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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
It's a clean, snappy, hugely entertaining game, and an excellent next step forward for the emerging property.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Azur Lane: Crosswave is for the fans, plain and simple. The game might hold over a newcomer for an hour or two, but the repetitive nature of the gameplay won’t keep their attention. Still, there are some rather attractive ship girls here that make it all a little easier to digest. This game knows its audience and doesn’t cater too much outside of that.
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.
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.