A solidly-made arcade action game with an anime aesthetic that suffers from a few too many issues to make it worthwhile.
| Developer | Souvenir Circ |
| Publisher | |
| Franchise | N/A |
| Genre | Arcade; Action; Hack ‘n’ Slash |
| PSTV | Yes |
| Physical English |
Yes – NA only (LRG)
|
World-building & Story
Croixleur Sigma follows students at the Irance Knight Training Academy as they venture into the Nito Towers, a mythical place that each of the female heroines will have to conquer. The story mode follows Lucrezia, Katerina and Sara-Annika through their own trials and tribulations, with short conversation scenes between the various floors.
Story is hardly an essential part of this title – from the opening text info dump to the often nonsensical and uninteresting situations you’ll view, there’s little here to keep you engaged in the girls and their journeys. Of course, Croixleur Sigma prioritises gameplay which is no bad thing in itself, its just a shame that there’s an attempt to tell a story and build a world here that’s handled in such a poor way. It’s anime cliché at its most obvious, which is disappointing.
Presentation & Sound
With simple anime-inspired graphics, a bright colour palette and a sharp framerate, Croixleur Sigma manages to be a fairly visually impressive game despite a few simplistic elements.
Character and enemy models are generally pretty good – the girls in particular are expressive with their attacks and zoom around the arenas with a cartoon-y trail of smoke behind them. Their designs are fairly standard – big clothing, bright hair colours and impractical armour, but it works in the context of this larger-than-life world (it’s also nice that you can customise their appearance). Enemies meanwhile are a collection of lumbering humanoid wizards and warriors, flying bat creatures and bosses which are the most impressive of the bunch (from gigantic dragons to weird shield-blocking rocks) that again have plenty of visual flair.
Where the game trips up is in terms of environments. There are a variety of themes here – dark castles, fiery lava and frozen tundras, but they’re all confined within a small arena which doesn’t really allow much room for artistic expression. At least the visual novel conversation scenes are solidly drawn and best of all, the game runs extremely well on Vita – despite a plethora of effects happening on screen I rarely noticed the framerate drop and the game never became unplayable.
There is some Japanese voice acting here, which music never impressed me – it’s mostly background noise, never really rising above this.
Soundtrack highlight – The Heart Speaks
Gameplay & Content
Sort of an arena-based brawler in the vein of Senran Kagura except with a bit more nuance, Croixleur Sigma is an interesting beast that’s fun to play in short bursts – but quickly loses a lot of appeal due to its repetitive nature.
Upon booting up you’re going to want to check the non-interactive tutorial (which is a shame there couldn’t be a bit more to do in it) to get an idea of the controls before diving into the story mode, which follows each of the girls in turn in their adventures through the Nito Towers. Each story campaign sees you progressing through a series of floors beating off waves of enemies, before fighting bigger boss monsters (or other girls who are easily the biggest challenge) at the end.
Control in Croixleur Sigma is fairly deep and allows you to experiment with various different elements. Basic movement involves attacking with circle and jumping with x, plus you can dodge with square which allows some invincibility frames but consumes mana (which refills automatically over time). The main gimmick here is that you can equip four weapons, each with their own special abilities that are triggered by pressing L and one of the face buttons – combining these allows you to pull off interesting combos that can often leave enemies in a daze.
Some will be ground-based (i.e charging forward and leaving a trail of lightning behind you) while others will be air-based (i.e leaping up and launching a shockwave outwards). Using one of these will also change the weapon your normal attack hits with and in story mode these can break – you’ll be awarded a new one each floor (for every blank slot you have), but this is an infuriating mechanic as it’s random and requires you to adapt to a different style of play every few floors thanks to broken weapons.
Enemies come in many shapes and sizes and in massive numbers – this is definitely more Drive Girls than Devil May Cry – but it’s fun to dispatch them. You’ll need to use dash and choose your moments to strike which makes it quite skill-based and punishing at times. Enemies occasionally drop health (which will also slightly replenish when levelling up or climbing a floor) and also drop coins which are used to fill up a special meter which can help get you out of a pinch – but they serve a much greater purpose for progression.
That is an equipment shop, where you can buy things like silly hats and monocles that actually give really nice stat boosts and definitely help out in some of the later levels. The problem is that Croixleur Sigma never explains this or indeed many of its systems, forcing you to fiddle around with them to figure anything out which is slightly disappointing given it wouldn’t have taken long to make things a bit more clear.
The issues don’t stop there – arenas are nothing more than simple circles and although different effects like icy floors or lightning strikes mix things up slightly, it’s hardly enough to stave off boredom. I also found the camera to be a nightmare leading to me getting hit by many off screen projectiles (which destroys your chain) while the AI partners you’re given are more of a hindrance than a help, regularly hitting you by accident causing you to be briefly stunned and suffer further blows from actual enemies.
The redeeming feature here is the variety of modes – aside from story, you can also dabble in challenge (specific arenas with difficult goals to achieve), score attack (as many enemies killed as possible in 3 minutes) and survival (go for as long as possible on one life). There’s even the weapon-swapping dungeon mode which offers an insane challenge if you’re up for it.
As such, there is a decent package here – just one that needs a lot more polish and definitely more budget to turn it into a true must-own Vita title.
Conclusion
At the base of Croixleur Sigma is a very enjoyable arcade hack ‘n’ slash – the combat is fast paced and mostly enjoyable which is a hard thing to master. A plethora of issues ranging from the absent story to the repetitive arenas to the dodgy camera keep it from greatness though, which is a real shame as with a bit more polish it could definitely be a hidden gem.
5.5/10
kresnik258gaming 