Namco X Capcom. The Game that Never Ends.

Why does everything take so long?

That's the name of this game. The shortest fight(s) in the game will take you at least 45 minutes. AT LEAST. That is the one thing you MUST know about this game before I go any further. It drags on forever.

Hourwise, it's not so bad. It definitely puts up some of the old school numbers (you're looking at like 90+ hours), but the game itself isn't ungodly long.

It's just, the battles. -rolls eyes-

That's like, the only REAL gripe you can have with the game. Every single solitary fight works the same way. Story, fight, new enemies (maybe allies too), story, fight, new enemies, story, fight, done. It's pretty tedious. It helps that the game gives you an in-battle save feature. I mean heck, with the "dynamic" twists in the story during a fight, the game sort of implies that you SHOULD be saving in between fights. It's not like you have to deal with a world map or anything. So it's just, chuggin' away through fights.

The second gripe there is with the game doesn't come directly from the game. It comes from the fan translation that I had the luxury to play through. And yes, I cannot stress luxury because it's amazing that a group of people were able and willing to translate and reformat an imported game to the point of where you could play through it. I'm completely thankful for that.

However, I swear that translation had to be from Japanese gamers who just learned English. There are so many grammatical errors and "common errors" that you'll question your ability to read English. On top of that it doesn't help that no proof reading happened, which is obvious by blatant typo errors (I.e. xame instead of came, rhere instead of there.) Even with all of this, I didn't get too upset until I started catching onto the fact that some phrases were copy-pasted in situations where they don't match. For example, you have a character who can drain magic. You have another one who also drains magic, but their skill will knock the enemy back. If you look at the text, they'll both say THE EXACT SAME THING. So you have to magically remember one of them knocks back. It's not horrible, but it pretty frustrating when you first catch onto it.

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Beyond those, the game is good. I'd give it like, a 75/100 or so. It's not bad by any stretch, but it's really not amazing.

The story is o.k. Well, the main story at least. The five-million side stories in the game vary depending on how well you know the characters. I mean, I was fairly interested in the Namco characters seeing as they were pulled from like, 20 different games I've never heard of. (I mean seriously Bravo Man and Wonder Momo? XD). But you take the Street Fighter characters, and you pretty much KNOW the story before it happens. It is somewhat interesting when they have cross-game stories. Beyond all that, the story is nothing amazing.

The gameplay is pretty much the only reason why you'd want to play this game, and it's fairly solid. The battle system is based off of AP, 1 to move (doesn't matter how far), 1 to wait, 3 to attack, items are free. Characters work in either short or long range (or both). The actual combat is a small mini game where you're given up to 5 moves (depending on character and range), and you string together combos for damage and a variety of bonuses.

Now, the thing that keeps this game from being awesome, in my opinion, is how fool-proof it can be. You don't really notice it at first since you have to unlock abilities and sift through the meanings of stuff, but once you start to get a handle of what your characters can do, the game gets pretty mindless. First off, there's no penalty for using items, and you'll wind up with just, TOO MANY of them. Then you catch on to the defense mechanic, complete with the ability to flat out avoid combat or taking no damage. And then you start realizing that you have some busted abilities, like a character who can drain mp AND raise ANYBODY's AP to 10. Note that the enemy NEVER uses mp. Yeah, that's as dumb as it sounds. I could go into who's super good and who's a waste of time, but that'd ruin the game for you. (If you DO want to know, just msg me somehow and I'll let you know.)

With all that, the game is not HARD at all. 90 hours, and I never had a single character die. Now, SRPGs are my favorite genres of games, so I can come up with some solid strategies, but I mean nobody even came close to dying. That's what happens when a majority of your characters can heal themselves. -rolls eyes-.

Um, sound? I wouldn't call it amazing, but it is kool how every character has a theme. I say a theme because it might not specifically be THEIR theme. I mean, do you know Karin Kanzuki's Theme? Doubt it. There are some pretty interest ones in here, assuming you haven't heard them all, but it's nothing to really write home about.

Graphics? It's not ugly. (I'm not big on graphics if you don't know.)

The only other thing to know is that the game DOES have an expert mode (Don't know if it's a New Game+ yet). Aside from that, I can't imagine there being too much of a reason to play through the game more than once. It doesn't really change, there isn't a wide variety of strategies to use. The game is fairly straightforward.

All in all, the game straight. I'd recommend it to srpg fans, but I don't plan on boasting about it to everybody. I am pleased to at least PLAY the game, seeing as it will never come out in America (which is obvious when you start looking at all of the Namco characters), but it's not like it's going to make my top games list. I honestly don't know if I'd put it on my top SRPGs games list.