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Video Game / Project × Zone

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Project × Zone (pronounced Project Cross Zone) is a Turn-Based Strategy Massively Multiplayer Crossover game for the Nintendo 3DS console, featuring characters from the companies Capcom, Bandai Namco Entertainment and Sega (and later Nintendo in the sequel) and developed by Monolith Soft. It is a Spiritual Successor (and an outright sequel, plot-wise) to Namco × Capcom, and a side story to Super Robot Wars: Original Generation as a whole.

Just like in Namco × Capcom, you move characters around a field, casting skills and spirit commands for buffs while hunting for items and objectives, and switch to a fighting game screen to attack the enemy. The fighting engine seems to be closer to the Endless Frontier games. The main playable characters are paired off into units of two, performing pre-made Combination Attack strings at your command, while solo characters can be attached to each unit for support attacks.

The opening is animated by Studio TRIGGER, formed from former Studio Gainax employees, who would later go on to make Kill la Kill. The opening theme, named Wing Wanderer, and the ending theme, named Galaxy, were sung by famous "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" singer Yoko Takahashi.

The complete game was released in stores and the eShop June 25th, 2013.

The sequel, Project × Zone 2: Brave New World, was released in Japan in November 12th, 2015, in both Europe and Australia in February 12th, 2016, and in North America in February 16th, 2016.

The second game's opening was done by Graphinica, and directed by veteran animator Yasutoshi Iwasaki. Yuzo Koshiro, the composer from Namco × Capcom, returns to compose the game's opening and ending, "Sekai wa Hitotsu no Butai" (All the World's Stage), and "Tsuki Akari no Curtain Call" (Moonlight Curtain Call), both sang by singer marina.

No relation to another Project X (or yet another Project X) or X Zone. Or the Super Scope Light Gun Game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System also called X Zone. Definitely should not be confused for a fan-produced Sonic hentai game.

    open/close all folders 

    Playable Characters 
Note: The asterisk marks characters who are initially Rival units.

Capcom, first game

Capcom, second game

Bandai Namco, first game

Bandai Namco, second game

Sega, first game

Sega, second game

Nintendo (Second game only)

Original Characters

    Mooks and Rival Characters 
Note: The asterisk marks characters who later join as Solo Units or just plain join with you.

Capcom, first game

Capcom, second game

Bandai Namco, first game

Bandai Namco, second game

Sega, first game

Sega, second game

Nintendo (Second game only)

Original Characters, first game

Original Characters, second game

  • Sheath
  • Blue/Red/Orange Hatter, Sword, One Eight/Eight Eight, One Five/Five Five, One Two/Two Two, Nine Nine
  • Byaku Shin

    Story and Summon Characters 

Capcom, first game

Capcom, second game

Bandai Namco, first game

Bandai Namco, second game

Sega, first game

Sega, second game

Nintendo, second game only

This game provides examples of:

  • Absurdly High Level Cap: Both games have a level cap of 99, but reaching it in the first game is impossible due to lack of replayable stages and even in the second game where you can replay challenge stages, the highest level you'll reach without them is around 60-70 and that's on the special difficulty level where enemies have higher levels and give more experience.
  • Acrofatic: Drei's pretty limb for a big guy, even being able to do a Wall Jump in thin air!
  • Action Initiative: In the first game, units act in order of their speed stat on each turn and a number of characters learn skills that allow them to jump the queue by boosting speed. The sequel replaces this with "normal" turns.
  • Actor Allusion: Tons.
  • Alas, Poor Villain:
    • During a villain's final defeat, they have a speech before dying, sometimes causing this reaction to the party. Aya-me and Vile are notable examples.
    • This also happens to Saya in the sequel to some degree, although Reiji still tells her to go to hell. Even Sheath gets this treatment from Xiaomu.
  • Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted for characters that have very noticeable asymmetric elements, like Reiji's white hair and scar, Zero's insignia, and Majima's eyepatch, but played straight for characters with smaller details like Xiaomu's zippers.
  • Anime Theme Song: "Wing Wanderer" in the first game; only in the Japanese version, though. The international release replaces the song with a generic bgm that only vaguely resembles it.
  • Already Met Everyone:
  • Antidote Effect: Inverted thanks to a hidden mechanic in the first game. If an enemy drops an item that the player already has a full stockpile of, they drop the next tier of the same item instead. So it's a better idea to frivolously use your upper-tier items to heal papercuts, or throw out a group healing item to restore one unit's HP, rather than dip into your buffer of weak healing items and delay the next higher-tier drop in the process.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: In the mission where he first appears as a boss, Seth will never target your newest unit with his special or MAP attacks (except on Hard Mode), and against all expectations that unit being KOed isn't a losing condition. This is because said unit appears way out in the boonies of the map and the rest of the team has to go through two bosses and a full compliment of mooks before they can provide backup.
  • Anti-Grinding: Since the first game doesn't let you replay stages, you can't be at a higher level than the game expects you to be. Averted in the second game, where you can keep replaying challenge stages as many times as you want, allowing you to max out your levels at your leisure if you feel like it.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Averted. Unless the party has been split up for plot reasons (and even then, they're usually split across several different dimensions) everybody in the party participates in every battle. Played straight in the sequel where you generally can't use your entire party even when they're all available, but you can choose what members to use.
  • Arc Number: 101 in Brave New World. It's a hint to the identity of the final boss.
  • Armed Legs: Both the Original Generation heroes have a pair each. Kogoro has wire-blades, while Mii has guns.
  • Armor Is Useless: Subverted to hell and back with Arthur. His armor can take only a single hit, but fully protects him no matter how strong the attack is. This is how he manages to survive a nuke that detonates at point-blank range.
  • Artifact of Doom: If Oros Phlox really does act as the "will of the stone", then the Portalstone is this in a way.
  • Artistic License – Gun Safety: Naturally, since we have the likes of Vashyron, Zephyr, Leanne, and Dante on the roster, but the medal has to go to Erica Fontaine, who has one attack where she grabs her gun, trips, then shields her face while proceeding to spray-and-pray directly at her partner. Thank goodness for Friendly Fireproof.
  • Art Shift: For most characters, this is the first time they have been rendered in Sprite form.
  • Ascended Extra: Flynn and Vashyron are upgraded to partners for Yuri and Zephyr in the sequel, including getting character artwork.
  • Ascended Glitch: X and Zero's Left-A combo includes Zero's Hyperslash.
  • Ascended Meme: Vashyron's infamous dance is one of his poses, and Zero's equally infamous line from X4 shows up in the chapter Iris cameos in. Jill also manages to stop Chris in mid-sentence before he could mention a certain kind of sandwich.
  • Asian Fox Spirit: Just like in Namco x Capcom, Xiaomu and Saya are werefoxes.
  • Assist Character: Solo Units function as this. Another nearby Pair Unit not in play can be this too, to the active pair. Devilotte, Ulala and Tron even bring up their own assists.
  • Ass Kicks You: Valkyrie's final support attack has her land on her butt when she's gigantic. Reiji & Xiaomu's Block-breaking movie has Xiaomu using her butt to break an enemy's shield, notably on higher-leveled enemies and sub-bosses/bosses.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • No selling attacks. Sure, you nullify the attack of the opponent, but it costs a whopping 60 point cross gauge just to use it. And if an enemy knows a Limit Break, you don't even get to use it.
    • Mirage Cancels, in the sequel. They allow you to cancel your current attack, gain an additional attack and slow down the enemy's fall so that you can time your Critical Hits easier, but by default they cost 100 XP to perform, meaning that using it even once denies you the opportunity to use your characters' Limit Break. Red Mirage Cancels would theoretically mitigate this, as they only cost 50 XP and come with no real drawbacks, but if you mistime them, you'll potentially lose out on a lot of damage since most cancel points are early in the attack and you still lose the full 100 XP.
  • Back from the Dead:
    • Project X Zone 2 brings back Aya-me, Ciseaux and Vile from the first game, and M. Bison, Tong Pooh, Solo, the Shtrom brothers and Kamuz from Namco x Capcom. In the latter's case, no character comments on their apparent survival and/or resurrection. This is specially grating on cases like Bison whose death was quite a dramatic one, though in all fairness, his soul survived Akuma's Satsui no Hado and the man himself returned just like in the Street Fighter IV games.
    • In the game's story, this is true for Vile and Aya-me as well, who were brought back from a previous death in their origin games. Project X Zone 2 does the same to Zagi and Sigma, and Tong Pooh, the Shtroms, and Ranmaru are seeking to resurrect their bosses as well (Grandmaster Meio, Scumocidenote  and Nobunaga Oda)
  • Back for the Dead: In chapter 29 of the first game, Iris is briefly resurrected. She doesn't make it to the end of the chapter, but at least Zero gets some closure.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: Several character do this in the opening sequence of the second game, such as Reiji and Xiaomu, and Chrom and Lucina.
  • Background Music Override:
    • The entire Gain Ground stage and Operation Crackdown replace the characters' individual songs with the Gain Ground theme.
    • In chapter 27, "Rocks" is heard through the entire level. In the English version, it gets replaced by Haken's theme.
    • "Wing Wanderer (Orchestral Version)" when fighting the Final Boss. And then "Mysterious Project" plays later.
    • In a New Game Plus, you can manually select which music you want to use for the entire stage as you please. Hell, if you set it at random, even Mooks get a particular random bgm, and they usually do not get one. Pick a music (which there are seventy-five to choose from, or just choose Random) and go wild.
  • Bad Ass Crew: Just take one look again at all the characters confirmed for this game, and see if you can find someone who isn't capable of kicking ass in a fight.
  • Badass Normal: Quite a few of the fighters don't actually have powers and are just, for all intents and purposes, regular humans, but that doesn't stop them from kicking a lot of ass. Examples include Frank West, Phoenix Wright and the Resident Evil protagonists.
  • Bag of Sharing: Even if say, a part of the party is at one world, somehow the other party members can still access the same items that the others had in a different world. Very egregious after finishing the stage when you get Kurt, Riela and Valkyrie.
  • Battle Baton: Mii's weapon is a rifle, but she sometimes twirls it as if it were a baton during her attacks, and she is a cheerleader.
  • Battle Couple: Several pair units in the first game ended their respective games as a couple. Examples include Haken and Kaguya, Reiji and Xiaomu, Oogami and Sakura and Touma and Cyrille.
  • The Battle Didn't Count: Like Namco × Capcom, bosses tend to retreat when defeated until the final chapters of the game, where you defeat them for good.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Many, many chapters begin with a new unit facing down long odds for a few turns, before the main party stumbles in to reinforce them.
  • The Bus Came Back: Kazuya, Strider Hiryu, Captain Commando, Felicia, Sylphie and Tarosuke debuted in Namco × Capcom, missed out on Project X Zone and returned for Project X Zone 2. This also applies to their respective enemies (such as Mokujin, Solo or Shtrom Jr.), who were also present in Namco × Capcom. Likewise, for the villain side, M. Bison returns from Namco × Capcom after his place as the Street Fighter villain was supplanted by Seth in the first game.
  • BFS: Many characters, ranging from the God Eater Burst guys, to BlackRose to Sanger (who brings a human-sized Zankantou around).
  • Behind the Black: The game just loves to have treasure chests and item-holding breakables hidden behind pieces of the level geography. Fortunately, the full 3D levels slide around with proper perspective, and you can wiggle the camera a bit from its default isometric viewpoint, so it's not too hard to explore.
  • Better than a Bare Bulb: The script takes advantage of having characters from various Earth-like yet contradictory worlds to mercilessly lampshade everything it can about every franchise that make an appearance.
  • Big Bad: While Due is the main antagonist for most of the game, the true villain is Meden Traore. And in the sequel, at first it's Saya, but later it's revealed to be Byaku Shin.
  • Big Good: Aura is treated as such, particularly during the story arc that focuses on reuniting her fragments. Mii Koryuji is this trope story-wise, since most of the game's plot revolves around her. Reiji Arisu reprises his role as this in the sequel, now that Kogoro and Mii are out of the picture.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Not so much in that the translation's bad, but that there are a few inaccuracies and a lot of typos, mostly in the text-heavy Database. For example, on the soundtrack CD, "Flutter Vs The Gesellschaft" is listed under the Mega Man Dash series...which had already been localized over a decade ago as Legends.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: In Namco × Capcom, you hardly see blood except from Armor King's mouth. In this game? Blood sprays are visible in multiple attacks, whether it involves stabbing the enemy in an exaggerated manner or slamming them onto something sharp.
  • Blown Across the Room: The battle system's main gimmick. All attacks cause opponents to be blown against the wall and be bounced back so the pair units can keep juggling and comboing them.
  • Boob-Based Gag: Just like her native series, a noticeable majority of the breast-related humor comes at Kaguya's expense. Exaggerated in that the game establishes she's bigger than Morrigan.
  • Book Ends:
    • The beginning of the game shows Mii exiting her house meeting up with Kogoro in the morning. The ending shows that they both go inside the estate at sunset.
    • The first prologue chapter is titled "The Wanderers". The final chapter is titled The Wing Wanderers - though the significance of this is kinda lost in the localization.
  • Boot Strapped Theme: Kite & Blackrose end up with a song from .hack//Link instead of the original quartet of games.
  • Boring, but Practical: Jin and Xiaoyu. Their moveset is lacking in style, relying mainly on technical proficiency and speed, and they're not as flashy and flamboyant as some of the game's more notable and quirky characters. But they are very good at one thing, and that one thing is delivering merciless beatdowns.
  • Boss Rush: The penultimate and last stages comprise of this. Chapter 40 has you fighting off against numerous clones of Sanger, Heihachi, T-elos, Alisa, Juri, and Saya. Chapter 41 has you fighting against almost every boss in the entire story, and defeating them just causes them to respawn. You'll fight most of them no less than twice.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Bragging Rights Reward: You can gain exclusive equipment for each Pair Unit by fighting through the sequel's challenge stages. By completing everything, the story becomes a joke. Bringing that over to New Game Plus makes that a joke too.
  • Break Meter: Most enemies have shields on them, so players must take it out before players can start damaging them. Some characters have attacks that are better suited for breaking shields, since they have powerful singular hits early on that do large amounts of damage to them, like Ryu's and Chun Li's moves that involve their Focus Attack from Street Fighter IV. The second game further clarifies which moves act as shieldbreakers by marking them with a cracked brick wall icon.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall:
    • During Chapter 33, some of the females start talking about how they want to have a race in the ship's pool and start discussing their different swimsuits. This prompts a line from Xiaomu;
    Xiaomu: Ah, we should have known this game would have had a swimsuit episode!
    • At the end of Chapter 13, Path to Certain Victory plays as Saya prepares, prompting this retort from Xiaomu:
    Xiaomu: Hey! Don't go bringing your theme music in here!
    Xiaomu: I thought this adventure was gonna be be non-canon!
    Ulala: Here comes a cross hit!
  • Brick Joke: After being shot out of the colossal revolver catapult in Paris, in the opening of Chapter 35, Jin hopes Heihachi fell out and got bashed on the wall of the fortress they were fired at. In the opening of the next one, Heihachi hopes the same thing happened to Jin.
  • Bullet Time: One of the new features in the sequel, this allows you to time Critical Hits easier and gain back some of the Cross Gauge you used to activate it if used correctly.
  • The Cameo:
    • Ulala and Devilotte's assists, which use characters from games like Side Arms and Fantasy Zone, among others.
    • The prologue to Stage 15 has the supercomputer from the old Sega game Gain Ground (in fact, Stage 15 is a big Shout-Out to the game), while Stage 17 includes statue versions of the enemies from Gain Ground's first boss stage.
  • Calling Your Attacks: For nearly every attack, sometimes even generic ones like Disembowel.
  • Canon Discontinuity: Lampshaded in the second game. When Ogami suggests using a cannon to reach the next destination, Xiaomu breaks the fourth wall to say she thought the game was non-canon.
  • Canon Welding:
    • Done to believably awesome and sometimes hilarious effect. Many characters with similar themes end up in the same world.
    • Also done In-Universe at one point, where the characters spend a little time spitballing about how they might come from different points on the same timeline. This stops being funny for them real quick when they realize the setting of God Eater Burst puts The End of the World as We Know It well within (and quite possibly at the endpoint of) many of their lifetimes.
  • Casting Gag:
    • The team-up of Dante and Demitri took the biggest slice of the cake, and ran with it.
    • Valkyrie insisting to be coded "Seventeen."
    • Bruno Delinger from Dynamite Cop/Deka is voiced by Ben Hiura, who is the actual Japanese voice actor for Bruce Willis in the majority of his most recent movies. Since Bruno is a Expy of Bruce Willis and the American version of the first Dynamite Cop/Deka was named Die Hard Arcade, this is quite fitting.
    • Also overlaps with The Other Darrin in a meta-example, since Ben Hiura replaces the late Nachi Nozawa as the Japanese voice of Willis.
  • Casual Danger Dialog: Lots, considering there's dialog snippets before and after most battles, every unit has several possible lines, every pair has a few exchanges they can make, and every pair unit/solo unit combo has at least two unique exchanges. Haken and Kaguya are probably the best example, speaking so casually that without context it's hard to tell if they're talking about fighting or foreplay.
  • Cat Girl: Felicia is the primary one, but there is also Erica when in her black cat outfit, Aty when in full Shartos form and Neneko due to her peculiar hat. KOS-MOS would be a bit of a stretch due to her verbal tic, nya.
  • Chainsaw Good:
    • Frank West uses Adam The Clown's pair in his attacks, alongside Hsien-ko's.
    • Alisa can transform her arms into chainsaws, which she does if the player activates her assist move.
    • Majima gets in on the chainsaw action in the sequel.
  • Changing Clothes Is a Free Action:
    • Erika changes into her black catsuit for her and Gemini's support attack, their down-A attack, and their super attack. Her red habit is seen flying back on screen for her to put back on immediately when she's done.
    • Reiji and Xiaomu's MAP attack consists of Xiaomu attacking the enemy in several different outfits, such as a Chinese dress, school girl uniform, and a wedding gown.
    • Both Ichiro and Sakura do this as well. Sakura changes into her Imperial Army uniform for their super attack, while Ichiro changes into his civilian clothing for their MAP attack.
    • In the sequel, Erica now changes into both her catsuit AND her Imperial Army uniform for her and Ichiro's super attack, Sakura still changes into her army uniform for her super attack while Gemini changes into her uniform for their MAP attack.
    • Lucina changes into the Bride class for her and Chrom's super attack and their down-A attack.
    • KOS-MOS changes into a magical girl outfit for one of her moves while Fiora switches between various drones on her back just so that she could perform the Talent Arts associated with them. (In her source game, the "drones" count as foot equipment only equippable by her).
    • Estelle and Felicia both finish their support attacks by changing their outfits. Estelle changes into her "Enchanting Belle" costume, while Felicia puts on a cabaret outfit.
  • Chekhov's Boomerang: The fountain at the Kouryuujii estate is a lot more important than just Chun-li and Morrigan popping out there. Or the fact that it's a dimension warp connecting to the shopping mall or the ship. This is again used in Brave New World where the Dragonturtle Mk. 1 needs a point of reference to get Reiji and the gang back to his timeline to deal with the bad guys.
  • Christmas Episode: Chapter 25 of 2 where Zephyr and Vashryon wear the reindeer outfits from such segment originating from their own game, although it's mostly used as a ploy to fool their enemies into thinking that they're part of their forces so they can foil their plans.
  • Clothing Damage: Arthur loses his armour and becomes clad in boxer shorts ala his game. Bruno also suffers from this as well as Devilotte and hers is a result of Blodia, the mecha of Jin (the hero protagonist from Cyberbots) punching through foes as well as her.
  • The Coats Are Off:
    • Saya◊ ends her support attack with her jacket off.
    • Similar thing happens with some of Erica's attacks, in which she throws her nun outfit off, revealing a cute cat suit underneath.
  • Combination Attack: All Pair Units come with multiple ones. In fact, a normal attack is already one of these. This can culminate in a five-person assault with the attacking unit, their solo, and a neighboring unit all attacking at once.
  • Combos: The gameplay revolves around these, with higher combo counts giving you various rewards and losing your combo might give the enemy a chance to refill their block gauge.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Normal units are easy to deal with, but anything deemed a "boss" unit will almost always counterattack anyone who attacks them, and in most cases, will shave off almost half the attacking unit's HP as a result. And not just the first attack, but every time during the turn as well, so expect to heal a lot of units on stages filled with boss enemies.
  • Contrived Coincidence: Anytime Phantom appears as an enemy, Sanger seems to be conveniently absent and thus doesn't know it exists. That is, until Stage 27, aka the first stage where you have every single pair and solo unit.
  • Cool Sword: Part of the opening shows some of the sword-wielders standing side to side with each other, pointing their varied swords at the screen.
  • Counter-Attack: If the enemy that attacked you did not inflict you with Downed or Stun or kill you outright, you can attack them back at the cost of some of your XP/SP. Less useful in the first game where performing a counter attack gives you 1 less attack you can use, denying you the use of the normal extra attack as well, but the sequel has no real restrictions when it comes to countering enemy attacks besides only being able to use support attacks during them with the respective passive skill and there are also various counter abilities that either damage the enemy or their EP or inflict them with a status aliment before you perform the actual counterattack on them.
  • Continuity Nod: Where do we start...?
  • Continuity Snarl: Characters in Tales of Vesperia can't use artes without blastia. While Estelle is exempt due to her being a rare being capable of using them without one, both Yuri and Flynn need them to use artes. The issue is that all three come from the end of Vesperia, where all blastia are sacrificed to save the world, meaning Yuri and Flynn shouldn't have access to their artes, but due anyway without discussion of that fact.
  • Cosplay Otaku Girl: Xiaomu in her attack taken from EXCEED and this time, it's the attack that hits multiple enemies at once instead of Jyuu no Kata.
  • Courtroom Episode: 2 has the entire stage 31 as such with Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey as the defending lawyer and his assistant while Miles Edgeworth as the prosecutor with Valkyrie at the witness stand. Otohime is the judge while Tarosuke is the bailiff. Meanwhile, the playable characters are at the defendant's side while Kamuz, Shadow, and Sigma are at the prosecutor's side. Finally, Saya, Aya-Me, and Juri Han are the witnesses to the trial. Finally, Sylphie is the resident Big Damn Heroes person. Yes, it's absurd as it sounds. (Un)fortunately, the entire segment becomes moot when Sylphie barges in before the trial can actually begin, inadvertedly revealing the culprit of the case outright by being in posession of the stolen object, telling everyone who stole it and how.
  • Critical Hit: Just like in Endless Frontier and Namco × Capcom, hitting enemies just before they hit the ground deals critical damage. It's even more important in this game because it gives out a lot more cross points to execute Limit Break attacks more easily and also more experience boosts just like the Branch-Up multipliers.
  • Crossover: A MASSIVE one. Over thirty franchises across Bandai Namco, Capcom and SEGA are brought together in this game, with the sequel even adding Nintendo characters into the mix.
  • Death Is Gray: If a playable unit falls in battle, its sprite in the map takes on a dark grey coloration.
  • Debut Queue: Just like its predecessor, both games begin with multi-chapter prologues introducing a few cast members that disappear for a few stages while the story focuses entirely on the main group.
  • Demo Bonus: Playing the demo gives you some bonus starting equipment in the full game.
  • Demoted to Extra: Tron, Arthur and Valkyrie from their fully playable roles in Namco X Capcom to being just support characters in the first game. Pai Chan, Alisa and Leanne also become support units in the sequel.
  • Developer's Foresight: Every possible pair and solo unit combination has an unique pre-battle conversation and at least 5 unique victory conversations, totaling up to 500 of them.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: When you defeat Meden. Especially if you land the final blow with a Badass Normal team, like Chris and Jill.
  • Disney Death: Arthur sacrifices himself in Operation Crackdown. As the next chapter starts, several members of the group mourn his death, but Arthur promptly returns, revealing that as long as he has his armor, he won't die, subverting Armor Is Useless.
  • Disney Villain Death: Seth gets one of these, even though he's clearly seen exploding.
  • Divergent Character Evolution: Design example. Akira uses his blue and red gi from VF 2 instead of his later white one so he's harder to get confused for Ryu.
  • Door-Closes Ending: At the end of the first game, as Kogoro and Mii walk into the mansion for a drink of tea, the doors are shown closing.
  • Dynamic Entry: Reiji does it again with his signature "WAIT!"
  • Dual Wielding: Lots of characters, but Reiji takes it up to eleven.
  • Dub Name Change: For (almost) everyone who's had one in their own canons, of course. Combining this with No Dub for You causes some dissonance when your eyes see "Hsien-Ko" and your ears hear "Lei-Lei". The exception is Bruno, likely because the licensing fees to turn him into John McClane again would be far too much trouble; however, his canon's second game was released internationally with the original names intact, and the Database lists him as being from that game (Dynamite Cop) specifically, so they already had another excuse. The second game references this with M. Bison, who's still referred to as "Vega" in any voiceacted segments: his Crosspedia entry states that the origins of his name are shrouded in mystery and that he likes to use other aliases internationally.
  • Embarrassing Statue: Leanne from Resonance of Fate is embarrassed that she has a statue depicting her struggling to hold up a heavy picture frame, with her legs spread and her knees bent just so she can remain balanced. She'd rather not go into detail why the statue exists in the first place, and tries her hardest to keep focus on the enemy threat that all the heroes have to deal with. Someone comments that it makes her look constipated.
    Leanne: Can we please talk about literally anything else?
  • Enemy Mine:
    • Dante teams up with Demitri, who by all means he should be killing.
      • In Project X Zone 2 Dante teams up with his twin brother, Vergil, who was a major antagonist in Devil May Cry 3. Though he had teamed up with Vergil for a short time in that game.
    • Frank West, the zombie apocalypse survival expert, teams up with Hsien-Ko, a Jiang-Shi.
    • T-elos works with KOS-MOS despite their bitter rivalry. Much like in Endless Frontier EXCEED.
    • Saya in the first game is a Solo Unit just like in EXCEED.
    • In the sequel, Jin teams up with his father, Kazuya, who, despite certainly not being Jin's worst enemy, definitely isn't on friendly terms with Jin.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Pair Saya with Chris and Jill, and she tells the BSAA agents that Ouma never uses viruses or other bioweapons. Chris doesn't buy it, since she's working for a known criminal syndicate and that she was heavily involved in the near destruction of reality.
    • A more humorous example: When Due Flabellum reveals that she's been staying in the Koryuji mansion while Mii has been away, using her private bathroom and has even eaten the pudding in the fridge that she was saving, Devilotte is horrified that anyone would do such a thing.
  • Excuse Plot: The plot and even the battles are primarily a backdrop to get all these disparate people together. The sequel is a bit better about this, as the characters have a clear objective when traveling to another world, but in the first game they hop between dimensions mostly out of sheer curiosity.
  • Extremely Short Timespan: Granted, a lot of dimension-hopping was involved, but by the time you finish the game, it's only sunset at the Kouryuuji estate.
  • Face–Heel Turn: The Phantom was a pretty steadfast partner for Haken in EXCEED, since after the first third of the original game. Of course, it doesn't stick and joins Haken and Kaguya in their MAP attack.
  • Facepalm: One of Demitri's character portraits shows him doing this, as he gets exasperated with the circumstances or the other characters.
  • Fanservice Pack: Some female characters have larger assets than in their original series. Hsien-Ko is a good example.
  • Fashionable Asymmetry: Mii wears a dress with one shoulder strap. A number of characters comment on it. What's particularly funny is that the strap has fallen off in a couple of her conversation poses, so whenever she talks for any length of time, the strap alternates on and off randomly.
  • Flash Step: Kogoro, the male protagonist, does this a lot in his attacks.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Done by some of the villains, Played for Laughs when Due and Mii are involved.
    • A played more straight example is when Saya mentions the Akatanas are based off an American operative who has a similar broken Japanese accent to them. Said operative is later revealed to be Sheath, an agent from Ouma America.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: Near the end of the second game's opening, Xiaomu can be seen winking at the player in a blink-and-you-miss-it shot as the characters all charge at Byaku Shin.
  • Friendly Fireproof: Considering you have up to five people attacking all at once (Ulala amps it up more) it's surprising that no one but the enemy gets hit with any form of attacks. Either it's this or everyone's just that really good at hitting their targets.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: Seth, V-Dural Felicia and Unknown are essentially naked, though their abnormal anatomy conceals this.
  • Furo Scene: A hidden illustration in the second game, only accessible by completing the second Fire Emblem level on a New Game Plus.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • The prequel made it a point that engaging a zombie enemy directly is pointless, as it will keep mutating and regenerating no matter how wounded it is, not to mention it puts the heroes at risk of being infected themselves. Project X Zone and its sequel throw this reasoning out of the window, as the characters can punch the daylights out of the Ooze or Nemesis without having to concern for their own safety.
      • This may also be because Resident Evil games released after Namco X Capcom had the characters being able to fight B.O.Ws with their bare fists. So keeping characters from engaging from them would have been pointless, because the story could now justify engagements.
    • What made the Aragami so threatening in their own game was the fact they were unkillable by any means except by extracting their core with a God Arc. Here they can be destroyed just like any other enemy, so they come off as little more than average monsters.
      • The story makes a point about this, with the God Eater characters being confused on how all the other characters can kill an Aragami with normal guns, swords, and even their fists!
  • "Get Back Here!" Boss: Stehoney and the other Gobs require you to chase after them. They're not that hard to kill, but they have almost as much movement range as your fastest teams, which means that some teams will get left behind when you chase after them.
  • Giant Woman: Valkyrie turns into one while performing her assist move.
  • Gimmick Level: The various challenge levels unlocked in New Game Plus in the second game consist mostly of these:
    • "The Ancient Mechon" has you essentially fighting one of the superbosses in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 which has massive amounts of HP for an enemy of its level and beat it before dawn that arrives in 4 turns.
    • "Cyberspace Dungeon" tasks you to beat Sigma at the end of the level in 30 turns with a single Unit while stationary enemies spawn at predetermined locations to stall you.
    • "The First Phase" spawns groups of massively durable enemies at you, tasking you to beat specific ones before the boss absorbs them to make itself stronger.
    • "The Unstoppable Rabble-Rousers" has you fighting an Ustanak that keeps respawning and summoning reinforcements every time you kill it.
    • "Wild Summons" has you fighting most major enemies as new ones are periodically summoned in.
    • "The Formidable Caged Ones" takes place in a small arena where you and your enemies are separated by barriers that're periodically lifted when enough rounds pass.
    • "Ninja Ninja Ninja" is largely self-explanatory: you fight a large number of ninjas with Kurohagane using his Doppelgänger Attack to create more clones of himself that then proceed to summon even more enemies or turn into tougher enemies themselves.
    • "My Blood Boils with Devotion to Play" has you fight a group of enemies led by Segata Sanshiro, with the main difficulty being that he removes most of your HP and SP right at the beginning of the level.
    • "Nine Trials" has you defeat 9 groups of enemies within 25 rounds, some of them being gimmick groups in themselves based on their source games.
    • "100 Battles" has no real gimmick, if the strongest enemies in the game and the possibility to fight up to 4 copies of the Final Boss at the same time if you don't play your cards right doesn't count.
  • Gratuitous English: Discounting attack names, we got:
    • Dante and Lady seems to have picked quite a few of these.note 
    • Of course, there's Haken who does this on a regular basis, as well as Ulala and Demitri with his usual "Let's play".
    • Gemini also lapses into this, though she's from the U.S. As is Frank West.
  • Gratuitous French: Erica has "Bonjour, Bonjour!", which she says during her Good Morning Dance attack.
  • Gray Is Useless: If a playable unit falls in battle, its sprite in the map takes on a dark grey coloration.
  • Guest Fighter: Chrom, Lucina, and Fiora are characters owned by Nintendo themselves. Fiora in particular was created by Monolith Soft, the specific subsidiary of Nintendo developing the game.
  • Hair-Raising Hare: Ciseaux in the first game, who's joined by Ranmaru and Sheath in the next. Haseo calls them the Brotherhood of Bitter Bunnies when they all show up in Chapter 32.
  • Harder Than Hard: SP Advanced in the second game. Subverted though, in that the enemies are actually just as hard as the ones in Hard difficulty, and you get more Gold and CP for beating them.
  • Hammerspace: Hsien-Ko with her sleeves, although the same could be applied to other units, like Kurt and Riela, Erica and Gemini, and Chris and Jill.
  • Harmless Freezing: Some of your units use ice powers and can actually freeze opponents. It doesn't last really long, but it's useful for setting up a Cross Hit.
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: The MAP attacks, usable by both the heroes and villains, can target from 2 to 4 units at the same time.
  • Hero Must Survive: Some missions are automatically failed if specific units are defeated, often the same ones who reach a space as a victory condition. In an interesting twist, this condition is sometimes tied to a solo unit, so the player can change who [Hero] is by altering their party setup.
  • Heel–Face Turn:
  • Heroic BSoD: Zero after he sees Iris. You'll have to save him within turn 8 with Skeith and Vile in your way.
  • Hero Must Survive:
    • There are a lot of stages where it is required for a particular unit to survive, else it's Game Over. Unlike in Namco × Capcom however, instead of just going back to the menu screen while keeping all the goodies you accumulated in battle, you are sent back to the title screen in this game so no, you can't exploit it.
    • Bizarrely enough, this is subverted of all places in the final stage when by all rights it should have been played straight (you need to get Kogoro and Mii right next to the barrier within 15 turns but you can actually get them ko'ed and still be able to continue).
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Arthur makes one at the end of Operation Crackdown. It doesn't stick and is resolved really quickly. This is also part of the Continuity Nod because Arthur states that he can survive one attack as long as he's wearing his armor no matter how strong or weak it is, just like in his game.
  • Hot Springs Episode: Present in Brave New World, much to Vashyron's dismay that he never got to see it. It's featured as a bonus cutscene in the New Game Plus.
  • Humongous Mecha:
    • One is revealed in the opening of both games. Those are the final bosses!.
    • The Gespenst known as Phantom is Haken's rival in this game.
    • Blodia and G. Kaiser are summoned by Devilotte during her Assist attack.
    • Ciseaux has one modelled after a rabbit.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Several Badass Normal characters fight by flinging, throwing or shooting everything they have up their (apparently very deep) sleeves. For some, quite literally.
  • I'm Standing Right Here: In the second game when the party encounter Tri-Edge, everyone noticed how he looks like an evil version of Kite. Some even compare him to Vergil and Kazuya in their presence, who take great offense to it.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Pairing Valkyrie with Gemini and Erica results in one of these
    Erica: Oh, Valkyrie. May God bless you!
    Valkyrie:I do come from the heavens, but...
    Gemini:Yeah, and you're heaven a great time! Hehehee!
  • Infinity +1 Sword: Beating the challenge levels that're unlocked in New Game Plus in the second game rewards you with some of the best gear in the game that can only be equipped by a specific pair of characters. The final challenge drops the most powerful equipment in the game which can be used by any characters.
  • Insistent Terminology: Hsien-Ko insists on the term "jiang shi", taking offense when Bruno calls her a "monster" at their first meeting, and then being called a "zombie" by Chris and Jill.
    • Mythology Gag: She also took offense in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 to being called a zombie by these two.
    • Soma insists that it's "God Eaters", not "Gods Eaters", in reference to how the localization of the game he came from changed all references of God Eater(s) to Gods Eater.
  • Interface Spoiler: Gels make their appearance in the item list much, much earlier than any actual characters representing the Tales of series. Y'know, if you didn't watch the opening or look at the box.
  • Ironic Echo: In Chapter 35, Jin hopes that Heihachi died by being bashed against the side of the wall of the Tower of Tarqaron; Chun-li tells him it'd take more than that to kill Heihachi. Fast forward to the next chapter, and this conversation ensues:
    Heihachi: Hmph. I hope Jin fell out and bashed up against the wall, personally.
    Akira: If I had to guess, it'd take more than that to kill Jin.
  • Irony:
    • Hsien-Ko, a Chinese vampire, is partnered with Frank West, whose game is centered around slaughtering an army of the undead.
    • Ditto with Dante and Demitri. This is Casting Gag-related. Toshiyuki Morikawa and Nobuyuki Hiyama are best buds in real life, and they're the VAs of Dante and Demitri respectively. Dante's a crass, stylish demon hunter while Demitri's a refined, noble demon. In fairness, Dante's pretty chill about the whole thing.
    • Kite's Zankou Enkon which he uses in his and Blackrose's last attack, is originally from Tri-Edge in G.U, but became his Cross Rengeki in LINK.
    • Yuri states that Vile pursuing X to the Tower of Tarqaron is this as a man he once knew died pursuing him to same place. Which doubles as Continuity Nod as he is refering to Zagi and Yuri still wants nothing to do with him. The icing on the cake is that Vile dies in the Tower of Tarqaron, and Zagi returns in the sequel fighting the party inside it, along with Vile.
  • Justified Tutorial: All five prologues serve as the tutorial to the game (Prologue 1 being basics, Prologue 2 being attacking with another Pair Unit, Prologue 3 being attacking with a solo unit, Prologue 4 being a mix and match of 2 and 3, and 5 teases us with MAP attacks).
  • Kamehame Hadoken: Besides Ryu and Ken, X gets this as a Limit Break, as a Shout-Out to the Easter Egg in Mega Man X.
  • Karma Houdini: In the first game, Riemsianne and Selvaria are the only villains not to be defeated at the end. Saya, T-elos, and Juri count as well, since they were working with the heroes at the time.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Played straight with everybody else who uses a katana, but not for Sanger when he shows his katana to Haken and Kaguya. So Kaguya powers it up to his original Reishiki Zankantou.
  • A Kind of One: Apparently all Soul Bees are called "Q-Bee" in this game in spite the fact that "Q-Bee" is a title used to designate the leader of the Soul Bee race.
  • Kinky Spanking: Reiji slaps Xiaomu frequently, much to her delight and the other characters' discomfort. The aftermath can even be seen in one of Xiaomu's portraits. Also a gameplay mechanic (Rosy-Red Kata, which boosts the EXP the pair earns at the end of the battle).
  • Kiss of Death: More like a kiss of brainwashing but this is how Riemsianne controls the Morolians but special mention goes to Coco Tapioca who as Kurt points out is a robot but is discussed and Played for Laughs in chapter 33. She described it as a novel experience.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler:
    • Fiora appears in her Mechon form within Project X Zone 2 while paired up with KOS-MOS. The mere fact that she's been turned into a Mechon is a huge spoiler within Xenoblade Chronicles 1 due to it being one of the game's various Plot Twists. That's just one among many others in this game.
    • Lucina's presence is a major spoiler for Fire Emblem: Awakening simply because of her status as a Walking Spoiler.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: This battle quote from Kite "Grinding for experience is a key part of any game."
    • Although granted, Kite is a middle schooler playing an MMORPG so for him it's a perfectly normal statement. The second game adds "Countering is a major part of strategy RPGs!" as one of his counterattack quotes.
    • And ironically, due to the way the game is set up, grinding is impossible.*
    • After chapter 11, the Queen Zenobia is drifting through the ocean. Ulala's response?
    Ulala: What will become of our intrepid heroes? The answer, after these messages!
    • Bonus points considering she knows her broadcasters are offline, and the quote being immediately followed by the intermission.
    • A pre-fight quote from Erica: "I think this is the time the announcer usually yells 'Fight'." Then cue the announcer: "Get readyyyy... fight!"
    • Project X Zone 2 has this exchange:
    KOS-MOS: Predicting enemy movement patterns.
    Fiora: I expect we'll hit them and they'll bounce a lot. Just a hunch.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: Yuri and Estelle end up fighting Sanger when they first encounter him.
    • This happens to Yuri again in the sequel; he and Flynn end up fighting Segata Sanshiro upon their first meeting after a very poor choice of words.
    Yuri: Sorry, but we're not playing games here, old man.
    Segata: Not Playing games? Yuri! Say that one more time, I dare you!
  • Limit Break: All Pair Units have two: a single target version used during a battle called a Special Attack, and a Multi Attack used on the map for multiple enemies.
  • Lonely Piano Piece: "Tear Drop", which usually plays during a villain's final defeat. It's also used when Arthur seemingly sacrifices himself in the climax of Chapter 17, and when Zero encounters Iris in Chapter 29.
  • Lovable Sex Maniac: Haken, Vashyron, and Majima are at the forefront of this.
  • Love Confession: At the end of Project X Zone 2, as the group celebrates their victory in Demitri's castle (much like how Namco × Capcom ended), Xiaomu confesses to Reiji that she loves him.
  • MacGuffin: The Portalstone, which Oros Phlox steals for some reason. It's revealed that Oros Phlox are themselves the stone, or more specifically, it's will manifest, and are trying to unite all the worlds.
  • Male Gaze:
    • KOS-MOS' Limit Break has a close-up of her chest.
    • One screenshot shows Frank West taking a photo of Riela in Valkyria mode... while aiming at her chest◊. Heck, Frank West taking photos of girls is pretty much a big lampshade to this trope.
    • During conversations, almost every female character has the Boobs-and-Butt Pose as one of their mood art, playable and non-playable.
    • During her Solo assist Valkyrie in a voice-over encourages the other characters (and player?) not to look upward. note 
  • Marathon Level: One of the main complaints about the game is the ridiculously huge number of enemies you need to kill per level on average to finish them and little else to break up the monotony of doing so, combined with potentially ridiculously long stretches where you can do nothing but watch the enemies take their turn one by one. The sequel aims to fix this with more compact levels that don't take as long to finish and which have more interactive elements such as stage hazards, along with adding separate player and enemy turns that allows you to thin out the herd more effectively before the enemy gets their turn. That being said, the latter missions in the second game can still take a long time to complete and most of the challenge missions are more or less intended to be this, considering they're the source of the best equipment in the game.
  • Mecha-Mooks: Stage 27 has your characters fight an assortment of robots and mechas from the different games.
  • Meet Cute: Xiaomu mockingly refers to T-elos and Metal Face's first meeting with each other as one of these.
  • Mexican Standoff: The opening of the second game has one of these between Reiji, Xiaomu, Saya, and Sheath.
  • Mini-Mecha: Quite a few appear as Mooks/Rivals, such as Armor Soldier, Phantom and Prelude. Vile also brings his Ride Armor along in some of the fights against him. It should be noted that, like Phantom, the G. Kaiser that appears in Devilotte's attack is a smaller version of the original.
  • Mistaken Identity: Tron at first believes X is Volnutt when they meet.
  • Monkey King Lite: Kogoro Tenzai is based off the Chinese mythological character Sun Wukong (Staff fighting, self-multiplication, golden ring headband and the Big Good he's bodyguarding). Mii Koryuji is based off of Xuanzang, but appearance wise, she resembles Bayonetta, Juliet Starling, and Petra Johanna Lagerkvist.
  • Mooning: The first few frames of Xiaomu's Super Move Portrait Attack has her briefly show the players her buttocks.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Played for Laughs In-Universe, in chapter 31, where Due mentions she ate Mii's expensive flan, several characters, including former rivals, react to this like it was the worst thing she has ever done.
  • More Dakka:
  • My Friends... and Zoidberg: When investigating the Bermuda cruise ship, Chris and Jill comment that it's infested with nothing but zombies. Hsien-Ko responds with a self-inflicted version of this trope:
    Hsien-Ko: Hey, there are humans here, too! And me, I guess.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • The shot of Sakura during the opening of the anime is the same shot used in this game. Observe.◊
    • Why does Bahn know Akira and Pai? Because their series crossed over in Fighters Megamix! note 
    • Remember that Capcom Fighting Evolution game and that Jedah's ending faces him off against Dante? It's happening in this game.
    • Sanger's Heel–Face Revolving Door stitch is very much the same thing he did in the first SRW OG. Extra points for the fact that during his time as Rival Character, he never used his Daizengar inspired move. Instead, he used Thrudgelmir's move, just like Alpha Gaiden.
    • Kite's Sansou Enkon which he uses in his and Blackrose's last attack, is originally from Tri-Edge in G.U, but became his Cross Rengeki in LINK.
    • Ulala's guns were never named in Space Channel 5, but here they're called Tension Blaster. Think Banpresto and SEGA made the name up especially for this game? Not so, because this is the name for Ulala's guns from Phantasy Star Online where one half of them appears as a rare weapon the player can use◊.
    • Many of Segata Sanshiro's attacks reference his many famous commercials. For example, one special involves him judo-throwing the target so that it explodes on landing, similar to one commercial for a Bomberman game on the Saturn. Another special involves summoning innumerable clones of himself to stampede the enemy, just like his commercial for Dragon Force II.
    • One cutscene involves Segata Sanshiro and Sakura hugging it out while standing under a shower of cherry blossom petals. This is a direct reference to a commercial for Sakura Wars 2, where Segata Sanshiro and Sakuranote  playfully chased each other under a forest of sakura trees before they hugged it out.
    • Chrom and Lucina's super attack◊ pays homage to their game's box art◊.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: One of the promotional videos shows Alisa assisting Jin and Xiaoyu against Heihachi. In fact, Heihachi joins before Alisa does - and while a later stage does include a copy of Heihachi as an enemy character, it is not the stage seen in the trailer.
  • New Game Plus: Features a harder difficulty and a slower EXP gain, but you also get to keep items you have on your previous playthrough and find new ones that're even stronger than the ones you got earlier. It should be mentioned that the slower EXP gain balances out the fact that enemies have higher levels in hard mode. Second game adds gold and total CP gained to things carried over, unlocks harder challenge stages you can use for grinding purposes, and a bonus hot springs cutscene after you complete Chapter 36 and at the start of Chapter 37.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Chapter 13 of the second game, you find yourself at the Fetus of God and start hearing a voice calling for help and has only 8 minutes before he's absorbed into the dimension. Upon freeing the captive, it turns out to be none other than Lord Raptor, who had nothing left but a head after his defeat in the first game.
  • Nintendo Hard: In certain stages, there can be five bosses and fifty enemies on a map at once, with shields. Since most normal enemies can be defeated in one turn of attacking (without using a Limit Break), especially if the attacking character can access a Solo Unit and a Support Unit, and most stages also let you use every unit you have at the moment, the game balances this by throwing hordes of enemies at you.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The ability to have five characters all attack enemies at once (by having a Pair Unit call another Pair Unit to help them attack, and then calling a Solo Unit who can be applied to the intial Pair Unit to also perform their own attack) makes some attacks become essentially this. You know you're screwed when X, Zero, KOS-MOS, T-ELOS and Ulala◊ are all taking you on at once, and some of those solos are assisted by characters from other games...like the aforementioned Ulala.
    • Cross Hit is more or less this as an actual gameplay mechanic: if the solo or assist characters hit the enemy at the same time as the pair unit, a large green X appears on the enemy that holds them in place, preventing them from being knocked away by strong attacks, increasing XP gained and in the first game, they're the only way to fill the XP gauge past 100% up to 150%. The second game refined them more so that getting the X to appear isn't as easy to begin with and any strong attack that knocks the enemy away will cause a Cross Break that causes a ton of damage but also breaks it as the name suggests, meaning that the enemy will more than likely get knocked away from any followup hits. There are also buff skills that can either disable Cross Break entirely if you want more XP or increase the damage done by it if you possess a combo that can potentially let you trigger it multiple times.
  • No Kill like Overkill: Due to the above trope, each and every attack made by pair and solo units can be this, especially when ending it in a Limit Break, which puts on the slaughter even more. You can even continue the beatdown even after reducing a target's HP to 0, mostly to build up the XP gauge, or for fun.
  • Nonstandard Character Design: Unlike everything else in the game, which uses traditional if very detailed spritework, the effects for the God Eater Burst characters using their Consume attack is animated frame-by-frame, making it look noticeably more fluid and very out of place.
  • Not Now, We're Too Busy Crying Over You: Done in Chapter 37 when Ichiro believes he's responsible for part of his group plummeting to their deaths, only he forgot (or failed to realize) that all of them could fly/hover/maneuver in the air in some way. It's Estelle and Neneko who play the trope straight during this event.
  • Obvious Rule Patch:
    • To discourage making units into an One Unit Army, if a character has a skill that can increase the experience rate by 20% and equips an item that also increases the experience rate by 20%, then the skill is not usable in the skill list. So much for getting 40% EXP rate per fight.
    • This applies to all skills, in that no ability can be stacked. If a unit already has boosted movement from an ally, they can't cast it on themselves, for instance.
    • Both of these being averted are one of the main reasons for the sequel's easier difficulty: if you have the SP and and SP recovery items to spare, you can keep casting your buffs until you reach the cap, which is usually around double the original value.
  • Oddly Small Organization: The second game makes fun of this when it comes to Shinra and ICPO, neither of which have any known members besides Reiji and Xiaomu (and now Urashima) for Shinra and Chun-Li for ICPO, with Xiaomu further joking that Chun-Li being the only known ICPO operative must be the reason "that Carmen chick always keeps getting away".
  • One-Steve Limit: The second game features both Reiji Arisu and Reiji Mitsurugi. Averted in English as Mitsurugi got the Dub Name Change of Miles Edgeworth.
  • Pac Man Fever: Various solo units mistake the nature of The World as being made up of this trope when paired with Kite and BlackRose. Kite starts correcting them when they do so before BlackRose tells him it's pointless to do so since the the various solo units wouldn't understand.
  • Post-Script Season: The majority of the characters comes from a time after the completion of their respective game(s), along with all their character development.
  • Power Creep, Power Seep: This is what happens when you take some of the more realistic characters (Chris, Jill, Frank, Xiaoyu, Akira) and have them fight against/alongside some of the more fantasy based characters (Demitri, Ulala, Sanger, KOS-MOS).
  • Power Trio: The units are set up this way (a pair unit and a solo unit). Some combinations are already partners to each other from their source games (Yuri, Estelle and Flynn, Zephyr, Leanne and Vashyron to name a few).
    • Interestingly, when Alisa and Soma from God Eater Burst are introduced, they come with Vashyron. When we meet up with Vashyron's partners, Zephyr and Leanne, they're with Alisa and Soma's leader, Lindow.
    • Odd Couple: The game sometimes forces the player to choose odd pairings, such as Ryu, Ken and...Neneko.
  • Prank Call: Urashima contacts Xiaomu's cell phone in the 2nd game, only to be treated to this.
    Xiaomu: Hello! This is Wilma. Wilma Bracomof! Who is this?
    Urashima: ...What are you, twelve? Ugh, nevermind. Where are you?
    • Then, at the end of that same chapter:
    Xiaomu: Oh, that's my phone. Hello! Spatula City, we sell spatulas, and that's all!
    Xiaomu: Hello! Welcome to Cheetahburger, home to the Action Fifty-Tuna Melt!
  • Promoted to Playable: Back in Namco × Capcom, Kazuya was locked as an enemy-exclusive character (as Devil Kazuya). In PXZ2, he is a playable character, and can switch between human form and Devil form.
  • Protection Mission: Chapter 26 of the second game. Think of it as Sector Z on foot.
  • Purposefully Overpowered: The equipment you get from the final challenge mission is naturally this: they have by far the highest overall stats out of any equipable items in the game, have a ton of passive skills and unlike other items gotten from the challenge missions, can be equiped by everyone, allowing you to give copies of them to every character if you feel like playing the mission up to 19 times.
  • Put on a Bus: In addition of the usual Kogoro and Mii not appearing in 2, it is eventually revealed that there's a reason Sanger, Haken and Kaguya did not return in that game: Sanger and Haken got thrown off to the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation universe and then ends up being trapped there (not so much on Sanger, but Haken is away from his native world). Without Haken, Kaguya would have little inclination to get involved when her world isn't in danger.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: On one hand, you have a ninja detective, some high school students, government agents, reporters, military personnel, and devils. And on the other hand, you also have Blood Knights, Ax-Crazy people, werefoxes, robots, Magical Girls, and a goddess. And some of them would rather do nothing than kill each other or everyone else. While the Namco × Capcom crew have worked together in the past, it's still a miracle that these guys could work together, especially with the battle system.
  • Random Events Plot: Even discounting the prologue chapters, much of the game is spent constantly jumping from scenario to scenario with little bridging. Played with in that the entire party is aware things aren't making any sense, quickly get frustrated with their lack of headway and make a point of collecting all the Story Breadcrumbs they can from each new party member and location. The sequel averts this for the most part in that while the characters are still being sent to random locations against their will, they generally have a means to do it on their own and have concrete goals in mind for most of the game.
  • Rated M for Manly: A World of Badass and a World of Snark, featuring a high school cheerleader and a ninja detective as the protagonists.
  • Recurring Boss: All the Rival Units other than the final boss must be fought several times over the course of the game.
  • Redemption Demotion: Very egregious with characters that pull off a Heel–Face Turn; not only do they not have that humongous HP that they had, but also they don't get to keep the barriers that they once had while they were fighting you.
  • Rescue Arc:
    • A set of missions where the player has to rescue Aura by bringing a specific character to her.
    • Some missions also require you to reach a solo character who for some reason cannot move from where they're at. Fortunately they'll never get targeted by enemies, making it easier for the players.
  • Rewarding Vandalism: If you can destroy anything on the map, then go for it because most of the time, it will have items in it and it won't cost you your turn. Of course, a few times there will be enemies in there as well.
  • Rule of Cool: Chris and Jill, two characters hailing from a quasi-realistic setting, having flashy auras following their physical attacks.
  • Running Gag: Since you have a character voiced by Kikuko Inoue, this line shouldn't be too much of a surprise:
    Valkyrie: Please, call me "Seventeen."◊
  • Save Scumming: Since the mid-battle quicksave in both games isn't deleted until you manually overwrite it with another save, you can just save before you perform any action and reload if you screw something up, such as not getting enough criticals to finish off the enemy, not managing to inflict them with a status aliment or positioning your characters so that the enemy kills several of them with their special attack. By using the Soft Reset that lets you reset and reload your quicksave instantly, this was clearly intended to be a viable way to play the game.
  • Schmuck Bait: The Portalstone, believe it or not. The schmucks in question were Mii's ancestors, who were messing with it just to see what would happen. Kogoro's ancestors had to stop them before anything bad happened...like all this crap, for example.
  • Scolded for Not Buying: The sequel has Miyuki Chan give the player a Death Glare along with monotone speech if you don't purchase anything or if you purchase too little◊ at her store.
  • Seen It All: Especially people who were in Namco × Capcom. Especially since they've also experienced going to Feudal Japan, Hell, space, and everything else that they're just used to it already. Lampshaded by both Kurt and Riela who are surprised that the party members' reaction to Riela going Valkyria was just "meh". When Chris mentions how he's been sizing things up too much to freak out in the first place, Jill theorizes that they've already seen a lot.
    • Haken and Kaguya take a close second in the ambivalence stakes, coming from a world that's already known for inter-dimensional portals. Haken's reaction to a Cross Gate spitting him out in Tokyo next to a pitched battle is basically "Huh. Bugger. Hey, if the people I recognize get a moment, can I have a hand with the rogue Mini-Mecha?"
  • Sequel Escalation: As stated above, all buffing skills are much more effective in this game: while the highest overall buff you could expect to see in the first game was around 20%, here the weakest one is around 25%...applied to ALL characters at the same time with a single skill. The strongest? Flat out doubling the respective stat until the end of the following turn. This, combined with boosts to critical damage and extra damage to hitting enemies from the side or from the behind which can all stack with each other, means that you can do 5-digit damage in a single hit halfway into the game while capping out 4-digit damage in the first game wasn't even doable.
  • Sequel Hook:
    • As Mii walks back inside her mansion at the end, Kogoro says he's glad he doesn't have to worry about the fate of the world anymore, but Mii mentions that it might happen again, as long as she has the "power".
    • In the beginning of Chapter 32 of the sequel, Otohime assures Tarosuke will be joining the rest of the heroes on another big adventure in the future. Likewise, Says mentions the European branch of Ouma during Chapter 36, Sheath mentions that Ouma America will collect data from the whole 101 Embryo Project fiasco, and Saya wonders if Reiji could handle chaos from the other side, ie the West during the final chapter.
  • Shameless Fanservice Girl:
    • Xiaomu kicks it up a notch, just when you didn't think that was possible for her. Everyone seems to be okay with it, since after all, she's having fun.
    • If you put Imca with KOS-MOS and T-elos, she'll express this opinion of them for their outfits and their shirt-ripping special attack. KOS-MOS says to take it up with their creators. Wait a sec, which set of creators?
  • Shout-Out: Has its own growing page, a majority courtesy of Xiaomu. Please contribute!
  • Shout-Out Theme Naming: From Endless Frontier comes the two clawed ladies, "Necron" & "Omicon", or Necronomicon. One of their Palette Swaps continues with the book-themed naming as she's named after the Egyptian "Book of the Dead".
  • Shown Their Work:
    • Most of the combos used by the various fighter characters are taken from their respective games and work more or less like they do in them; for example, both parts of Ryu's and Ken's super can be performed separately in Street Fighter IV.
    • Goes into overdrive when it comes to tidbits in Darkstalkers, including mentioning Emperor Ozomu and that Demitri's aura lets him operate in the sunlight. These are things that are canon and discussed in sourcebooks, but never mentioned once in the games themselves.
  • Sidelined Protagonist Crossover: Downplayed in Project X Zone 2. Fiora is not the main character of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, but she is part of the protagonist ensemble there.
  • Smoking Is Cool:
    • Referenced in a couple of XP skills, such as Lindow and Bruno, which involves them smoking. Subverted with Ein, who the party thinks he smokes because of this at first, but he states that he tried to quit but didn't have the willpower. You can actually notice this in his Limit Breaks where he has to take a second to breathe before the final hit and occasionally mutters something about tobacco.
    • In the sequel, Kiryu and Majima have "Smoking Break" which increases buildup rate for the XP bar.
  • Space "X": In a nod to Space Channel 5's love of this trope, Ulala, Frank and Hsien-Ko after finishing an attack together proclaim themselves to be a space reporter, a space journalist, and a space jiang shi respectively.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: It's standard fair that the music will change to the theme music of one of the 2 or 3 characters in a unit when their turn activates. Ryu and Ken both have their own themes that are quite appropriate for two hardened warriors. Then comes Chapter 8 in the first game, and Neneko joins up as the solo unit for them. It's rather amusing and unexpected to see Ryu and Ken coming up next on the turn list, ready to finish off an enemy, just to have Neneko's happy, peppy, super cute song start playing.
  • Spoiler Opening: That Humongous Mecha you see in the opening? He's the Final Boss. Also Juri as part of the group when trailers showed that she was a villain.
  • Sprite/Polygon Mix: The game is made up of detailed 3D levels inhabited by intricate 2D sprites.
  • Stealth Sequel: It certainly isn't advertised as a Namco X Capcom sequel. Justified in countries that never actually got that game.
  • Suddenly Voiced: Saya's minions from Namco × Capcom now have spoken dialogue, a trait included to them since Endless Frontier.
  • Super Move Portrait Attack: Every playable character gets this when they use their Limit Break.
  • Suplex Finisher: Kogoro Tenzai, the male original character, does this in mid-air.
    • X does this after summoning his Ultimate Armor in the sequel.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: Late in the game Drei says there definitely isn't anything under Mii's fountain. In fact, that's where the portalstone and Oros phlox's base of operations are located.
  • Sword and Sorcerer: Yuri and Estelle and Touma and Cyrille are classic examples. Reiji and Xiaomu and Zero and X have this dynamic too, but they're subversions.
  • Tag Team: The characters are paired off like this. Some are teamed up by series (Ryu and Ken, Jin and Xiaoyu, Akira and Pai) while others make use of the crossover (the aforementioned Dante/Demitri and Frank West/Hsien-Ko team-ups.) The second game has a few inter-company crossovers such as Strider Hiryu and Hotsuma, Fiora and KOS-MOS, and Chun-Li and Xiaoyu.
  • Take That!: In one of the most oblong uses of this trope, Xiaomu at one point in Chapter 2 calls the B.O.W.s the "residents of Evil Creek." This is a reference to a report in a piece of anti-video game literature that was undermined by its egregious lack of knowledge on the games it was condemning, up to and including referring to Resident Evil as "The Resident of Evil Creek."
  • Tech Points: You can use Character Points (CP) in the sequel to make your attacks stronger and unlock new passive skills.
  • Technician/Performer Team-Up: Project X Zone 2 pairs twin brothers Dante and Vergil from the Devil May Cry series together, where in their home games, they are the performer and technician respectively. As one of the game's Pair Units, they work together with one another to overcome a multiversal crossover threat, using various attacks that complement each other's fighting styles.
  • Teethclenched Teamwork:
    • KOS-MOS and T-elos in the first game (though it is one-sided on T-elos's part).
    • Everyone, be it hero or villain, can barely contain their disdain when working with Juri. She reciprocates it.
    • Jin and Kazuya in the sequel, especially if paired with Heihachi as their solo unit.
  • The Force Is Strong with This One: Sakura and Ogami actually registered on Ryu's Supernatural Sensitivity.
    Sakura: Ogami is the captain and commander of the Imperial Assault Force. He belongs to all of us.
    Natsu: Weird. Anyone else feel like a whole barrel of gunpowder's about to go off, somehow?
    Ryu: The very air, it quivers.
    • The beginning of Chapter 37:
    Ogami: My body... It's moving towards the bathing area of its own volition!
    Ryu: So this is what a state of perfect selflessness looks like...
  • Theme Music Power-Up: Most pair units have these when they initiate their Limit Break, especially for Reiji & Xiaomu (Including MAP-Attack), Kurt & Riela, Kogoro & Mii, and Haken & Kaguya.
  • Theme Tune: "Wing Wanderer" performed by Yoko Takahashi. Yes, that Yoko Takahashi.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: This is how Sanger's support attack starts.
    • A couple of Frank and Hsien-Ko's attacks, including their Support Attack, also have them juggling a sword between them.
  • This Is the Final Battle: Before the Final Boss battle with Byaku Shin in the second game:
    Xiaomu: ...Reiji, this is it. For you, for me, for everyone... Our very last battle.
  • Timed Mission: There are stages wherein you have to do a specific objective before you run out of turns otherwise it's Game Over, like in Operation Crackdown where you have to destroy five statues within fifteen turns (though in this game, that's a lot).
    • There's also a universal limit of 99 turns per chapter, although you have to be seriously trying to make that happen.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: The cast of the first game meet some of the returnees but from their perspective, it's been years since they have last met them.
    • This also applies to characters within certain universes: Hibana comes from the Shinobi universe's future, ahead of Hotsuma. Leon uses his Resident Evil 6 incarnation, which takes place two games after Resident Evil Revelations, where this game's Chris and Jill come from.
    • It also applies directly to the game itself. Chris, Jill, Busujima, Chun Li & Morrigan, and Frank & Hsien-Ko are all introduced in the prologue on board the Bermuda, and all of them are sucked into the same portal at the end of the stage. While Chun Li, Morrigan, Frank, and Hsien-Ko are prominent throughout the entire game, the portal took Chris, Jill, and Busujima directly from the Bermuda to Chapter 21. There are other examples of characters who end up skipping through time as well.
    • Even characters who are supposedly within the same time frame are kind of messed up, time-wise: Shenmue takes place during the 1990s while games like Resident Evil, Yakuza and Ace Attorney take place at least a decade after it. Yet here, all the characters from these games are from the same time period.
  • Time Skip: Alisa notes that it's been three years since she last met Zephyr, Vashyron and Leanne. Meanwhile, Haseo mentions that it's been seven years since Kite's escapadesnote . All meet on the fourth prologue stage of 2. That being said, for Vashyron's group and Kite, it hasn't been that long.
  • Title Drop: Done a lot throughout the game for the represented canons. Arthur's world is constantly referred to as "the land of ghosts and goblins", Ryu is called a "street fighter", and an entire level is set up with nothing but mechanical enemies seemingly just so somebody - in this case, Haken - can namedrop "Super Robot Wars".
  • Token Evil Teammate: Several. T-elos, Devilotte, Juri, Saya,Heihachi and Kazuya.
  • Token Religious Teammate: Erica Fontaine being the top instigator.
  • Truer to the Text: Many characters' attack animations are recreations of attacks in their original games. The best example of this is with Zephyr, Leanne and Vashyron, who's attacks are almost perfectly replicated, down to idle poses.
  • Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Dante (with Demitri) versus Jedah is just one example that happens in this game.
  • Underboobs: Alisa Amiella's get lampshaded constantly by the rest of the party.
  • Underground Monkey:
    • Much like its predecessor, there's plenty of Palette Swaps to go around, coming from all series represented like the "White" Arremer, Red Horokko, multi-colored Zombies, etc.
    • Mocked at one point, when the heroes note the Akatanas were just Katanas that had been painted red. Said Akatanas protest.
  • Unflinching Walk: At the end of his support attack, Segata Sanshiro does this after throwing the opposition into the camera and having them spontaneously explode upon landing.
  • Useless Useful Spell: The status effects in the first game are more or less this since you'll rarely inflict them on any enemy that'd you'd want to disable. Averted in the second game, where they're far more likely to connect, affect most bosses that aren't explicitly immune to them, there are skills that increase the chance that you'll successfully inflict them on an enemy and attacking a stunned enemy increases the amount of damage you do to them.
  • Verbal Tic: Kogoro's "ka na," Mii's "te ne", Neneko's "na no da", and Ciseaux's "pyon" and "Ussa-ssa-ssa", to name a few.
  • The 'Verse: Characters who also appeared in Namco × Capcom all remember each other and that game's events, as they did in Endless Frontier, which was already a Gaiden Game to the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation series, which was recently canonically connected to Another Century's Episode. One could also include Xenosaga, given that characters from the series appeared in the first three games listed above. It helps they were all made by the same development company.
  • Villainesses Want Heroes: Riemsianne once again seems to have her sights set on poor Touma. Saya also seems to have the hots for Reiji.
  • Villainous Friendship: In PXZ2, Alisa and Xiaomu complain that the party's enemies tend to get along far too well.
    Alisa: So you two hit it off and you wound up lending him your forces? Ugh, can't you types be more antisocial?
    Xiaomu: We'd better keep this guy from meeting our pals at Ouma. That'd be a bit too much esprit de corps for me.
  • Violation of Common Sense: In stage 28 of Brave New World, the solution to putting out the fire is to have your characters walk into the fire and take damage. Even the characters thought this was insane for them to do. On the other hand it was fire from Makai so conventional methods of putting it out wasn't going to work.
  • Visual Initiative Queue: The bottom screen displays the next few units that will act after the current one. In addition, each unit displays a number over its head indicating its place in the queue.
  • Wall Jump: While X and Zero are known for using this frequently in their source game, it's notable in their Special Attack when they wall jump up thin air.
    • Subverted with Kaguya, who looks like she's doing this, but is actually jumping off her rings for her final attacks.
  • Wham Line: At the end of the second game.
    Reiji: Xiaomu... will you marry me?
  • When Life Gives You Lemons...: Xiaomu has a fun twist on this.
    Xiaomu: When life gives you lemons, you close the bedroom door and read them all!
  • Where It All Began: The game begins at the Koryuujii estate. It also ends there because Oros Prox's headquarters is located underneath the freaking fountain.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Played with for laughs. After the group had a sample of Sheath's Genki Girl personality earlier on, they find themselves in Sakura Wars-New York trying to defend the Little Lip Theater from Shadow and the Rhythm Rogues when Ranmaru makes his entrance. Cue a incredulous Xiaoyu:
    Xiaoyu: Bunnies. Why do the biggest weirdos always gotta be bunnies?
  • Womb Level: You get to visit "Fetus Of God"/"Creator's Fetus" in this game. It is still as creepy as ever.
  • Worldof Badass: What else would you get with having heroes and villains from several franchises fighting each other? Heck, it's not even just one world anymore; it's six (or technically three).
  • World of Ham: Even characters who usually aren't hammy get to ham it up in this game.
  • World of Snark: Everyone gets to be snark-y in this game.
  • Yaoi Fangirl: Xiaomu's at it again.
  • You All Share My Story: Considering the Namco × Capcom veterans have met up with each other in the past, they manage to get along easily.

Alternative Title(s): Project X Zone 2

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