Azur Lane: Crosswave gives off the vibe of a fairly deep tactical naval shooter. You could be forgiven for thinking that, but it is actually a straight-up visual novel. Specifically, it is a visual novel about anime girls fighting across an alternate-history WWII ocean. We have to admit, that is totally wild.
However, the whole experience is relatively short—shockingly so, we would say. We spent hours reading through text boxes, but we only spent a fraction of that time actually firing torpedoes. The narrative is well-written, and we found ourselves quite enjoying the story. We just wished it lasted longer, as the world and the lore are quite unique and rarely experienced.
Ice Skating With Battleships
When we finally hit the water, we pick three main ships to control. In addition, there are three support ships, but they mostly act as “stat sticks” in the background. That was just the beginning of our discontent with this system. The game drops us into a flat blue square that is completely featureless. Movement feels less like sailing and more like ice skating. Once the novelty wore off—which didn’t take long—combat essentially devolved into locking onto generic enemy boats, holding down the fire button, and tapping the shoulder button whenever our torpedo cooldown popped. If we brought an aircraft carrier, it was just a matter of spamming planes instead. Either way, we weren’t satisfied.
Playing a mobile game on a loop?
Most fights wrapped up for us in about sixty seconds. Even bosses rarely took more than two minutes. We couldn’t stop thinking that the developers missed an opportunity to introduce deeper strategy. Whenever we hit a wall or took too much damage, we just backed out to the menu, upgraded a gun, and brute-forced our way through. The so-called Extreme Battle mode just recycles these same short fights over a hundred times. They seem to be there just so we can grind for crafting materials, and we have to say that it simply wasn’t fun or worth the effort.
The environments are basically just flat water textures boxed in by invisible walls. Our biggest headache, however, was actually just getting through the menus. Crafting gear or equipping new items took so many button presses that it started to feel like a chore. Also, a quick heads-up: the Nintendo Switch version is capped at 30fps. The PC or PlayStation versions are definitely the smoother way to experience the game.
For The Fans, And Only The Fans
We walked away feeling alright about the experience, even if the action is paper-thin. We did the same fast battles over and over and read a mountain of text. However, we can totally see why hardcore fans of the mobile game would enjoy this. Seeing these characters fully rendered in 3D is a neat novelty. We even spent a surprising amount of time messing around in the photo mode, posing characters and swapping backgrounds. It is not the next great hardcore action game; it is just digital comfort food. We can turn our brains off, read some dialogue, and shoot some boats for a minute or two. Sometimes, that’s just enough.
ID Card
- Developer: Compile Heart, Felistella
- Publisher: Idea Factory International
- Platforms: PS4, PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch
- Release Date: August 2019 (JP PS4), Feb 2020 (Global PS4/PC), Feb 2021 (Global Switch)
- Genre: Visual Novel / 3D Action Shooter
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