Crosscode on PS5: All the trivial aspects of an MMO without the "O" or "M" ... or fun
Published on HivePostify by @whoisjohn · Sun Aug 02 2026
I got kind of excited when I saw this game on offer and watched the trailer video for it on the PS-Plus network because it kind of looked like the sort of old-school vibe that I appreciate about games from the 16-bit era but with better sound.
I enjoy throwbacks with more simplified controls and an overhead view of the battlefield quite a lot. Nobody Saves the World is a good example of how this can be done very very well. Crosscode starts out looking like it is going to be similar, then it kind of devolves into this strange and initially interesting look into the world of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) and kind of takes the piss out of them, but then unfortunately becomes the same slog that real MMOs are, but without the social aspect of it with other real humans.
[src](https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/fauto/qauto/dpr1.5/cscale,w400/store/software/switch/70010000015329/7579e6ca168b8599a1ae283926996d5e049b65cefd09703d789de928692db406)
The game has all the usual main and side-quests (in spades) that you would have from a real MMO complete with the rather trivial and tedious nature of many of them. For example: Really early on you encounter a woman on the side of the road that wants you to help her collect plant samples and now you are just running around hitting every single plant you encounter in the hopes that you are going to get one of the ones that she is looking for. You do this for half an hour until you realize that this quest is a bunch of bullshit and it doesn't seem to have a real end. Later on you run into some simulated real life player in a distant city that needs some bronze armor but is too introverted to go to the main player city to acquire it. Your quest is to go and acquire it for him and I actually took this one on only to discover that finding the shop that actually sells this armor is a very frustrating act of trivial fetch-quest-dom of the highest order.
[src](https://image.api.playstation.com/vulcan/ap/rnd/202006/1809/k2uqR6D6lpjOpI6s35HV63X0.jpg)
Perhaps the devs of this game were intentionally making fun of the repetitive nature of real MMO's and the silly quests that you get assigned in many of them and at first I chuckled along with it. However, unlike in Nobody Saves the World this happens so frequently that it doesn't really seem like they are poking fun at anyone. This is the actual game.
This isn't to say that it is all bad though. I actually quite enjoy the simplistic 80's to 90's action standard that takes place during the combat and dungeon exploration. It made me think of Mega Man actually even though as far as I know Mega Man was never a top-down adventure game. None of the ones I ever played were anyway.
[src](https://www.radicalfishgames.com/wp-content/uploads/jungle-clearing-600x338.png) The old school graphics and puzzles actually DO appeal to me
I think there is a very real reason why this one hovers at 3.5/5 on the ratings scale and also why it is now free with a PS-Plus account: Anyone that was going to pay actual money for this game has already done so.
If the game had continued with the interesting storyline with the dungeon sort of environment that the game began with, I would have been ok with it. Unfortunately those instances start to quickly become something that you rarely see and instead the main focus of your play is wandering around a simulated open-world complete with other characters that if you were playing an actual MMO, would be other human players.
[src](https://www.gamespot.com/wp-content/uploads/original/1575/15759911/3697891-desktopscreenshot2020.07.03-12.55.07.42.png)
I have put about 2 hours into this game and it started to become very stale. Some of this may actually be my fault because many of the quests that I decided to take on were optional and I never was able to actually complete any of them.
I also couldn't ever figure out how to actually upgrade my equipment because the shops are arranged in what can only be described as a retarded method. A weapon shop should sell weapons, an item shop should sell items, a food shop should sell food, and so on, correct? Well not in Crosscode. In this game all shops sell a bit of this and a bit of that and therefore I just decided to not upgrade anything. Not that any of this matters as far as I made it in the game because I never really experienced my equipment being anything that was holding me back and I only ever bothered to look into it because one of the quest characters suggested that my stats and equipment were not good enough to continue.
Make it more obvious about how it is that I am meant to complete the part of the rather silly puzzle if you are going to make it part of the silly puzzle why don't ya?
[src](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/crosscodegamepedia/images/5/58/CharacterMenu.png/revision/latest?cb=20211216031839)
In the end I find myself strangely drawn back to this just like I did real MMOs and in that regard I commend that creators for capturing the inexplicable addiction that is online gaming in a 16-bit looking 1-player local experience. It is clear that they have experience in simulating this experience but unfortunately, at least for me, this simply isn't fun and therefore I will not continue.
The simplistic nature of this game actually really does appeal to me and I will give this just a bit more time to see if maybe, just maybe, my decisions to pursue optional side quests are what is actually holding me back from enjoying this. I was cool with the tutorial and found the story quite compelling, but once the simulated MMO nature of the game became the main focus, I quickly lost interest. You have 1....more..... hour..... Crosscode!
Tags: #gaming#games#ps5#playstation#ps-plus#mmo#rpg#review