A note first about the name here. I can’t be arsed with the pretentious use and pronunciation of the “cross” symbol. It has no place outside vector maths, and I am generqally annoyed by its widespread use recently. However, I find amusement by pronouncing it as “X”, ie. “ex”. Namco ex Capcom, Street Fighter ex Tekken, Project ex Zone. I refuse to say this the way those marketing suits want me to. So now we have Rockman ex-over, supposedly a great celebration of 25 years of Rockman history. Pffffttplhplhplhphhhhffffrttthhtttthhhhhhhhh. Not to give away my feelings too early or anything.

Similarly to Animal Crossing, I’ve been playing this game daily for the last month. It’s somewhat addictive and I like to fire it up for a little bit, use up my energy points or whatever then quit. Progress has really slowed recently though and I missed the 8-bit event it seems, so I’m nearing my limit I think. Can’t beat the World 5 Shooting Star bosses either, there was a huge “difficulty” jump there.

I say that in scare quotes because there is nothing whatsoever related to skill, reactions, etc. in this game. There’s barely even what could be called gameplay. Stages are extremely basic flat autorunning affairs with random baddies at two levels: ground, and a flat plane above you, for you to jump n’ shoot at. You pick up cards and auto collect money. The only strategy really is sometimes if you’re not careful you have to choose between picking up a card or jumping to shoot a flying enemy.

Boss fights are a completely different gameplay style, violently shifting to a turn-based RPG battle system, and using the stat points that you’ve been collecting all those cards to enhance. I found all the bosses of the first four worlds’s stages very easy, except maybe the final world bosses, and then as I said the curve shoots up to impossible, as if the game is saying “go grind for a few weeks, loser”. Except it doesn’t say that, or maybe it does because I haven’t bothered to translate all the Japanese it comes out with.

Did I mention this game is not available anywhere except the Japanese App Store? I found it was quite easy to make an account there and get the game, although having that account with an app installed from a different region store causes some minor App Store problems every now and then. The game itself is very unforgiving to non-Japanophones, although (as with my long-ago playthrough of Zoids Saga 1) I figured most of the functions out fairly easily.

There’s also social features, with friending, chat, and team battles. People just friend you automatically, as you are often shown random players and given an option to send a request. So getting partners to team battles is never a problem, but I’ve never had a chat request (not that I would understand them anyway—my formal written Japanese is vestigial but present, but colloquialisms would defeat me).

This game was advertised as a “social RPG”, a genre that is much bigger in Japan than in the West. I think this fulfills the promise of that kind of game, as far as I understand them. It has all the hallmarks I would expect, along with copious in-app purchasing, limited play, premium items, and “community” features. Not as cynical as some, but not as well executed as others.

The game is kind of a mess to play. It feels like it was thrown together in a few days. So many buttons, menus, dialogs, loading screens. Things aren’t explained that well and viewing your cards is janky as heck. The two play modes have no pause button. There is lag, especially between menu screens. It asks you to optimise your cards (a process that leaves them most assuredly non-optimal) every time you view the equip screen, and before every boss fight—ie. way, way too often. (Although I may be missing an elemental bonus effect that it accounts for, but I doubt it.) It’s playable despite the horrible interface stuff, but I don’t know how much longer I can stand it for the very little content I get for that.

And so we come to that. As a “social RPG”, it’s passable. As a tribute to 25 years of Rockman, it fails horribly. It, uh. I can’t even. There’s just. Ack. Ok, I read an interview, and the guys who made it sounded so passionate and authentic. How is there such a big disconnect between their attitude and this pathetic scrap? What characters are used have new, fairly nice sprites, but they are used so badly. There are 7 sub-series to Rockman, and some are woefully underutilised in the cards. Others (X) are overused in the worlds and bosses. I don’t think I’ve even seen a Zero series character yet. The new armours are cool, but literally the only characters that appear aside from the bosses are Over-1 and Kalinka (at least she has a new portrait!).

I dunno, this game is just a massive wasted opportunity to me. The mechanics are just executed so badly, and Rockman series representation is so, so limited. A brief cutscene of that Legends airship is not really good enough! Stages only have two bad guys and a Met, for the whole world! And did I mention the loading screens! This is not an adequate Rockman celebration game. It’s not an adequate Rockman game. There’s been a lot of weird Rockman spinoffs, but a lot seem to have more effort involved than this.

Rockman Online looked way more exciting than this, although had it been released I probably wouldn’t have been able to play it. That game looked like a crossover done better. It didn’t claim to represent all 7 series, but it did 2 (Classic and X) very well, with new character designs, nice environments, loads of characters appearances, and proper gameplay.

Anyway, as I said, the game is mildly addictive and it is somewhat gratifying to see something of a wide range of minor characters in the cards, and the occasional more important one showing up. It also familiarised me with some characters and enemies from the Battle Network series (or at least their name and picture, which is all you get with the cards), so it has that. And I must say, the gameplay is unique among Rockman titles. There are small consolations and additions to Rockman canon here, but on the whole it’s pretty disappointing. The customisable equipment/card system surprised me at first with its depth, but ultimately there’s not much point to it.

So I’d say my reaction to this game has been mixed. I’ll keep it around and maybe try to beat those hard bosses, but it’ll take a while. They seem to update with content every now and then too, but some of it is time-limited, very frustrating. I must say, Capcom better have some tricks up its sleeve for Rockman’s “anniversary year” because the fanbase is pretty angry already, and Xover hasn’t done anything to help matters in the West. In fact, fan reaction was so negative that Capcom America promised not to localise it for now. (Insert they’re happy [i]not[/i] to make a game when the fans demand it comment here.) Me, I don’t mind so much, I’m not so short-sighted about these kinds of things, but I’d hate to see this get worse. Although if anything, the way the suits upstairs in Japan are treating the franchise, if anything it’s making the fanbase stronger in its support. Unfortunately they are allied in hostility towards Capcom, so that could get ugly.

Personally, anniversaries don’t mean too much to me (love you honey), but if it means the game companies take the excuse to make more games, then I’m all for it. And any game game in a beloved franchise is important to me in its own way. So in a way, I’m glad Xover exists. I just wish it was better, and I hope it doesn’t preclude further crossovers. Anyway time to end. For those who mind, sorry about writing another Rockman post. To my fellow Rockfans, Rock On! (so lame, I am so lame.) Ok, let me try again: pray for a true peace in space! No wait, wait that’s Metroid. WHAT AM I WRITING FOR!?!?!? Heh, much better.