’s most prolific publishers.

A beautiful but disappointingly shallow exercise in self back-patting. [Aug 2013, p.70]

Project X Zone is a repetitive and boring tactical RPG that survives to itself only thanks to the charisma of its historic characters, who come from some of the most famous video games sagas created by SEGA, Namco Bandai and Capcom.