Azur Lane Crosswave Reviews
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.
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
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.
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.
It’s not a game you will want to burn through in a single session, which while it sounds tempting, isn’t near as tempting as it might seem, isn’t beneficial and only will lead to some mildly induced irritation the further in you get.
Azur Lane: Crosswave doesn't harbour ambitions to be more than it really is and, though it may be a bit underwhelming, it at least doesn't outstay its welcome. It's perfectly happy to just provide some hours of mild entertainment without trying to reinvent the wheel and that may be enough for some, but certainly not all.
Azur Lane: Crosswave is a mobile to console game that should have stayed mobile.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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
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.
Overall, Azur Lane: Crosswave is a good game chock-full of fan service. If you’re a fan of the mobile game you’ll have plenty to like here. Many of the systems in the game function the same as they do on mobile so it is very easy to play, looks nice, and sounds nice too. Though the story segments can seem to drag on at times, they do add some good depth to the myriad of characters throughout the game by showing their interactions with one another.
Azur Lane Crosswave – PC Review (February 26, 2020) http://chalgyr.com/2020/02/review-pc-azurlane-crosswave.html Overall, I’d say that Azur Lane Crosswave is a great way to help get the series out there, and while the battles can get a little repetitive, there’s nothing I can really point out as being truly wrong or bad. Although it does feel rather lacking in content, and how much you’ll enjoy this title is rather dependant on how much you like the mobile game, considering that Crosswave basically turned the mobile system into essentially a console type game, I have to say they did rather well, all things considered. ---------- Azur Lane Crosswave – Switch Review (February 24, 2021) https://chalgyr.com/2021/02/review-switch-azurlanecrosswave.html Overall I have to say I really did enjoy my time with Azur Lane Crosswave. While I couldn't really recommend it too heavily to someone not a fan of the series, it definitely should be something to keep on your watchlist to see if it goes on sale. The gameplay is pretty good, albeit with shorter and sparse battles at the beginning, and the game is primarily a visual novel to start, so if you are ok with that, you'll probably like Azur Lane. There's plenty of post game and extra battles to engage in, and the music is really solid. It feels like the game got a graphics and water physics upgrade from the PC port as well. If you do decide to pick this up for the Switch, I suggest playing on a TV if available. Also, go check out the mobile game so we can get more of these.