Project X Zone is all about tickling the inner fanboy in us all. A large variety of franchise characters from Capcom, SEGA and Namco Bandai mix together thanks to dimensional rifts. Half the fun is seeing your favorite characters team up to battle familiar foes. Despite it being a title built around the idea that players will grab onto characters they’ve know for years, I’ve found myself enjoying meeting new faces from titles and series I’ve yet to unearth myself.
With over fifty character in the main party, which might as well be a small army, there’s not much time to really get to know each of them. The starting prologue missions have tidal waves of character introductions, however after that most will just randomly show up and make a comment before disappearing back into the sea of party members. Everyone lacks depth within Project X Zone, but sprinkled dialog bits over the chapters gives you a small window into their personalities and their worlds.
After spending some time with my new allies, I often end up distracting myself looking up characters like Toma and Cyrille who were completely off my radar as they’re from a 2007 PlayStation 2 title, Shining Force EXA.
While I had a passing awareness of Zombie Revenge, Rikiya Busujima tempted me to actually take a look at some gameplay. Now it’s near the top of my list of titles to pick up for the Dreamcast as it looks like a charmingly cheesy late 90’s 3D beat-em-up.
Some discoveries were a bit less exciting. Hunting down Neneko brought up this lovely result. After a giant “NOPE,” I’ve become fairly certain that my time with this little loli will end once I finally get around to completing Project X Zone.
Cross overs and cameos are nothing new, but the sheer number of characters and worlds in Project X Zone makes it a great title to get a glimpse into a variety of Capcom, SEGA and Namco Bandai franchises, even if their actual gameplay isn’t represented.
