Have you ever wondered what it would be like if some you could play an RPG containing some of your favorite video game characters from companies like Capcom, Namco, and Nippon Ichi? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, for all of us, the short answer to that question is that could quite possibly be the worst experience of your life if Cross Edge is anything to go by.

Before you go and label me as just another hater, I want you to know that I really, really wanted to like Cross Edge. I’m a huge Disgaea fan and I was totally onboard with the idea behind the game when I heard it was going to have Etna and her prinnies. When I found out it had other popular franchise characters such as the sexy ladies from Darkstalkers, I about came bricks. I was absolutely certain that there was no way this game could go wrong.

Of course, that was where I was completely wrong. Cross Edge is the video game version of an amateur fan fiction minus the tawdry perverted sex. For starters, its sports some of the worst graphics I’ve ever seen on a next gen system. The last time I saw graphics this bad was on my old Game Boy Color. Not only are the character sprites low rez and blocky, but the overall game lacks any sort of continuous art style. Enemy sprites seemed to have been pulled from a variety of different sources with some creatures rendered in 2D while others have a 3D texture to them. The cutscenes that occur in-between battles and the time you spend aimlessly wandering the world maybe are nothing to write home about either. Rather than making any attempt to create something that might even vaguely be considered “animated,” the developers of Cross Edge decided to go with still images of the characters in three or four different poses overlaid onto a blank background. I guess they must have had to cut some corners in the art department since I’m sure that fifty gig blu-ray disc the game comes one was just too small to fully encompass their original vision. =-_-;;=

Sadly, as bad as the graphics were, that wasn’t what ultimately drove me to dislike Cross Edge. Oh no, it was the absolutely batshit retarded combat system. This game sports more gauges and meters then a Jules Vernes inspired steampunk wet dream. The worst part is that none of them seem to make a damn lick of sense or function in a coherent manner. After several hours of plodding through pointless battle after pointless battle, I still could not pull off certain combos or special abilities in a consistent manner. Since so much of the game’s combat system relies so heavily on having certain gauges are particular levels while standing in very specific parts of the battlefield, random battles eventually become more of a frustrating chore rather than an entertaining pastime. The game does include an in-game help manual, but I found it to be consistently vague or just plain wrong most of the time.

Oh yeah, that reminds me. I think the story and the dialogue was written by retarded monkeys drunk off their asses on banana mash whiskey. I know translating a game from one language to another can be a difficult job and since I don’t remember any obvious grammar issues, I’m going to assume that the terrible dialogue was the fault of the game’s original creators and not the poor sad shlubs who had to translate the game’s awful script into English. I could be wrong though since I did notice some wonky inconsistencies in character names when comparing the spoken dialogue to the text. I won’t even get into the earbleedingly bad quality of the English dub. What you heard in the video trailer I attached embedded in this post is only the tip of the iceberg…

All in all, if you haven’t guessed yet, I think Cross Edge is a horrible game that owes me money for the hours of time it stole from me. Maybe there’s a gem buried in there somewhere, but I could say the same thing about my cat’s litter box. In the end, the result is the same; you’re going to have to dig through a lot of crap before you ever find anything good. Save yourself some heartache and do not buy this game even when you find it in the dollar bin at your local GameStop.