As of this writing I am approximately 35 hours into Project X Zone, plus or minus an hour or so. When I last wrote about it I wasn’t nearly so far in and I hadn’t experienced some of the game’s attempts to make itself more difficult. Most of these endeavors fail and only manage to make the game more tedious. It reminds me of Metroid Prime’s Hard mode, which merely increased enemy health and damage. In the end, foes simply took more time but weren’t really more challenging.

The go-to strategy of Project X Zone this far into the story is to first drop you amongst a couple dozen of low-level mooks, building some experience and your XP bar (if you don’t know the difference then read the previous piece I wrote on the game). After a turn or two, or after so many foes have been slain, the game will then drop in a new group of foes. This will typically include multiple “boss” units, the signature characters from the various respective games. There will be a lot of dialogue as the game tries to cram as much of its cast in as possible, providing equal representation of each franchise and company, before finally moving on.

The problem is the majority of these mooks are still quite easy to defeat if you already have a basic grasp of what you’re doing. Stay adjacent to allies, use special abilities as needed, and then pull in all Support and Solo units as possible. The average time for a single battle is about an hour and a half at this point, and seeing as I have about nine-and-a-half more chapters to go, I’m guessing I have somewhere between fourteen or fifteen hours remaining (which would be consistent with HowLongToBeat.com).

I imagine they will try to shake things up further in that time, but thus far the most effective has been providing turn limits to complete an objective. For example, in a recent chapter Zero from the Mega Man X franchise was incapacitated, and I had less than nine turns remaining to get to him and essentially fail the mission. However, once this objective is completed (with the exception of a handful of earlier iterations in the game), the player is then given the objective to simply wipe everyone out. As a result, the player is merely rushed towards a certain objective before they have to do what they’ve always done, which is to clear a room of dozens of foes.

On the whole, the game is not really difficult. I could go more in-depth as to which Solo units work better with different Paired units, or which characters should have what equipment, but then you run into an issue of overabundance. You can’t sell any old or unused equipment, so every time you enter the equipment menu you have to look through and compare every possible item. This makes inventory unwieldly when you consider just how many combat units you’re in control of. The same goes for matching the units together, as you may recall that some units don’t play nice with your current set-up, but specifically which units becomes a fog.

The differences are present, but they’re very small. Very rarely will a pair stand out such as Leanne and Zephyr from Resonance of Fate. Due to their weapon choice of pistols and sub-machine guns, they excel at boosting your combo count and thus your XP bonus at the end of a match. They also deal a lot of additional damage when using Multi-Attacks that other allies do not manage. Simultaneously, Akira and Pai are only able to Multi-Attack two foes at once, but they deal even more damage. So there are some interesting differences between characters, but it becomes easy to forget in the midst of the shuffle. It’s almost as if each unit is a pawn, only once in a while you have a bishop and are absolutely giddy to move diagonally instead.

I will say that the game has become more interesting as far as resource and ability management goes. Early on the player will be using their XP on stronger attacks left and right, but as the game progresses it relies more and more on those additional abilities. The player must nullify a foe’s block, or perhaps summon a support/solo unit twice. Careful attention to which characters have certain passive abilities can also help determine who best to support you in a fight, as some characters provide a percentage chance to be able to summoned twice no matter what.

Something I’ve discovered, a bit too late in the game, sadly, is how to score a critical. At first I figured critical strikes were by chance, like in most role-playing games. However, in Project X Zone the critical strike is executed through timing. I’m not completely certain what that timing is, however. When an attack on an enemy has finished, they will typically bounce or rebound through the air afterward. Either right before they hit the ground or right as they hit the ground is the time frame you want to strike next, as it is a very small window of opportunity to score a critical.

In addition to a small amount of extra damage per strike, each time you nail one of these critical opportunities also garners an additional 5% experience. This late in the game, that can be important as gulfs appear between units. Some will lack special abilities or attacks while others will gain them early, and the enemies will be adjusting based on the anticipated new skills developed.

The real problem is that when these units gain these attacks differs. Some learn special multi-attacks through story events, others by reaching a certain level. Some will gain extra moves, allowing for a maximum of five, which means much more damage being dealt. However, without that bonus attack, some units will be weaker than others. As a result, some of your already high level and skilled units will be killing foes with ease and gaining more experience while others are just so close to killing an enemy, yet miss out on experience necessary to catch up.

The best strategy, in that case, is to simply save up your XP or use items to build it up so that these lower level units can unleash a special move and defeat a boss unit. This will gain a 20% bonus to an already large amount of experience gained, often gaining these units two levels. It does not guarantee they’ll learn a new ability, but it will help.

On the whole I’ve still been enjoying the game, but I am partially playing it out of obligation. I don’t want it sitting on my shelf for several months unfinished, as I’ll then feel obligated to start it over. I’d love to come back to this game for fun, but not with the goal to play it all the way through. The spectacle of all of these characters gathered onto one cartridge has lost its luster, and there just aren’t enough truly interesting, mind-bending tactical decisions to be made.

Even so, I’d love to see another sequel that could further refine these ideas. Perhaps one featuring some of Konami’s characters?