The moment I realized I just sat through an 8+ hour session of Aksys Games’ visual novel title XBlaze Code: Embryo for PC was the moment that I realized that I’ve been missing out on a great fighting series that is more than your average “You disrespect me with your face. <insert grumpy face here> Prepare to die!” mentality faire. Don’t take that last part the wrong way though, as there are several fighting titles that have managed to craft interesting storylines including the likes of King of Fighters and Injustice over the years.
Even though XBlaze Code: Embryo is in the same world as the BlazBlue fighting franchise 150 years beforehand this game is pretty much the equivalent of a page-turner book that I could not put down. As I had no real knowledge of the series beforehand other than it was a fighter, I went into this review pretty much blind only to find a rather interesting story with elements of science fiction and fantasy. That said if you’re already accustomed to BlazBlue then several aspects of the series will be familiar to you but I think newcomers such as myself can play XBlaze Code: Embryo by itself without getting overly lost as it is a prequel story of sorts.
XBlaze Code: Embryo is an interesting breed of a game as you don’t so much as play as just read for hours. Much like your RPGs of old you will progress through the story to eventually come to one of the nine possible endings. Yeah that’s right nine endings which is where I draw comparisons for this title to games like Corpse Party or King of Fighters. But it’s how you actually achieve those endings that make Code: Embryo a little different than the few visual novels I’ve seen. As with most manga or anime presentations the outcome is always the same no matter how many times you go through them but Code: Embryo contains this social media feed system called Toi that actually alters how the story plays out.
I personally went through the game the first time reading every single TOi article that came up when the little icon popped up on the upper right hand side of the screen as I didn’t want to miss a thing being the completionist that I tend to be most of the time. While doing that earned me just one of the many endings, which I did enjoy the outcome, it also blocked other potential outcomes from happening. You see each article has visual markers denoted by which characters it will actually effect if read though these actually don’t show up until after your gotten at least one ending. So essentially I did the right my first time through so that in future run-throughs I could tailor my experience to get the other endings at a faster rate. As far as gameplay goes that is pretty much your only real contribution or interactivity to the story.
However that doesn’t stop XBlaze Code: Embryo from actually being a fun adventure as its voice acting, sound design and visuals cues all bring the experience together. Code: Embryo isn’t all static backdrops and switched out character poses either as most of the scenes show character’s mouths and/or eyes moving when they speak. Though most of the time you’ll be too busy reading as the voice acting in entirely in Japanese with English text. You can opt for Japanese conversation text as well but even in the English text version some areas of the menu are still in Japanese which is kind of an annoyance despite an otherwise coherent localization.
While XBlaze Code: Embryo definitely looks good on the PC it’s obvious that it didn’t originate here as the edges of the character art and even the main menu suffer from jagged edges. There is also the constant reminder that this game was designed to be played with an actual PlayStation controller in the first place which makes figuring out the actual keyboard commands for triggering the Toi and other elements frustrating so I highly advise using a gamepad like the Steam Controller instead.
That is however not the biggest issue that I ran into with XBlaze Code: Embryo though. The biggest problem was that in my later runs if I saved and quit the game and loaded up my save and used the A.O.S. system the game would crash most of the time. The A.O.S system is a cool recap feature to refresh your memory on where you left off but not at the cost of game crashes. I even had the game crash during the final moments of my first run but thankfully I save often so I didn’t lose huge chunks of story progression.
So despite some issues with game stability and navigation, XBlaze Code: Embryo was a pretty enjoyable experience for a visual novel. Like many anime/manga out there it is without some offensive tropes but the story itself was what I really enjoyed most about XBlaze Code: Embryo. I know that I’ll be returning to get all the other endings to see how differently things play out but from what I saw with my initial experience makes XBlaze Code: Embryo a keeper and may have just made me a new BlazBlue fan in the process. So if you like BlazBlue and want to see a different take on the series be sure to pick up XBlaze Code: Embryo for PC today.
