Azur Lane: Crosswave - Thoughts/Review

To note: I do play the smartphone game.

I have beaten all of the stories, tried all of the modes, and have completed all of the side-battles.

I've not completely, completely finished the game as in, 100%, but the only thing left is to listen to all of the short stories, so I think I can give my impressions of the game now.

Also, to explain the game, I'll be using the main image below to go over each mode.

I will start off with a short summary of my impressions.
If you are a fan of the game, then you will probably enjoy it enough to make the purchase worthwhile.
If you are not a fan of the game... Then... I would not suggest spending a full 50+$ on this.

Then again, this is a Compile Hearts game. Like I always say, they know their audience but are not the best in technology. As such, they never make amazing games, but they make games that satisfy their target audience.

And this game's audience is Azur Lane fans.

Modes:

Okay, so let's start from the left and go to the right from this image, and I will give my impressions if there are any.

Dock

Just that. I didn't really use it for much. You get to look at your inventory. There aren't tech boxes or anything, as tech boxes are treasure spots in Story Mode, so you don't do anything like that here.

Shop

There are two shops, Shiranui's and Akashi's.

Shiranui's is the basic shop... That you just will never use.

Akashi's is where you take your blueprints and create equipment. She will sometimes have special limited deals where you can pay money to buy equipment directly. You also get every other item and trade money-items for money here. Basically, this is where everything about items is done.

Dock

Your characters. You change equipment, power-up your equipment, increase your max level, marry.

Unlike the smartphone game, increasing your max level and marrying requires character-specific versions that you can gather material for by grinding on specific battles/maps and traded to Akashi.

This is also the place you go to unlock new characters through a special currency outside of money. (It's that green thing on the top-right of the image).

BTW, there is no "Commander" character in this game, so marriage is kinda weird, because they seem to be marrying to the commander, who doesn't really show up in Story-mode or anything.

I guess there is a Commander anywhere except Story-mode? *shrug*

Extreme Battle
Just battles. Unlike Story-mode, there is no conversation. It is just a whole bunch of battles you can do, up to around 110 challenges.
You need to use this mode to grind for stuff like tech books and the stuff you trade in for marriage rings.

Story

Okay, you are probably wondering how the story in this game is.

Let's say the content of Story-mode is like one event in the smartphone game. So like, Shinano's event. Or Divergent Chessboard.

One of those. So yeah, it's not exactly... impressive for a game that is pretty expensive.

Also, if you buy the DLC (the Switch version comes with the first two for free), you can play additional stories.

I guess you can say the main story is equal to one event in the smartphone game, and each DLC story is a mini-event in the smartphone game.

Photo

You get to line-up a max of 6 characters and make them do poses, change their expressions, and redden their cheeks.

You get the idea.

Also, if you are playing the PS4 version, it's censored and you can't really move the camera down to see the characters' pantsu. Good ol' Sony.

Episode

Basically, short-stories. Just dialogue.

There are quite a number though, over 50.

Gallary

CGs, Soundroom, Player Stats (like how long you've played, etc. etc.), that stuff.

Options

Volume, controls, the usual.

Now

Now, from what I have said, I give off this impression that this game kinda... sucks.

But wait for a moment.

Here is what is good in this game, and why I said that fans may enjoy it.

One, it does a good job of translating the battle system of the smartphone game to 3D. You get waves, you can shoot torpedoes, guns, barrages. AAs fire automatically. You get self-destruction boats.

You get the idea.

The only complaint I really have with this is that there aren't that many variety between the characters. Especially the barrages, which all really look similar. Maybe some difference, but in the end, it's just a single spray of bullets and that's it. Some may fly in a special... ish way... maybe?

Like, Nagato is definitely NOT firing an arrow with spikes around it like the smartphone game.

Also, it is FULLY voiced. Everything, pretty much. Not just the story, but all 50+, 60+ episodes/short scripts are fully-voiced. So fans of the game can definitely enjoy a lot of voiced dialogue of their favorite characters. The game's voices are all one-liners. This game, actual full dialogue between characters.

And imagine how many characters there are. That's a LOT of VAs.

I mean, you can kinda tell I really like Ajax, but her VA isn't exactly... popular? So wow, it felt weird hearing Ajax talk so much.

Of course, Compile Heart games are mostly full-voiced. What they can't do in technology, they focus elsewhere, I guess you can say.

I think Warspite forgot her voice a bit though.

So you see, if you are here to enjoy the characters and play a 3D version of Azur Lane, I think this game does do a fairly good job.

Also, I didn't really talk about graphics or music or anything, but if I don't mention these, that means it isn't noticeably bad or good, so there isn't really anything to talk about.