Project X Zone: A good premise executed poorly.

I'll say right now I'm only in chapter 11 of Project X Zone, and while it's not a bad game, as a fan of Strategy RPG's (SRPG's) it leaves a lot wanting.

The main selling point of the game is the endless amounts of fanservice they force-feed into the game, and while it's really cool seeing a bunch of characters from different franchises meeting up in this one mega universe beating common enemies together, the actual gameplay very quickly devolves into the same thing.

You enter a map. There are grunt enemies. You kill enough grunt enemies to trigger the next event, or break something, etc, etc. This triggers either a cutscene with even more enemies spawning along with additional allies, OR it ends up setting up a cutscene to spawn more enemies which you have to defeat in order to trigger ANOTHER cutscene, which finally reveals the "map boss" you're meant to defeat.

You then surround the map boss with all of your guys, wail on her/him until s/he dies, then proceed to the next map and repeat. There's no sense of strategy or challenge; you just keep pounding on one character while occasionally healing, and move on to the next map. The game was very fun initially, because the formula was slowly changing and ramping up.. it just kind of stopped.. and I can't see it moving past it's current system any time soon.

The game does fanservice right, with characters lines written as you'd expect; it's also filled scantily clad large breasted women, which is perfectly fine for this game, because it's expected, to an extent. The charm quickly wears off as you begin repeating what essentially feels like the same battle over and over, with the enemies slowly taking longer and longer to kill.

If you're starved for a 3DS game, and you enjoy SRPG's, this game will be something you can chew on for a while. If you are a fan of any of the series represented in the game (which there are so many I can't even begin naming them all) then it's worth a look, but I'm not necessarily sure the appeal of seeing dante and morrigan in the same game is enough to really send you over the edge towards a purchase.