Croixleur is a cute and polished game that delivers arcade-like fast paced arena action game.

Developed by Japanese Doujin studio Souvenir Circ., Croixleur offers a Devil May Cry's Blood Palace mode in which players must fight against waves of increasingly difficult monsters. The game which was originally released in the west last year by Nyu Media and has been since refitted for Steam with a new name Croixleur Sigma and a number of enhancements like 2 player co-op, multiplayer, online leaderboard, Steam achievements, Steam Trading Cards, improve visuals.

The Japanese audio is a delight addition that compliments the beautiful artwork and soundtrack.

The graphics is simple, a flashy and full of colorful effects. The artwork is cute to look at.

Don't expect much story because the real focus of the game is combat. The controls as expected in an action game is responsive.

Croixleur Sigma is an arcade hack n slash featuring two adorable main characters named Lucrezia and Francesca.

I would strongly recommend a controller for this game. And locking the game to 60 fps in the configuration tool to avoid breaking the game completely.(Very high fps speeds the game up, making it impossible to play.)

Although the game is very short it has a ton of replay value with all the different game modes, which are: Story Mode, Arcade Mode, Score Attack, Survival, 30 different challenges and an extra Bonus Mode that unlocks after you complete the Story Mode under a certain time with each character.

The main focus of this game is to kill every enemy in each of the levels until you advance to the next level, while doing it as fast and efficiently as possible to get the best time possible. Every level also increases the difficulty slightly with tougher monsters, and every 5 levels they throw a boss creature into the mix as well.

Different modes such as Score Attack works a little differently, you get 3 minutes to achieve the highest score possible.
Survival is exactly what you would expect, survive for as long as possible and kill as many enemies as you can.
Arcade Mode gives you the option to play through the Story Mode levels without any story scenes for nonstop killing.
And finally Bonus Mode, a continuation of the story with more levels and tougher enemies.

While playing through Story Mode you will unlock more weapons, each with different stats and special attacks. Think of each weapon as a different move, you can hold up to 4 weapons at a time to build any combo you would like. Oh and the more you use a weapon the higher level it becomes!

The graphics may not be the most impressive but I think it fits the game very well. The gameplay however is amazing, it made me want to get better and improve after every time I fell in battle and lost some unnecessary time. While the soundtrack did not blow me away I think it accompanies the gameplay really well.
I had a lot of fun trying to complete all the achievements, it added many extra hours to the game as well as giving me some goals to achieve while playing.

If you are in it only for the story (which is not much) then this game is probably not for you. However, if you are looking to complete most of the achievements in the game and wondering how long it would take, expect around 12 hours. That is how long it took me to finish everything.

It's a pretty solid game, so if it looks interesting to you I would definitely recommend picking it up!

+ Various modes of play to explore, though nothing particularly innovative
+ Includes a collection of challenges to complete, and bonuses to unlock
+ The system for unlocking weapons makes for great combos that are fun to use
+ Time attack and survival modes help to buff up replay value
+ Fluid, intuitive combat system

- Unplayable without a controller; the controller setup, too, was an absolute nightmare (I spent over an hour on help forums to finally get the game to recognize my controller past the keybinding setup screen)
- Even for an indie game, the graphics were very, very poor for a game in 2014
- Story mode is incredibly short (~10-15 minutes), placing heavy emphasis on the few other gamemodes for (somewhat) forced replayability
- Plot was generic and uninspired; the game's narrative took a complete back-seat to the gameplay, and felt almost "painted on"


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Devil May Cry ~Moe Edition

The game was worth the money for a myriad of reasons.

The Good:

- For $8 you get about 10-12 hours worth of content which mostly consists of time attack-style challenges/achievement goals.
- The game is mildly difficulty. It takes a bit of repetition (not too much ~ maybe an hour or so) to reach some level of perfection on your 'speed runs'.
- There is a good amount of difficulty variation depending on which character you use (Francesca or Lucrezia), which weapon loadout you go with (10 weapons each character while carry 4 weapons at a time), and which challenges you go for (Story/Arcade mode, Score Attack, Survival, Challenge mode, Bonus mode).

As far as hack and slash/arena brawlers go, I really liked this game for its simplicity. It's quite easy to pick up and play due to the length of the game (15-minute levels) and the straightforward goals.

My only concern about the game is that it's geared toward the use of a controller, but does not change the button prompts depending on which controller you use. Executing your special attacks can get confusing especially if you customize your controls.

PLOT: Lucrezia wants to take a bath with Francesca. Franny is all "NO WAY IN HELL" and runs off to a massive tower(paging Dr. Freud). Luc has to fight through a dozen or so floors of goblins, flying eyeballs, knights in shining armor, and huge beasts to drag Fran's sorry butt into the tub.

Okay I forgot the actual plot to this game. I assure you all that there is one and it's kinda-sorta-quasi-serious. But who cares about that nonsense? This is a supplemental-arcade-arena-slashemup. If you have less than 15 minutes to spare you can complete a play-through of this game. Yes, this game is a short one, but it's pretty sweet. There are no crazy mission designs, no escorting, no stealth, nothing but just slashing through hundreds of generic foes and grabbing coins.

Before the game starts you decide on your arsenal. There are 10 weapons per gal and they all have their own special moves. Basically you want a combination of weapons that suit your play-style. Special moves can be chained for more damage, and some are only effective in mid-air, or as anti-air (gotta account for the flying eyes). Don't fuss over your style rating though, this game rewards speed and efficiency above everything else. Yellow enemies drop in a single hit, blues go down in three, and reds take 4+. Once you memorize the basics all you have to worry about is dashing around and mopping everything up.

There are a variety of modes, but variety is a rather strong word when it comes to Croixleur.
Story - Kill Everything As Fast As Possible. Lots of plot and talks about baths.
Time Attack - KEAFAP in 3 minutes
Survival - KEAFA you want. Expect to see huge crowds of enemies.
Challenge - Definitely KEAFAP.
Bonus - This is the epilogue. Luc & Fran team up to bring the hurt on slightly tougher enemies. Don't forget to KEAFAP.

For the most part Croixleur Sigma is a fast-paced and satisfying slasher. The controls are fluid enough and it's fun zipping around shredding everything. However there are some issues that I have with the game.

Certain moves have weak properties. One of the specials Luc can perform is a downward stab that causes a large shockwave. However, that shockwave is mostly for looks and only hits enemies that are practically under Luc. This tends to be the case with a number of special moves. They look like they should hit because you see the flashy trails and pretty lights connect with enemies, but instead they miss completely. It's...well not really that big an issue. I mean, it's not like it's inconsistent or anything. It would be much worse if the moves hit only some of the time.

Anti-cooperative play. When Luc & Fran team up, it spells trouble...for Luc & Fran. You have to give your BFF plenty of breathing space or she will hit you with her regular and special attacks (and vice-versa). This doesn't do any damage, but it will stun you, and can throw your rhythm off as well as waste time. Maybe the developer thought it would be too easy if this wasn't the case. Luc & Fran could just throw those special moves out constantly and be a whirling dervish of destruction. I disagree. Croixleur Sigma plays up the bestest buddies element, but then implements a design-decision that causes real-world friends to fight? That is a definite head-scratcher. Also during the bonus mode the game only ends when player 1 dies. Player 2 can die as many times as they like. This is something I abused for the cheap final battle.

Croixleur Sigma is like I said, a supplemental game. You play this title alongside your "main" game, or when you absolutely must play something, and don't have much time. It's not a deep game though, not even in terms of game-design depth. If Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae complements games like Devil May Cry and Metal Gear Rising, this game is best played alongside Dynasty Warriors. When you want a dumb 5-minute slashathon, but don't want to run around huge maps and listen to a bunch of talk about Three Kingdoms and whatever whatever, then play this game.

The question we must ask when buying a game like this is how much value are we getting for our money? The answer to that is, a 10 minute Story mode. It will than take about 3 minutes to complete all the "challenges" and than another 3 minutes to do a run through Score Attack mode. After that all there is to do is play Survival Mode over and over again and there really isn't much fun in that.

There is hardly much of a game here and for the full price of $8 this is pretty pathetic. You can experience the game in it's entirety in less than 20 minutes. About 3 standard enemy types and 3 boss types, all of which can be killed individually in less than 5 seconds. This is probably the easiest arena fighter i've played before.

Oh and one more thing, Local Co-op? I don't think so. The current steam version does not contain the required Setup.exe to set the controls for Player 2, so without that you cannot play Co-op. If you manage to track down that file (which I did) you can experience Survival Mode and Score Attack mode with another player, as they walk off the screen or kill you with their special attacks.

You are much better off buying any other game, as there are a lot of better action games for the same price or less. Hell there are even tons of better free games. Don't waste your money on this. I would say time but even if you buy it, you won't be spending much time with it anyway.

It's unfortunate though, the combat system is solid and the assets are nice, there could've been a fun game here if it tried but with such an insultingly small amount of content, this is shorter than most demo's.

Support for this version got dropped and they re-released it with DLC attached. No free upgrade or discount for owners of this original so you have to buy the game all over again to get a supported version. Trash dev + publisher don't support them.

Developers abandoned the game for PC to work on the console version instead.

One of the things I love most about arena brawlers is how they can take simple to understand and execute mechanics, and turn them into deep satisfying combat through various systems and enemy designs. Croixleur Sigma gets at least part of this right, but leans too heavily toward simplicity to have any long lasting appeal. Its mechanics are sound but excessively basic, and the limited amount of content makes it hard to wring more than an hour or two of enjoyment out of the experience, which ultimately left me wanting.

Nothing about Croixleur could be described as especially innovative, but that's not entirely a bad thing as it builds itself upon a proven design that has persisted because it works. Dropped at the foot of a tower, you ascend floors clearing out waves of enemies, ultimately ending in a boss and maybe a new weapon. The catch is that you're on a strict time limit, which if exceeded will lot you out of the real ending or fail you all together. It's a good method for pushing you to find faster more powerful combos, but it does mean that by design the game can be beaten in about ten minutes. There are two characters each with their own unique weapons to unlock and dialog, along with some trivial challenges and hi-score modes, but despite all of this the amount of content still seems far too little.

What Croixleur does well is its blisteringly fast button mashing combat, which feels fantastic once you get the hang of using the dash ability and various special abilities inherent to different weapons. The problem though is it doesn't go further than this. While it's fun to sprint around wacking baddies over the head, it's extremely repetitive and allows virtually no room to grow once you've mastered its few mechanics. The brainless enemies (though typical of the genre) are little more than practice dummies to beat upon, and with only a handful of different varieties become tedious to fight after your first few times through the tower. I also found the way special abilities work to be rather convoluted, requiring you to both push the correct button and be on the correct plane for them to work, and even then it was hard to predict which ability was going to activate as pressing a button repeatedly cycles through all your specials instead of simply activating whichever is assigned to said button.

Croixleur Sigma isn't a bad game, in fact I had a great time with it, but it's mechanics are so shallow and its content so limited that it's hard to recommend entirely. It's amusing and colorful, satisfying to a degree, and solid enough to entertain, but just know that you are unlikely to put more than an hour or two into it before it grows stale. In the face of its many far more engaging and deeper contemporaries, it never manages to be anything more than average, but if you're just looking for a quite fix then at the very least it will satisfy your need for badass lolis that like to kick the living hell out of demons. That alone ought to count for something.

its a Hack & Slash, if you like them, and you like cute anime girls, its a win.
<3
i beat the story pretty fast, but when i tried the survival mode, i maybe lasted 10 min. its so intense and fun!! it has a high replay value for the time attack mode, and survival... XD and the story is adorable between the two girls.

def worth a grab on sale, or if you have the money snag it up not on sale. <3