Project X Zone 3: The Azure Eclipse

Project X Zone III: The Azure Eclipse (プロジェクト クロスゾーンIII：紺碧の日食 Purojekuto Kurosu Zōn San: Konpeki no Nisshoku) is a strategy role-playing game developed by Monolith Soft and published by Bandai Namco Games for the Nintendo 3DS. A remastered edition was released on the Nintendo Switch later on with  its predecessors as part of the Project X Zone Trilogy. This is third game in the Project X Zone video game series, as well as being the first game in the franchise to get a home console release. Even though the series is a dream crossover between Capcom, Bandai Namco Games and Sega, this game once again features guest characters from Nintendo, as well as introducing characters from Activision and Square Enix.

Main Plot
Every thirty years, a mysterious object blocks the sun. Usually lasting about a week, this causes a blue glow to illuminate the entire world. Scientists have stated that the moon is nowhere near the sun during these strange eclipses, but they could never identify the object blocking the sun itself.

This phenomenon is infamously known as the Azure Eclipse.

While the Azure Eclipse gained publicity over the years, tons of incidents occur in its more recent appearances. People receive unexplained injuries, strange disasters occur, and even reports of berserk creatures come up. That’s how the Azure Eclipse got Shinra’s attention.

Shinra, an organization dedicated to keeping reality safe from all kinds of dark multidimensional forces. They have been lurking in the shadows for hundreds of generations, fighting a silent war with no conclusion. Many of their battles don’t last long, but that doesn’t mean the long ones are nonexistent.

During the last Azure Eclipse, a young man named Leos Risket led Shinra’s forces through a brutal conflict. His intel discovered that the beasts present clues of advanced intelligence. This brought up some questions during the eclipse’s aftermath.

What kind of civilization do these monsters live in? Why did they come here? Are they following the orders of some leader? Does the Azure Eclipse act as some gateway to another world?

20XX, Present Day.

After thirty years, the Azure Eclipse has returned to shake a whole new generation… and quite literally. During those past years, Leos married his long-time sweet heart and started a started a family with her. Time has passed and their twin daughters are now rookie Shinra agents.

The two sisters are now on their way to their first field mission. Little do they know that this little operation will lead them on a journey that will test all their limits, but also reveal the meaning behind the Azure Eclipse.

Basics
Project X Zone 3 keeps the core gameplay mechanics like its predecessors. The player moves multiple playable units across a map to engage in combat with enemy units. Multiple attacks can be linked together with other close pair units and a selected solo unit to build extensive combos.

Unit Stats
These are the stats carried by all units on the map. Players can increase the stats on their units by either leveling them up or equipping them with gear and accessories.

HP - Health. The amount of hit points a unit can take until they're defeated.

SP - Skill Points. Used to activate a unit's Skills.

ATK - Attack. The amount of attack power a unit has.

DEF - Defense. The amount of attack power a unit can reduce.

TEC - Increases a unit's chance of triggering a status effect.

DEX -  Decreases a unit's chance of getting a status effect.

MOVE - The amount of spaces a unit can move on a battle map.

RNG - Shows how many spaces a unit can attack from.

SP M-RNG - Additional spaces when a unit performs a multi-attack.

Status Effects
Status effects are abilities that both allies and enemies have in a few of their attacks. Most of the time, these usually last for about two to three turns. Playable units that have a status effect can be cured with the right item.

Stun - The unit is completely immobilized and vulnerable to enemy unit attacks.

Poison - The unit will lose health each time their party's turn arrives.

Down - The unit is prevented from counter attacking.

Block Crush - Player exclusive. During the combat phase, this greatly helps out in destroying the enemy's shield.

Bind - Enemy exclusive. Effected playable units are prevented from activating their skills.

Skills & Auto-Skills
Skills are a way for players to temporarily enhance abilities for playable units. Normal skills can be activated by individual units with the cost of their SP. Returning from the second game, auto-skills are equipable  enhancements that trigger when certain conditions are met.

Intermissions
Intermissions happen in between chapters, giving players a break from battle scenarios. During intermissions, players can save their progress, modify a unit’s skills and abilities, buy and sell equipment from the shop, and practice combos in training mode.

New Features
Unlike the previous instalments, this game introduces some new mechanics to the series.

The most notable addition is the moveset customization feature. From here, players will have the ability to select and arrange the input to a unit’s moveset. With all possible moves unlocked, players can select five out of seven normal attacks for each pair unit (plus one out of two support attacks), and one out of two for solo units.

With all the other unit stats, the SPD (Speed) stat returns from the first game. Instead of determining the order of the units, SPD is a player-exclusive stat that gives playable units a chance to dodge attacks from enemy units, functioning in the similar way to the Super Robot Wars series. A higher SPD stat increases a unit’s chance to dodge enemy attacks.

A new status effect being introduced to the series is Burn. This is an effect that will temporarily lower a unit's stats. Units infected with Burn can be cured with the new item, Water Hose.

Glas Risket
Glas Risket (ガラス・リスク Garasu Risuku) is the twin sister of Emerald Risket, a rookie member of Shinra and serves as one of the game’s main protagonists. Her favourite hobby is reading, collecting, and even writing all sorts of literature. She is mostly known for her peppy attitude and is always looking ahead towards her future. In battle, she fights with the Sage Gauntlets, which can both enhance her punching power and harness all sorts of supernatural & elemental abilities.

Emerald Risket
Emerald Risket (エメラルド・リスク Emerarudo Risuku) is the twin sister of Glas Risket, a rookie member of Shinra and serves as one of the game’s main protagonists. She’s a junkie of 1970’s to 1990’s music who’s been diagnosed with a split personality disorder at a young age. In a flash, this collective brainiac can transform into a crazed maniac without a warning. Her combat weapon is the Checker Hyde, an electric guitar that can cast various spells with the right tunes.

Leos Risket
Leos Risket (レオス・リスク Reosu Risuku) is a non-playable character and the father of Glas & Emerald. Thirty years prior to the events of this game, he was a member of Shinra’s field division who’d witnessed the Azure Eclipse for himself. Now he’s in charge of the same division he’s been assigned to and behaves a mentor figure towards his two daughters. In the game, he pilots the Dragonturtle Mk. 1 which was given to him by Dr. Chizuru Urashima, who has started constructing a new Dragonturtle model. His personality is best described by Glas & Emerald as a  “ stereotypical shonen manga protagonist in the real world.”

Zaffre Vigil
Zaffre Vigil  (ザフレ・ビギル Zafure Bagiru) is a powerful goddess and the main antagonist of Project X Zone 3. Even though her appearance is that of a woman in her early thirties, she’s actually been alive for centuries.

In addition for being responsible for the Azure Eclipse, Zaffre's also the original creator of the Portalstone from the first Project X Zone. Doubling as an ancient way to access different worlds, the original purpose of the these enchanted stones is to seal in the spiritual energy of those who attempted to rob  Zaffre's  power, even giving them amnesia in the process. But in extremely rare cases proven my Oros Phlox, it’s possible for these prisoners to escape and even harness their stone’s energy.

Backed up by Portalstones from all sorts of worlds, Zaffre opens dimensional rifts from her world every thirty years to lay down further seals on her prisoners. This is what fuels her motivation to destroy all the worlds that hold her Portalstones, bringing the innocent mortals to live in her own dimension.

Similar in a way to how Oros Phlox used the Portalstone, Zaffre's way of combat is to summon horrific monsters from her thoughts. Unlike Oros Phlox, she can actually accomplish this ability at will. As a world threatening goddess, Zaffre seems to be a strangely polite woman. Traces of sadness come across her whenever she’s confronted by the heroes on her plans of destruction, never showing an angered or sadistic nature. Later on in the game, this trait gives the Riskets a theory that she’s actually being manipulated in some way.

Playable Characters
Characters marked with a (*) symbol are temporarily fought as an enemy unit.

Characters and game titles highlighted in Italic are new to the series.

Pair Units
A pair unit consists of two characters; a leader who is the one represented on the map and during boss unit attacks, and a partner who assists the leader during the player’s attacks. Pair units are navigated across a map to collect items and trigger battles with enemy units. With 100 XP, either a Special Attack can be activated during combat, or the player can attack multiple enemies at once from the map. Pair units can also activate skills that can effect units in the player’s party. These type of units can gain experience points, level up, and eventually gain new skills.

Main Story
These are the characters that appear in the game's main story.  Downloadable Content These characters appear exclusively in bonus chapters that can only be purchased online. Placing these units in the main campaign will leave no effect on the story. 

Solo Units
A solo unit is a character that can be linked to any pair unit in the player’s party. These characters are meant to be summoned by the player during combat phases to further extend combo attacks. Solo units cannot be levelled up, but they do provide some unique skills to their linked pair unit.

 Main Story These are the characters that appear in the game's main story. 

Downloadable Content  These characters appear exclusively in bonus chapters that can only be purchased online. Placing these units in the main campaign will leave no effect on the story.

Boss Units
These are the enemies that will be fought throughout the entire game. Bosses are obviously much stronger than the regular grunts, even having access to both special & multi-attacks with 100 EP.

Characters marked with a (*) symbol have multiple forms.

Characters and game titles highlighted in  Italic  are new to the series.

Alternative Boss Forms
As the main story progresses, certain boss units can go through an enhanced transformation or two. Their attacks will mostly be different, but sometimes they might even receive new auto-skills with their evolution.

Sub-Boss Units
This is another type of boss unit that will be encountered throughout the game. Even though they cannot use special or multi attacks, these enemies can be quite a handful with their auto-skills.

Characters and game titles highlighted in  Italic  are new to the series.

Event Characters
In the game, these characters don’t appear as enemies, but they’re not playable, either. Most of these characters appear exclusively in cut-scenes while some act as shopkeepers.

Characters marked with a (*) symbol are shopkeepers.

Characters and game titles highlighted in  Italic  are new to the series.

Enemy Units
These are the basic grunts that players will face off against. Usually most of them can be defeated in one combat phase, but enemies with high stats and  certain  auto-skills won't be a pushover.

Chapters
This is a list of all the chapters in Project X Zone 3: The Azure Eclipse. With 5 prologue chapters, 45 main story chapters and 12 unlockable challenge stages, there's a total of 62 battle scenarios for the player to conquest through.

Characters being introduced in the game will be highlighted in italic bold.

Cameos & References
While many franchises from the three companies are featured in this game, a select few can only be spotted through a cameo appearance. This can range from a character being present in a unit’s attack, having an entire map be based on a certain game, or by just making a reference to something though dialogue.

Soundtrack
One month after the international release of Project X Zone 3, the game's official soundtrack made its worldwide debut. All songs and jingles from the game are present on the soundtrack which came out on digital download stores, CD, and even a three-part vinyl record set.

Trivia

 * During the game’s concept phase, one idea involved a new villain (who would later become Zaffre Vigil) kidnaping heroes from across the multiverse and creating an army of mindless clones from them. Project X Zone 3’s original concept had the surviving protagonists go out and rescue the captured heroes from this new threat.
 * Open world map exploration would have been introduced to the series as it involved the idea of capturing enemy clone units. Any playable unit would use this new card technology to capture Illusion Units (the name for these characters), summoning them to either fight on the battle map or to be used like a solo unit. However, this concept went unused because it was very similar to the lore of the Pokemon games. The only thing to remain from this premise is the playable character lineup.
 * The game’s opening theme “The World Watchers” is actually performed by the voice actresses of Glas and Emerald.
 * Crash is the only character to have his appearance change between the Japanese and international versions of the game. In the original Japanese release, Crash's design is based around the depiction of him from his franchise's japanese marketing. When the game was ported to the rest of the world, all of his sprites, dialogue portraits and artwork were changed to match his design from the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.