I played a demo of Project X Zone at Tokyo Game Show which started with Batsu Ichimonji from Rival Schools running into Tekken characters Xiaoyu and Jin in a Ghosts ‘n Goblins map. Batsu was in Roppongi before he was warped into the crossover world. “Oh? Were you on a date,” Xiaoyu asked.
Project X Zone plays a lot like Super Robot Taisen OG Saga where timing attacks is critical if you want to impact the most damage. One “attack” has several hits, kind of like a canned combo. The trick is to keep the combo going by catching an enemy with a second chain of attacks to juggle them. While Project X Zone has some fighting game elements, all of the moves are done by pressing the A button and moving the circle pad in a different direction to change attacks.
Keeping a combo going also fills your super gauge and when it’s over 100% you can press Y to do an ultimate attack. Units in Project X Zone are actually a pair of characters. You can add solo units too to create a three character group, but solo characters like Batsu only come out for one attack.
On top of the Tekken team, I had Dante + Demetri, Pai + Akira, X + Zero, and a trio of Tales of Vesperia characters. Flynn is a solo character in Project X Zone. My fighters were hopelessly outnumbered by Mets and other ghoulish enemies. I’m not sure because this is a demo, but there were roughly 20 enemies I had to defeat. When enemies retaliate you can either block, counter, or nullify damage. I always chose counter, which gave me a chance to strike back with one more attack.
One of the main strategies in Project X Zone is placing your units close together. This allows Dante and Demetri to call in X and Zero to extend a combo even further. Support units are also useful for dealing the final blow to enemies with just a little HP left. At most, you can have five characters – your pair, a pair of nearby support characters, and a solo unit – on screen at the same time. Things get a little crazy with Virtua Fighters and Dante jumping all over the place, but Project X Zone, at least for the TGS demo, didn’t have any slowdown.
I wish I could say I cleared one map within the ten minute time limit, but I wasn’t close at all. My character units didn’t take much damage – there were simply too many enemies to kill including a shadowy creature that ran on the screen after I defeated the first Met.
