Picked the game up today, gave it a good spin of 3+ hours to complete all the prologue missions and get into the start of the first episode. I didn't want to stop at the prologues and give half-assed first impressions so here's the real deal. 
Graphics: Awesome detailed large 2D sprites with awesome animation in battles. The large portrait art is also pretty damn awesome. 3D battle enviroments aren't stellar, but very servicable and instantly recognizable by fans. Good stuff all around, loading is short (5 seconds max between episiodes), there's NO loading in stages themselves or in scene transitions. ^_^
Sound: Man all these remixed tracks are FUCKING AWESOME. Each character has their remixed "theme music" from their own games and the themes change as the characters' turns change. Great awesome stuff. Sound effects and voices are spot-on and awesome. The only disappointment comes in that the game is not fully voiced. The key scenes and battles are all voiced, but there is much left to the imagination. The game probably didn't have a huge budget, plus it feels like it's going to be a pretty long ride in terms of script content.
Gameplay: Many will complain that the game is way too easy and simplistic, and that *might* be the case but I seriously doubt it'll remain this easy throughout the game. Already in the prologue missions I can see how when expanded into more "serious" battles with less overpowered characters the game would not be a complete push-over. I don't expect a fan-game to be insanely hard like many other strategy games but there is a good amount of actual "gameplay" in this one.
The strategy-battles themselves are pretty standard fare except with the absence of elevation/directional effects on actual damage and so on. The bulk of what determines the actual damage you deal on the other hand is in the awesome battle system after you have chosen to attack a foe. You're given 5 attacks to pull off in a realtime sideview screen. You have 5 attacks to choose from Tales style based on using circle or circle and a combination of a directional button, the trick is to keep the enemy up while pulling off more combos because if you get about 10 hits, you get another free attack. Also as you attack enemies (or take attacks from enemies) your special attack bar builds up, when it's full at anytime in any battle you can trigger it with the triangle button. The attack is not unleashed instantly when the bar fills, so you can definitely save it for tougher enemies.
Also unique to NxC are the teams and MA attacks. Teams are basically two characters teamed together as one unit, the available attacks will be split between them depending on range and so on, while they both gain exp at the same rate from battles and defeated enemies. MA attacks are "multiple assualt" attacks, this can mean 3 things. Multiple-related-characters attacking one enemy, one character attacking multiple-enemies or multiple-related-characters pulling off an attack on multiple enemies. This all depends on available MA attacks for each character/group of characters, as well as their proximity to each other as well as their proximity to available enemies.
Storyline: I left the BEST for last. So far the storyline is fucking awesome and is blowing me away. Whoever wrote this is a fucking genius. They've basically taken all the games of Namco and Capcom that they've decided to include, broken them down into what they mean thematically combined them into a fucking awesome seamless crossover storyline. The comparison will be more akin to Kingdom Hearts imo, than to Super Robot Wars.
Having played ACE (Another Century's Episode) recently, the comparison of storyline types is clear as night and day. In ACE/SRW plotlines, most of the respective series plotlines are kept neatly seperate yet in the same universe with tiny bridges in the plot connecting them. Where else in NxC, the entire experience is something I think will blow any Namco/Capcom fan away. The way they can break down the characters and worlds of the respective games and combine every few games with thematic similarities into a seamless world is amazing. This is an aspect where I feel non-Japanese reading fans will be left completely out and why this game NEEDS a localization stat. The loooong prologue was awesome writing promising things MUCH greater in the future. Can't wait to play on.
So yeah, I'm REALLY liking this despite having been reading rather negative impressions for the past day or so before it was available in stores here. It's a solid title with TONS of fun and quite a bit of love and care put into it. It's not a quick cash-in, and in the same way I hope fans don't just give it a quick test-run before giving it up because the prologues seemed "too easy" or "too simple".
Graphics: Awesome detailed large 2D sprites with awesome animation in battles. The large portrait art is also pretty damn awesome. 3D battle enviroments aren't stellar, but very servicable and instantly recognizable by fans. Good stuff all around, loading is short (5 seconds max between episiodes), there's NO loading in stages themselves or in scene transitions. ^_^
Sound: Man all these remixed tracks are FUCKING AWESOME. Each character has their remixed "theme music" from their own games and the themes change as the characters' turns change. Great awesome stuff. Sound effects and voices are spot-on and awesome. The only disappointment comes in that the game is not fully voiced. The key scenes and battles are all voiced, but there is much left to the imagination. The game probably didn't have a huge budget, plus it feels like it's going to be a pretty long ride in terms of script content.
Gameplay: Many will complain that the game is way too easy and simplistic, and that *might* be the case but I seriously doubt it'll remain this easy throughout the game. Already in the prologue missions I can see how when expanded into more "serious" battles with less overpowered characters the game would not be a complete push-over. I don't expect a fan-game to be insanely hard like many other strategy games but there is a good amount of actual "gameplay" in this one.
The strategy-battles themselves are pretty standard fare except with the absence of elevation/directional effects on actual damage and so on. The bulk of what determines the actual damage you deal on the other hand is in the awesome battle system after you have chosen to attack a foe. You're given 5 attacks to pull off in a realtime sideview screen. You have 5 attacks to choose from Tales style based on using circle or circle and a combination of a directional button, the trick is to keep the enemy up while pulling off more combos because if you get about 10 hits, you get another free attack. Also as you attack enemies (or take attacks from enemies) your special attack bar builds up, when it's full at anytime in any battle you can trigger it with the triangle button. The attack is not unleashed instantly when the bar fills, so you can definitely save it for tougher enemies.
Also unique to NxC are the teams and MA attacks. Teams are basically two characters teamed together as one unit, the available attacks will be split between them depending on range and so on, while they both gain exp at the same rate from battles and defeated enemies. MA attacks are "multiple assualt" attacks, this can mean 3 things. Multiple-related-characters attacking one enemy, one character attacking multiple-enemies or multiple-related-characters pulling off an attack on multiple enemies. This all depends on available MA attacks for each character/group of characters, as well as their proximity to each other as well as their proximity to available enemies.
Storyline: I left the BEST for last. So far the storyline is fucking awesome and is blowing me away. Whoever wrote this is a fucking genius. They've basically taken all the games of Namco and Capcom that they've decided to include, broken them down into what they mean thematically combined them into a fucking awesome seamless crossover storyline. The comparison will be more akin to Kingdom Hearts imo, than to Super Robot Wars.
Having played ACE (Another Century's Episode) recently, the comparison of storyline types is clear as night and day. In ACE/SRW plotlines, most of the respective series plotlines are kept neatly seperate yet in the same universe with tiny bridges in the plot connecting them. Where else in NxC, the entire experience is something I think will blow any Namco/Capcom fan away. The way they can break down the characters and worlds of the respective games and combine every few games with thematic similarities into a seamless world is amazing. This is an aspect where I feel non-Japanese reading fans will be left completely out and why this game NEEDS a localization stat. The loooong prologue was awesome writing promising things MUCH greater in the future. Can't wait to play on.
So yeah, I'm REALLY liking this despite having been reading rather negative impressions for the past day or so before it was available in stores here. It's a solid title with TONS of fun and quite a bit of love and care put into it. It's not a quick cash-in, and in the same way I hope fans don't just give it a quick test-run before giving it up because the prologues seemed "too easy" or "too simple".
I can rip the cd and upload it somewhere if anyone has a place to host it for a day.
But the collection of characters is very hard to resist.