If it's this =
https://store.steampowered.com/app/368340/CrossCode/
I look forward to hearing what you say about it. That game was on my maybe list. Speaking of lists, I think the remaster for Tales of Vesperia is coming out on PS4 any day now. Never played it before and the idea of a Tales game makes me happy. Will very likely buy it this week.
-chronodekar
Yup, it's that.
It's set in a sort of future MMO. Think Sword Art Online or .Hack.
I'm not entirely sure what your character is just yet. It's not entirely clear aside from she may or may not be someone's sister who was involved in creating the game. There's a plot element that limits her speech that has led to some fun moments. She's not silent, but not talkative either. She also doesn't seem to have a life outside of the game, where as the companion characters will occasionally talk about theirs.
It's very much like Secret of Mana actually. I'm really enjoying it so far. You only control a single character, but can party up with other characters and they'll help you out as AI companions. They're actually quite useful in combat and you can give them simple commands and set up how aggressive they are and such.
Weirdly, you're usually on your own in dungeons. The game explains this as "instances".
You have a melee attack and a ranged attack, and can specialize for using either in the level tree. Your ranged attack works twin stick shooter style, and your melee works like a typical top down ARPG. You also have a more powerful ranged attack that will bounce off surfaces a few times, which is used in a lot of puzzles.
You upgrade skills using something called CP, which you gain every level. There are also separate trees for each element, and they do not share CP, so you don't have to worry about keeping any aside for those trees. Once you unlock them they have their own separate CP pools. There are also certain segments of branches that you can switch between at any time that you can have one or the other active. These largely have to do with your special attacks, but it is nice that you don't have to commit to one or the other.
Overworld enemies seem largely passive until you attack them so far. There are a few that will attack you if you get near them, but for the most part you can walk right through most mobs on the overworld and they'll ignore you. Dungeon mobs are always hostile.
It has anti-grind, to a point. You're expected to do a certain amount, but the enemies give lower and lower xp as you level, keeping you within a range when you're in an area. As I understand it, you won't reach the level cap [99] playing naturally, and even if you do you can't fill up the entire grid for your CP upgrades. You do get the opportunity to respec by visiting a certain NPC, but I've not actually done it and am not entirely sure what is involved.
You'll also need resources. As there are only a few armor sets you can outright buy. The others need stuff gathered from an area to craft in addition to a gold price. Some items may require you to craft other items from lower tier items, and then use those to craft the gear. If you're running around breaking anything you can, you should have enough to stay upgraded fairly well.
There are a lot of "build" options for your character, which is nice.
There's a "combo" system of sorts where you level up from D to S rank by killing enemies. It doesn't reset when you get hit or anything, but you need to kill a bunch of enemies in a row. Once you clear a set of enemies, a timer bar starts and you need to find more and engage them before it runs out to keep the combo going. The higher your rank the more resources you'll get from enemy drops, and some drops can only be obtained above certain ranks. You do not auto heal or level up until you let the bar run down and reset your combo.
Enemies also respawn fairly quickly, so it's not a huge chore if you need to kill certain ones to get a certain resource. Though you may want to plan out a route to face the largest possible group of a certain type of enemy when your combo is maxed out.
Plus, you'll get decent equipment and resources as quest rewards if you're doing sidequests. As far as I can tell, you don't actually need to grind more than a little. Unless you're trying to craft every item in every area, you shouldn't need to grind a whole lot and should come across what you need just by playing normally assuming you're fighting most things and breaking any destructables along the way.
Getting some of the rarer stuff might be a bit of a pain later on, but I've yet to come across that issue as I'm still fairly early in the game.
There are some neat settings that you can tailor the difficulty how you want. Don't like the puzzles, but like how hard everything else is? You can turn down just the difficulty for the puzzles. The same goes for the combat, as you can adjust both enemy attack frequency and how much damage you take.
I think some of the towns are a bit too big, and a bit convoluted. Once you get your bearings it's not so bad, but it did get a little annoying trying to figure out how to get around the hub towns because they're so crammed with stuff and often the path to get places isn't terribly clear. This is both a good and bad thing. It can make finding a specific building a pain, but also means there's a lot to explore.
There are lots of jumping platforming paths throughout the game, some covering two or three screens, you'll need to navigate them to reach a lot of optional chests and hidden stuff. Figuring out how to get to something across a two or three screen jumping maze is not an uncommon thing to do. It can be a bit hard to tell whether some platforms are level with or above others and where you can and can't jump, but the only penalty I've run across is having to start from the beginning. Falling won't kill you, even though getting knocked off a ledge or falling into water loses some health, you'll immediately regain it unless you're in combat.
Overall, this game is totally worth it so far. The areas are pretty big, there's lots of NPCs to interact with, and lots of hidden stuff. The combat is fun and has a fair amount of challenge, there are lots of clever puzzles. It's one of those "hidden gem" kind of games if you're a fan of old school ARPGs.