Okay. I guess it's time to break down and take a look at Namco X Capcom.
The disclaimer that it's a fanservice game precedes this. Of course, it's a crossover SRPG. In that regard, Monolith went the left field lane and had no regrets: the cast is -full- of obscura and less overexposed characters, aiming for a true memory lane feeling and vying for more niche pandering. In this regard, it succeeds massively. The locations are hugely recognizable, and you're likely to recognize the references everywhere and chuckle. The fanservice was done in as clever a manner as a fanservice game could do. The snappy dialogue and the general light-heartedness of the writing do the game a service as well. Honesty is a quality! Granted, some of the choices were WAY out of the left field: Resident Evil Dead Aim? Forgotten Worlds? Baraduke? Genpei Toumaden? What the hell is a Genpei Toumaden? Burning Force? Man, I thought I was the only person who remembered Burning Force even existing.
Granted, the game... isn't as stylish as it could be. Enemy animations are thoroughly disappointing: Strider's Grandmaster could've been massively stylish and neat, but what he does is... smack you with MAGICAL FISH. It's hilariously nonsensical, but poor. Most enemies also are boring. At least, they did a good job with the PCs - thoroughly recognizable, and they often have their full original skillsets, sometimes with added gusto. It all makes entirely too much sense.
What about the gameplay, then? Well... it's SRW-style SRPG. Only with even more broken in a fundamental mechanics sense and a combo system that makes battles slower in general, since they disallow animation skipping. The part of the broken is particularly eyebrow-raising, because it's a fundamental cornerstone of the system.
You see, in SRW, you have notable freedom with spellcasting, trading that freedom for more limited offensive actions (you can cast spirits without taking a turn, but there are moves you can't use after moving, etc), and the defensive system offers the choices of counter/defense/evade for a simple, yet effective experience. This system is fundamentally broken on its own, but to a lesser degree than this one.
Because, y'see? In NxC, you can: cast spells without taking a turn, both -before- and -after- moving. Attacking has no restrictions other than range, and item usage, which exists in SRW but is usually limited and ineffectual, becomes broken in NxC because it also can be used ad nauseum without taking turns, before and after moving. Of course, this makes sense considering the different spectrum of spells in NxC - there are a bunch of spells that require you to be next to the enemy to use. But those very spells tend to be broken, too. The focus on spirits in SRW was mainly self-defense and straight offense, and you had to watch closely to not run out of resources before handling the map. Healing spells were usually expensive and limited, and resource-whoring spirits were also limited.
None of this in NxC. The game has deeper resource pools than your average SRW, and they're far more replenishable - both due to items being broken and thrown at you like candy and due to the existence of other methods of regeneration (particularly, doing chains in a certain way gives you 10% HP or MP regen. This can be abused for vaguely horrific results if you're willing to sacrifice some damage). Then, there are outliers like KOS-MOS and Sylphie, who get what amounts to essentially full MP Regen every single turn due to having a 5% per hit MP regen skill, which makes them horrific beasts. There are other characters who get 5% per hit suffered MP Regen skill, which turns them into doom tanks if they have healing (and the characters with that skill -almost always have-). The healing, being stat-based and skewed towards the high side, also becomes horrifically good. Then, there are the people with MP draining, and they're often paired with inanely retarded support spellsets. This turns them into monsters in their own right.
This isn't even getting into the counter mechanics, though. You see? You can cast spells and use items when the enemy attacks you too. While the counter/evasion maneuvers sans defense are more limited and less effective, the side spellcasting/item using is impossibly broken, and what makes the MP Regen tanks so retardedly good at the tanking business. As long as you have resources and you're not OHKOed, you. Can. Not. Die. And since enemies in NxC are complete wimps (particularly bosses. The enemy competence in general is Grandiatastic) very, very few things can OHKO you through defend - hell, only the final boss can consistently OHKO people through defend. And she couldn't OHKO KOS-MOS, which meant she got soloed by hookerbot.
The system is pretty fun, but very, very mindless. It's the SRPG equivalent of a musou game in a sense, and you're not extracting any depth out of a system this inherently broken. The slow pacing of battles bogs the gameplay a bit further as well. That and having so many forced units through so many maps. In a sense, it was nice that they encouraged using everybody, and there is no such thing as unusably bad in NxC (not even close to. The tier gaps are far more staggering than character usability), but a bit less leash-handling on the roster would be nice.
All in all, it was fun while it lasted, but probably one of the essentially shallowest games I played in years. Which is okay, but certainly not winning prizes. On the other hand, it was hilarious to see how badly the game tried to one-up itself with broken at every turn. Entertaining, but ultimately forgettable game.
