If you’re trying to keep your gaming budget reasonable like I am, then you’re probably considering 8 and 16-bit titles. Pixelated games are usually a great bang for your buck because they deliver lengthy gaming experiences for a fraction of what their 3D cousins cost.

CrossCode, a 2018 16-bit JRPG developed by RadicalFish, is a classic example. You can easily grab it on sale for less than $10 USD and milk it for at least 40 to 60 hours of gameplay.

Of course, whether you’re entertained for the whole stretch is debatable. I would answer with a resounding no, if I’m being honest. CrossCode has some good qualities, but it tested my patience so much that I thought about walking away several times (and actually did on a few occasions).

Here’s why you should think twice about playing through this one.

Neat Premise With a Boring Story

CrossCode is about a girl named Lea who wakes up in Crossworlds — a literal MMORPG developed by Instatainment — with no memory of who she is or why she’s there.

Lea can’t speak because her Avatar’s voice module is broken. Luckily, she runs into a few sympathetic people right away, including Sergei Asimov, an Instantainment insider who communicates with her via a secret channel. The bulk of the story goes on to cover Lea’s trek along the Track of the Ancients, the fictional game’s main quest line.

I usually love when studios explore this kind of world-within-a-world concept, but I guess it never occured to me that the fake game in question might actually suck.

Crossworlds is split into five areas that all unfold the same way. You find its hub, figure out how to open the ancient temple, grind enough to survive it, and head there once you’re ready.

That’s not a great foundation to build a story from, and since Lea can’t speak, most of the dialogue is pointless banter about her party’s personal drama or the game’s lore.

Things do get spicy whenever Lea and her friends log off for the night. When that happens, Lea enters a dream state that shows what you assume are traces of her memories. These visions eventually unfold into some great reveals that I found way more interesting than the otherwise dull slog through the game world.

But the worst of it is that I never got to see this secret plot through. The Crossworld main quest ends when you reach a final temple that Lea can’t access because Instatainment hasn’t patched it in yet. That opens up an end game similar to Expedition 33’s Act 3 where you have to explore the world for more powerful loot before you can attempt the real ending.

By that point, I had lost the drive to see it through.

Grinding Isn’t Optional

On big reason is that CrossCode made me waste a lot of extra hours backtracking and searching for materials.

Generally speaking, I was fine making it through the game’s first half with the gear sold in shops. But somewhere at the halfway mark, I started getting owned by regular enemies, so I had to start trading materials I scrounged up to merchants for higher level gear just to keep up.

The closer I got to the end game, the rarer those materials became. Eventually, some components were only available from fetch quests, bosses, and hidden chests. If that doesn’t sound problematic…wait until you discover where those chests are located!

You see, CrossCode doesn’t just tuck them away in a room like other JRPG. No no, that’s far too pedestrian! Instead, they’re on ledges at the end of concealed parkour courses.

The outdoor maps are massive, and some of these platforming sections span across several rooms. Finding where a path starts can be daunting and usually comes down to luck. And if you happen to miss a jump near the end, you guessed it, you have to hoof it back to the start and try again. Often, I wouldn’t even get the chest or item I was looking for, making the whole endeavor feel like a waste of time.

The only redeeming thing about this masochistic exploration was picking fights along the way because I did enjoy CrossCode’s ARPG-style combat. Unfortunately, jumping beasties and chaining kill streaks together could only numb the pain for so long.

Apparently, the devs wanted to make my life even more of a living hell, so they incorporated some of the most finnicky puzzling I’ve ever encountered in a video game. You know, just to suck the fun right out of it!

This Puzzling Is No Bueno

I know I’ve complained about puzzle games in the past, but trust me when I say that CrossCode really crosses a line between fun and jabbing myself in the eye with a hot poker.

Lea’s Avatar is a Spheromancer, and her class skill shoots a steady stream of spheres that bounce off most surfaces. Naturally, 95% of CrossCode’s puzzles use this mechanic is some shape or form.

In the early going, the game mostly presented me with straight shots at switches, but later dungeons were merciless. Some of the hard ones had me racing my own projectiles to clear obstacles or flip reflectors before they got there. These same puzzles exploited the different properties of Lea’s elemental skills, so swapping between them on the fly had to become second nature.

Truly, the challenge level rose way beyond just trial and error. Executing some of these advanced puzzles took me at least 10 minutes — far too long for them to be any fun.

Lea’s aim was a big culprit here because I had to use the joystick on my PS5 controller to line up my shots. I share that controller with two kids, so that joystick is shaky as hell on its best day. Anything that involved holding my aim steady or targeting something quickly was a real nightmare. And paying $60 for a new controller to play a $10 old-school JRPG wasn’t in the cards.

In some situations, the screen wasn’t big enough for me to see the target, so I just had to fire blindly in a direction and hope for the best. At other times, I reached a platform I thought would give me a clean shot, only to find out I wasn’t at the right elevation to hit my target. Oh well, back to the drawing board I guess!

Now line-up several of these challenges together, and you can see why CrossCode pushed me past the point of frustration. I found myself looking up at the ceiling a lot and yelling “Why!?” to some unresponsive gaming deity. That’s ok if I’m playing a souls-like, not a JRPG.

How Much Pain Are You Willing To Take?

I still enjoyed some parts of CrossCode. The story had a surprising amount of intrigue and a nefarious plot I never suspected at all. Lea’s elemental abilities added some good variety to combat and the boss fights were great. Under different circumstances, this could be a great buy for a guaranteed 40 hours of gameplay.

But boy, is a lot of that time spent on pointless things like listening to your crew whine about school work, combing the same screens over and over to find a way up a ledge, or restarting a long puzzle because your aim was off by a hair.

I wouldn’t play through CrossCode if I had the chance to do it again. I still haven’t made it through the end game, and the just thinking about wandering about looking for more chests makes me shudder.

That’s just not how I like to spend my gaming time, and I don’t recommend CrossCode to anyone that doesn’t have the kind of patience it demands.