Azur Lane Crosswave

In a world that has battleships personified as anime waifus, a Joint Military Exercise has been enacted. Nations from all over the world join in this rigorous event but it leaves a few questions. Why was this event organised? Is there a greater element at play behind the scenes? Which boat do you most want to bang? Jump in and find out in Azur Lane: Crosswave by Compile Hearts.

Gameplay

So there are a few elements at play here. The gameplay is 80% visual novel, which means there is a great deal of reading and watching still images of scantily clad girls talking to each other. That doesn’t have to be any kind of issue if you like a visual novel.

The gameplay around that is side-scrolling shooter with upgrades to beef up over 55, 25 of which are playable, character ships. It works as a simple enough shoot ‘em up, a lot of the enemies are damage sponges that require a fair bit of time to wear down but there are often smaller enemies to keep you occupied in those bigger battles. I persolly found it to be quite reminiscent of games like Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, that strong 3rd person shooter action, versatile movement but Azur Lane doesn’t have anything close to the hand to hand fight aspect of the Dragon Ball games.

Ship Design

So this is obviously a game where a great deal of effort and detail has been applied to the characters. They are brilliantly designed and both their 3D models and the standard 2D renders are quite pleasant to look at for prolonged intervals. My only gripe is that I wish there were more poses. These girls are cute and have a lot of personality that comes through facial expressions and character design so it still gets the job done on conveying emotions. All the girls are noticeably different from each other which is a pleasant take away, this is accented by the lovely fact that the game is fully voiced, only in Japanese but they voice actors do a brilliant job regardless.

Story

The story primarily follows two newbie ships, Shimakaze and Suruga. These two are taking part in the ramped up training sessions in preparation for the events and as the story progresses, it focuses on their inner conflicts and beliefs. One thing I really enjoyed was the ‘Episode Mode’ where it takes a look at the interpersonal relationships between the characters; this is unlocked by fulfilling certain conditions like buying ships of completing extreme battles. These can make for surprisingly pleasant and engaging moments between the characters that are a lot of fun to watch.

Pros

• Adorable and well designed characters
• Interesting story
• fully voiced and good quality Japanese dialogue

Cons

• Very repetitive
• Not enough was done to endear the characters to the audience
• Provides almost no challenge