CODE SHIFTER Reviews

this game has the feel of a 3 dollar mobile game, which is what it should of been. pros: - Puzzles using the different character types are fun - Graphics look nice, especially the pixel art - A wide cast of characters from different arc sys games (I've only played guilty gear oh well) - One of the three (technically 5) games with Bedman from Guilty Gear Cons - There are a lot of sections where you have to pause and fight a lot of enemies, slowing down the pace by a lot - The game is very short but I gave up on the final world because it got pretty repetitive and boring - Worst game with Bedman from Guilty Gear

Got it on a good sale, no regrets. The main game is a mediocre platformer. The hunt for character unlocks was pretty fun (the EX stages). The platfighter mode is basically a second game for free that you access inside the main game. Kill a Saturday unlocking all the characters. Beat your friends up in a game they've never played on Sunday. Replay value would probably depend on how much you play the 1-4 player platfighter mode.

The gameplay is good,My laptop is potato...so i enjoyed the game because I can play the game in my laptop,The size is small too,but for 100k in IDR ,I think it was still expensive for me

Ok so I can imagine the people who bought this game as of right now are here for the super smash bros part... yes the game does have that but you'll need to do the story mode in order to collect them... in my opinion o well, I enjoy the sprites and I enjoy the 8-bit music you they made of their own themes. Anyway I wish everyone luck in getting all those characters!

This game is a complete disappointment. Skip this game. Not even worth the sale price of $5. The "negative" reviews got this right, but there's a couple of things I would like to add. First: The game is just bad. Platforming is barebones, maps are dull and uninspiring. Fighting is clunky and extremely bad, which is surprising being this an ARCSys game, and also because there's a lot of Metroidvanias and Roguelike in 2d with great fighting mechanisms, so you would think they would make an effort in the fighting department, or at the very least, that ARCSys wouldn't gree light this game in it's current state. Second: Missed opportunities. The selling points of the game are also subpar. Even if the game is bad, you would expect to get kickass art and kickass music, and a serviceable gallery of good 8bit art and music. Surely good art and good music would make this worth the $5 or $15 asking price, right? Nope. there's absolutely nothing here. Sprite art is really bad and uninspired. The chiptunes music is also subpar and annoying. This was not supposed to just be an 8-bit remix of music that often is heavy rock with a lot of guitars, sounds like a mess if a proper re-arrangement is not made. Inside the game, everything just doesn't synergize at all. Whenever you switch a character the music changes on the spot making this very annoying. The fighting makes it hard to beat enemies that don't even attack well, you just get damage by touching them. There was potential in this game which makes this frustrating. ARC games are full of animé dumb tropes but this game actually has a serviceable story and very cool characters. The art of the original characters might not be the usual "animu waifus and chads" but all of the characters have actual personalities. While not excellent, the story and original characters were so good to the point I wanted to keep playing just to see more of their interactions and how the story unfolds. But the mediocre gameplay, horrible sprite art, and noisy messy "music" made me quit this game for good. If they ever make a sequel, I would strongly consider it if they do it right and deliver an actual game with actual production values. As it currently stands, this game is a hard pass. I never expected for ARCSys name to put its name in such a bad product, but here we are.

Frequently called "ARC's Smash Bros", Code Shifter really isn't, but it manages to be pretty fun as its own thing, if you can get past some bad first-impressions. Let's get those out of the way first. Code Shifter's plot is overall a missed opportunity for fun, as it never lets the many crossover characters it features function as autonomous beings who react to each other's presence or have any interactions with each other beyond fighting. Instead, they're rendered just parts of a computer system that our heroine, Stella, must debug. That bookending story and dialog wherein Stella interacts with her coworkers, take up more space in this game than they really need to. The tale is advanced in an isometric office environment with RPG-like interactions, via captions accompanied with Banjo-Kazooie-like gibberish voices, and while nothing is outright unpleasant it doesn't have much emotional impact either--and again, you're probably not here for these bookending characters; anyway. I also have complaints about its controls. If you play it on a keyboard, this isn't likely to give you much confusion, but the game's own controller mapping didn't work great; in part because some of it doesn't work AT ALL. I was able to map most functions conveniently to my controller for the action parts, but it took a while, since for whatever reason, the in-game references get the top and bottom button confused. A lot of the button functions for menus and the office segments of the game are unchangeable, and I was never able to map Pause to a controller button. Getting past those issues, let's talk about the gameplay. With many of the franchises crossed over here being fighting games of some sort, you'd likely suspect this to be one, too. In fact, though many of the attacks are melee-ranged, there aren't enough per-character to lend any much individual depth, there's no blocking and there's no combos. That means instead, Code Shifter feels more like Mega Man. Fortunately, I like Mega Man. The elements are pretty familiar to those familiar with that series; you start as Stella's in-program avatar, Sera, and she's fairly mobile and has some useful abilities, but much of the action is spent playing as 8-bit ARC characters you'll find as power-ups throughout the stages, and summoning still more to jump in and help for a while; those are this game's versions of the weapons you earn from beating Robot Masters. Despite the earlier statement that individually these characters don't have many moves, taken as a group the amount of moves and keystone abilities they give you to play with make for quite a deep and varied experience. This game differs from Mega Man, though, in that you can't KEEP any of them between stages, and depending on circumstances the character you get to recruit at a specific place may be specific or totally random. The above points combined lead me to one more warning: Code Shifter is a SPECIAL type of difficult. Specifically, it's the type of difficult that muscle memory can't save you from; at least not for very long. The levels utilize so many different approaches, from combat-heavy to jump-heavy to navigation-heavy, combined with the varied nature of the playable characters and the addition of assist characters, and how they are again, sometimes random, that you shouldn't expect to get by solely on Sun Tzu's advice to win first and then go into battle. To be fair, you can upgrade and customize Sera a bit as the game goes on, but as you'll be doing most of the gameplay as other characters, beating these levels is a matter of learning to roll with each new sucker punch the game throws at you, and it keeps throwing them. Sound messy? It is, and that's going to be a turnoff for some gamers, but I found it to be a FUN mess. Because what the game demanded of me and let me do kept changing, it never got monotonous, and it helps that most levels aren't long enough to outstay their welcome. A few I got stuck on, mostly boss stages, but with time I managed to get through even them. And even if it doesn't feel like a fighting game, combat in Code Shifter is still a lot of fun; owing to its extreme asymmetry. The game also includes extra levels besides the required ones, and three difficulty settings for every level, so if you're into it, there's plenty to engage you for a long time. This game also has another mode; Colorful Fighter. Here is where Code Shifter truly does try to be ARC's answer to Smash Bros--but it doesn't try very hard. You get to play as the same 8-bit renditions of ARC characters as you played in the main stages, but here the move limits and asymmetry between the characters become a bigger problem. It truly does seem down to sheer luck who wins most matches. That's not helped by how you only get to control a few factors when setting up a match. You can choose your own character, whether to have a life limit or point match, and a few other things like the amount of lives or points, and time, but you don't get to choose which characters the AI uses, or which map. Unlocking most of the characters is also a chore, as you need to play the aforementioned extra levels in the main game and defeat them in battle. Whom you can fight where is not something you have any guide to, so it's an oppressive grind for rewards that, unless you're trying for your favorite characters, isn't worth it. Code Shifter sadly is a failure at doing what most people would like it to. Taken as a fighting game, it's surely one of the worst fighting games ARC has published, and taken as a crossover, the lack of characterization for any participating ARC characters really hurts it. But taken as the action-platfomer it chooses to be, it's a quite unique one that offers a lot of wiggle-room within that genre, with a chaotic approach that keeps it from ever getting monotonous. I really enjoyed it; your mileage may vary. There's room for improvement in a sequel, as well as the strong possibility that the next attempt at an ARC crossover shouldn't be a Code Shifter sequel at all, as this scenario simply isn't the right one to get the most out of a crossover. But as disappointing as it is as a crossover beloved ARC games, in a future crossover I could see Code Shifter being one of those beloved ARC games featured. Until that time, well, it's not like ARC has any shortage of good fighting games. Now it also has at least one good platfomer.

I've played a few missions and got to what I think is the first boss. Game is a fun and relaxing platformer that pays homage to arcsys' history with characters from Guilty Gear, Blazblue, River City, etc. The 8bit renditions of characters and their theme songs are definitely my favorite part of the game. Game is solid for $15. I got what I was expecting. That being said, the framerate is locked at 30fps which is very noticeable. The hub area of the game looks choppy when you move around. It's less jarring during the actual missions, but it's still an issue. The multiplayer brawler game is also only local or remote play. There isn't any online for it, but the remote play should work fine. Don't expect it to be an in depth mode. It's very much a mini game for fun. I'd recommend it for people who are fans of charming platformers or fans of arcsys characters.

kinda tricked, this feels like an indi project someone at arc systems got a green light to release. its pretty bad and the only plus is the sprites.

Sorry Arc I want to love this game. I Really do. But I just can't. And it really hurts to write this review as i'm a huge fan of Arc's games ever since the very first guilty gear game back in 98. But this Arc... This is beneath you as a company. This lacks the care and effort the games you publish are known for and lack of a better term feels lazy. I love this concept and I even like the characters. But that just isn't enough. This whole game screams mobile port. I checked and it's not on any mobile store but I'm thinking that that was the original intention of this game. Every thing from the art direction, to the narrow field of view game play, to the lengthy text box story. The only thin missing is daily login rewards, premium currency and loot boxes. You know the, grind heavy, psychologically manipulative and predatory monetization that makes up %99.99999 of fee to play games. AS IT IS... This could have been a great PR game. A fun little casual game featuring a crossover of Arc's various IP released to fans for free, would have been a great anniversary or new multi IP release promotion. And that's more what this feel like. There just isn't enough game or enough hart in this product to charge $15.00 for when I could go play one of Arc's classic games for less and have a better time doing it. It's possible for a publisher like Arc to do smaller casual games with their IP. But when your one of the few remaining publishers known for constant care, quality and respect for you fan base, you have to step things up a little compared to a company like EA or Ubi Soft.

TLDR; I didn't finish the game. Wait for a Sale. A deep one. I was actually kinda looking forward to this game, seeing the sprites and 8bit remixes on ArcSys' twitter, but now that the game is out, I am really disappointed. I could not give two shits about the 6teen lookin characters and their office troubles. the gameplay itself is okay, but box after box after box of narrative that I just cant get into is kinda agonizing. Plus being forced to use the main girls netnavi looking thing and the music cutting out each time, idk. I just noticed after i beat the first boss that I just wasnt having fun. if the smash clone had netplay and some more gameplay options? that would maybe be worth $15. but as it is right now, it looks like they took someone's really nice arcsys sprites and remixes and just shoved them into some mediocre flash game.