Azur Lane Crosswave Reviews
In the end, that's the real draw of Azur Lane: Crosswave, rather than its gameplay, which is more of a formality. As such, your reaction to it will likely depend on your on how receptive you are to Azur Lane itself. Existing fans and open-minded lovers of cute anime girls gabbing will find much to dive deep into, but everyone else is probably better off taking some shore leave.
Azur Lane: Crosswave has a well-written story mode that runs as deep as the ocean, but the combat that strings these story scenes together is as shallow as a kiddie pool. It's wonderful to see fan favourites interact, and the voice acting adds a lot to the already charming story mode, but it's a shame that the gameplay fails to leave as much of an impression as the narrative and art did.
Azur Lane: Crosswave is a game that was best left on smartphones. The visual novel sequences are perfectly fine, and the story itself – while utterly bonkers – is interesting enough to keep you engaged, while the characters are both charming and unique. Sadly, the naval combat sequences bring down the entire experience. They're slow, repetitive, rarely require much strategic thought, and look incredibly bland all at once. This is a game for hardcore fans of the genre only; everyone else ought to look elsewhere for their naval combat needs.
Azure Lane Crosswave is a poor 3D shooter, with a lot of grind to unlock everything, and poor visual novel sections. Despite the game is quite sexy, some caracters look too young to appear in it. A shame.
Review in French | Read full review
Azur Lane Crosswave is a tale of two games. On one hand, you have the story mode, which features a chunky, entertaining narrative that also doubles as a visual novel with nice art and excellent Japanese voice acting. On the other hand, you have the 3D combat, which starts out promising but eventually feels a bit sparse and shallow. That being said, I still enjoyed my time with Crosswave. It won’t be for everyone. But if you love the lore behind Azur Lane, it might be worth dipping into this pool for the story mode alone.
There is enough variance to make sure for a large majority of story battles you have a way of coming in with a fresh look, but the battles kind of always play out the same way, so it’s frustrating when the build you brought isn’t good enough and you struggle to get through what you were clearing before without any problems.
Despite the rather negative sounding review, Azur Lane: Crosswave isn't a bad game, it's just nothing particularly special. Fans of Neptunia will likely enjoy the silly antics of cute girls, but others will probably fail to see the appeal. It's a character-driven adventure with rudimentary gameplay and a hollow story that manages to be oddly dialogue-heavy. Beyond that, enjoyment will come down to how interested you are in upgrading your ships or figuring out why one character might be better than another. If this sounds good, odds are you'll enjoy Azur Lane: Crosswave, whereas everyone else need not apply.
At first glance, Azur Lane: Crosswave may look like a fan service-filled experience, and while there is a bit of truth to that in both character design and some conversations in the story, it is also a title filled with intrigue, rivalry, and cooperation. The depth of the story and character growth coupled with the easy to pick up, hard-to-master gameplay make it perfect for the portability of the Nintendo Switch. Post-game content is just as important as the main story, whereafter dozens of hours can be put into creating a dream team whose power is unstoppable against the Sirens.
On the other hand, Crosswave already features Neptune from the Neptunia franchise--and I have to assume that the other Goddesses will move in eventually. That's probably not enough to keep me coming back, though. If you like anime-based visual novels, you might get something out of Azur Lane: Crosswave. For me, though? I like a little more "game" in my video games.
Azur Lane: Crosswave is essentially a visual novel with some brief moments of action. Everything works as intended, and there's no need for a combat strategy, but the equipment and upgrades systems are cryptic. The visuals look good, and the chibi characters are adorable. The game can be a decent way to pass a weekend. However, Crosswave and all games under the Azur Lane banner espouse views on females — especially young girls — that I cannot look past, and it's troubling to me that this title is deemed appropriate for teenagers.
Fans of the mobile title will enjoy this, if you have a dislike of anime style games with fully voiced Japanese dialogue, you won't get any enjoyment out of this.
Azur Lane: Crosswave is a game with some good ideas and it manages to execute them decently well, but stumbles on various other points that limit way too much how well it entertains the player.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
It's a clean, snappy, hugely entertaining game, and an excellent next step forward for the emerging property.
Your enjoyment of Azur Lane: Crosswave will almost entirely rely on your affinity for gawking at anime girls. If that doesn't align with your tastes then you'll likely be disappointed by the mostly tedious and repetitive experience offered here.
Azur Lane: Crosswave takes a popular mobile title’s world and crafts a solid story with a great cast of characters and some fun combat that doesn't stick around long enough to be enjoyed to the fullest.
Regardless, the gameplay is just too dull and boring for me to keep my interest, and when the other half of the game (the story sequences) are so agonizing that I found myself skipping through some and literally missing nothing when going back to check if I missed anyway, that’s not a good sign of a fun game at all, regardless of platform.
Azur Lane: Crosswave is adamant about staying close to the mobile experience and pleasing this dedicated niche. It is not a blockbuster game and it doesn’t even intend to be, but it proposes dozens of light and fun hours. It is recommended for ecchi, harem or all-are-girls fans.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Good gameplay takes time to shine as it is overshadowed by long scenes of dialogue and too short and repetitive battles, where you can barely see the real potential of the time investment made in Kansen girls. The game really wants is that you just collect them all and sinned a lot when reproducing the casual mood of the mobile version. Despite this and other execution flaws, I concluded that a little more daring was needed to do something bigger. Azur Lane: Crosswave should appeal even to game enthusiasts based on Japanese pop culture and players who are very fond of grinding.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Being a huge fan of the mobile game I really enjoyed my time with Azur Lane: Crosswave. It gave me a chance to spend time with my favorite characters and experience a new story with them. Combat is fun, but much like in the mobile game it’s very repetitive. I pretty much expected this going in, and I didn’t mind it. It was worth the grind to level up all the girls and see all of their marriage scenes. If you are a fan of the mobile game I feel like you will get your money’s worth at $49.99 price tag. I spent around 20 hours in game so far, and finished the main story and most of the extreme battles. While I do think fans of Azur Lane will get more out of this, Azur Lane: Crosswave is a great introduction to this amazing world of Kansen that I think anyone with a mild curiosity should try out. You may just find the characters and world irresistible and want to see more of it. I know this has certainly became one of my favorite franchises over the past two years, and I am thankful for it.
In the end, I find myself rather mixed on this title. It has some very good points – the character interactions, the voicing and the way it works as an introduction to the world of Azur Lane. There’s even a huge selection of characters to unlock even if it doesn’t cover the full range of Azur Lane characters. While there are positive points, there are certainly negative ones too. The constant button pressing and going back to the map to proceed. Battles being too short and too easy to need to do much. The user interface only really works well if you have a controller. In the end, I think this is going to be one mostly for fans of Azur Lane rather than fans of anime games in general.