Gamespot score:n/a
my score:8.5
(+)Pros:-Possibly one of the best dreams come true for both namco and capcom fans,-loads of cameos make for one of the most exciting game of all time,-simple to pick up stragetic tactics,- slick battle system,-main game alone is extremely lenghty.
(-)cons:-close to no replay value,-visuals can be rather lacking
gameplay time:40-50hours( long)
Here's possibly one the most fun games ever(to me) on the PS2, namco X capcom. Lets begin with some personal ranting, namco X capcom was a japan only release. Whats up with that? Either namco or capcom should have the balls to dub or at least translate this and have it localized. Seriously! I saw some english scans and got super hyped but up to today, 4 years later, the PS2 is now close to dead, and not an ounce of the english release of namco x capcom was heard. Sad I am, truly. Still that won't stop me, this is one of the only japanese games that I own that I personally went online to look for the in game script, print it out, and had it beside me when Im playing the game, to understand the characters' individual speeches. Thats how far I went for this game, now time to move on.
The game's story may not be extremely phenominal or fantastic compared to some of the more dazzling RPG games out there, but with the involvment of so many different namco and capcom characters, the amount of badasstitude in the story is basically unimaginable. So its basically alot like kingdom hearts, where warriors of 5 worlds experience a dimensional rift, and all meet together. This happens for the villians too, and now drauga has loads of underlings, and he requires to capture some maidens for his total resurrection (sound familiar?). The story revolves around the game's originals, Arisu Reiji and shaomu, as they work as combat agents in tokyo, and are suddenly jumped on by some gnosis and are soon saved by the chicks from xenosaga, and later even run into chun li. The game has loads of characters and the story later takes place in all the 5 different worlds, and the battle slowly deeepens as more characters get pulled into the fight.
With the involvment of so many different characters, they sure went all out with the character arts. The characters all have excellent portraits, and when the characters go all out with the vocal bashing, you can tell that they all have awesome seiyuus too. Many characters, in which you may have portayed them as silly( arthur, klonoa) or too damn serious (Jin, Ryu, dimitri), all look pretty damn good in this game, portrait wise. Also character wise, the selection is superb, we have all sorts of popula characters, such as megaman volnut, the long lost mike haggar, captain commando, strider, jin kazama, mitsurugi and many more. Obsure characters got thier shot too, as the game sees more of the more unpopular characters, like the unknown soldeirs or maybe beradibou man and wonder momo( who knows , they may be popular in japan). Still, the game is super solid character wise, and they are packed with alot of personality.
With all the grids and funky looking squares on the field, followed by its own battle screen with 2 sides both filled with text content, battle counters, and many other wierd numbers, namco X capcom may look like it has a very diverse combat system, but no it doesnt. Its really easy to pick up. On the field the game is simple, you pick your unit, move it anywhere you want, near an enemy or far away, to iniate either a close or far range attack, then you will move to the battle screen. Likewise when the enemy attacks you. In the battle screen, you or your enemy press a combination of O and D-pad buttons, making a combo of attacks, chaining them together as you look at the damage counter rise. As usual when a unit's HP hits 0 it goes bye bye. All the characters may have very diverse fighting styles but its basically jus mashing the attacks you know are strong until the enemy bites the dust. Oh and when you have your special gauge maxed, you obviously get your own special attack, which will hit hard. Same with the damage gauge, when you get hit too hard or get hit too many times, it fills, and when its maxed out, your character will be stunned, remaining motionless on the field for awhile. Following this are many other options in battle, such as on screen field special attacks, in which a unit consumes some of its SP to do a death defying attack that hits an enemy or a certain amount of enemies. Some of these require a few specific units to team up and perfrom the attack, while some can do it alone.
As appealing as it sounds, the game is just that simple, and its easy to pick up. Following that are the downfall of the visuals. While they all seem "cute" on the field and somewhat a little more serious on the battle screen, a little more could have been done to make them a little bit appealing. Even something like street fighter standard would suffice really, since the sprites in battle in this game look rather short. Even big bad bosses like alastor or the T-rex from dino crisis look only abit above average height, when they should be towering over your characters. Finally, though the game campaign is long as heck ( later stages last more than 2 hours each), when you clear it theres absolutely nothing left to do, resulting in 0 replay value.
Happy gaming!
