This was a pretty special one to me. Its gameplay was serviceable, not exactly great, and the story didn't quite affect me the way I think the game intended. I still came out greatly appreciating what Crystar tried to do and all the ways it succeeded. It reminds me of teen angst a lot, it dabbles on some pretty sensitive topics without delving too far into them to be overbearing. The main character, Rei, ended up striking a lot of nerves with me because I could relate to her in many ways I wasn't happy to admit, and that made the game become very introspective as I watched her grow and examined how I could also improve. It wasn't really a great game, but it was very important to me.

Crystar is an interesting game. It has admittedly been on my backlog for the better part of a year & I finally decided to play it recently & it took me around 30 hours to finish the main story in its entirety. And honestly I admit I’m a little conflicted on it.

Now I won’t waste too much time talking about this game’s mechanics cause I’m pretty sure most people have done that several times. I have always been one who prioritises gameplay over everything else cause well this is a game. I’m not saying everything else is unimportant it’s just if you can’t make a game fun to play? Then you’ve already failed. Doesn’t matter how incredible your story is, if I’m not enjoying playing I’m unlikely to keep going. So that already marks a couple points off Crystar right off the bat cause this game? It’s dull. It’s repetitive. And its combat lacks any sort of depth. The dungeons are incredibly samey & don’t have a lot of variety to them at all. Most encounters you resort to the same tactic mashing the same buttons over & over. Several hours in it really did get mind numbing & yeah it’s just not very fun at all. So with all that in mind you’d think I don’t like this game very much

However despite its majorly unsatisfying gameplay loop, I can still say I liked Crystar. It’s an extremely compelling story about grief & loss & I think it handles those themes really well for the most part. The art & characters are also pretty fantastic. There’s a lot of depth to the cast I feel & the performances in the English dub are pretty solid. Though I will say I found some dialogue…very cringe inducing (looking at you Kokoro) but I’d say that I did really like the bond of the party as you go through Purgatory the main area of the game. There’s a lot of complexity to the cast with my favourites being probably Rei & Sen. And the way the narrative explores the trauma of each of the girls is incredibly compelling. I think there’s a lot to be said about this game’s narrative & how much it pulls on the heartstrings especially in the latter chapters.

Now while yes I enjoyed the narrative for the most part…I’m going to say the endgame? What the fuck. This entire section was absolutely mind boggling since you need to repeat several chapters multiple times just to get all the endings. It felt like padding for the sake of extending the length. And while yes I will say the combat does improve slightly around that point, it’s still mostly the same throughout. I’ve never been much of a fan of multiple endings with exceptions going to games such as NieR Automata. However I will admit on the true ending path, all these different outcomes really did make the journey worth it. Even if I also will say that the true ending left me feeling a little…underwhelmed.

Honestly if you trimmed this game by 10 hours & fixed up the gameplay to make it less tedious? This would be a pretty easy recommendation from me but no matter how much I enjoyed Crystar, I can’t really recommend this title to anyone without first warning them about its many flaws. It was a good game though, one I definitely am glad I persevered with even despite the repetition.

Final score: 7/10

A good story wrapped up in a boring bundle.

Crystar has been sitting on my pick back up pile for a long time now. I started this game a few years ago but just stopped playing it for no particular reason. With the release of Crymachina I thought it would be fun to go back and finally finish Crystar. By the end I found myself really enjoying the story but really just wanting to finish the game and get it over with due to its horrible midpoint gameplay choices that followed through until the end.


What did I enjoy about this game ?

To start off, the story was very nice and one that will keep you interested until the end. The story of Crystar is simple on a base level, having you play as Rei , a girl whose sister has died. In order to get your sister back you make a deal with the devil that sets you out on a journey in Purgatory / Limbo. Crystar does a good job building up its story to its eventual climax giving you multiple characters you will meet and care for throughout the runtime. Beyond that , the OST is great and has tracks you will want to listen to when you are not even playing. Furthermore , the artwork is simply amazing making you wish they had even more of it in game because I loved the character artworks , specific cutscene artwork.


Sadly this is where it gets tricky.

I want to touch upon the story real quick because while I think it was overall great I was not fond of the ending. There was so much aftermath we the players deserved to see but simply didn't. My biggest complaint which ultimately ruined the game however was its gameplay and runtime of the game. First off, the game doesn’t have a high quality feel to it which is FINE not every game needs to have a AAA feel to it. However, this doesn’t mean you can have boring and repetitive gameplay and think it will be passable. To simply put , the gameplay is BORING and downright BAD not ever feeling fluid or fun. Hits don’t feel impactful , certain skills are insanely OP making what you use severely limited as you will end up using what is OP. This sadly translates over to characters as 2 out of 4 characters overpower the other 2 by a crap ton. By the end I saw myself using literally 1 character as there was ZERO reason to use anyone else. Furthermore, the loot pool is boring as it all comes down to numbers and looks. The weapons will not have special effects or stats the higher the tier they will simply look different and have better numbers. You will not sit and think about what to equip, you will just equip what is best and move on. The game features an upgrade system which is utterly useless as upgrading weapons do not really boost the stats to a degree that makes it worth grinding for. All these small things will begin to add up quickly and maybe wouldn’t have taken as much of a toll on me if it wasn’t for the runtime of this game. By now you would think these would be my biggest issues right? Well you would be wrong weirdly enough. I always find enjoyment in games and do not mind middle of the road gameplay HOWEVER the story makes one of the worst decisions gameplay wise. The story hits a point in which you will have to replay the SAME EXACT MISSIONS OVER AND OVER. Doesn’t sound bad at first but when you take into account how long and boring levels are you will literally lose your mind by the end. I cannot fathom why they force replays of the same levels over and over when they simply could have saved so much time by skipping so much of that portion of the game. By this point I literally found myself confused as the game makes you go through so much just to get new story scenes that eventually lead into its ending. It truly makes for a dreadful experience and one that I was not sad to see finished lol.


Do not 100% this game

As a trophy hunter my #1 rule is to get my feelings and review out of the way when I finish a game. I NEVER allow trophy hunting to affect my overall feeling of a game but I felt the need to add this section for people who do like Plat hunting. DO NOT GO FOR THE PLAT ITS INSANELY GRINDY AND BORING , that is all.

In the end

I am really bummed out because if there was a great gameplay loop to back up the great story that is already present I believe we could have had a really good game on our hands. I am very intrigued to dive into Crymachina as I played the demo and personally really enjoyed it. The physical for Crystar is quite expensive now for a US copy so I 100% do not recommend hunting a copy down however if you catch it on a deep sale digitally then give it a go if you understand what you are getting into.

A unique and wonderful experience. The game has a sad, yet ultimately cathartic, feeling to it. There's great care in fleshing out the cast, the scenario is unique and there's some heavy themes it deals with in an amazing way. I'd say more but it's best to experience that firsthand. A wonderful score by Sakuzyo and an amazing script by Naoki Hisaya, along with beautiful designs by Riuichi and ntny are the main appeals of this game. It also features a wonderful cast of Japanese seiyuu (don't play this game dubbed, or else).

The game has two major flaws - dungeon design and enemy responsiveness/variety. Both reveal its nature as a rather low budget game, but they shouldn't prove to be a hindrance, as long as you have the perseverance to push through.

Had gotten this game for my birthday two years ago and just now was able to play and complete it in the past week. This one was a doozy. To be honest, the dungeon crawling and combat become very repetitive and monotonous, however even with the added party members and special moves you can learn and chain together I often found myself just running through a bunch of areas to see what would happen next. The dungeon layout and gameplay seem like something that would fit a psvita title. However where this game really shines is the art and the characters as well as the story. Wasn't expecting this to be a jrpg in regards to the length, even so, the story and events that kept occurring were enough to keep me invested. At first, I was almost ready to toss this to the side, but I'm glad I stuck with it. Sen is best girl! Holler if you hear me!!

narrative depth means calling everything in your story by other names so the player has to reach back into their memory and go "oh right revenants are this and idea is that" at every other line of dialogue.

its a shame bc the all the game's art, the stuff by hajime ueda especially, is totally enthralling to look at. the presentation is slick, though mindless i enjoyed the combat for what it was, there were things about the central conceit i quite liked, even. but what i played was just absolute grade school tier.

God tier characters and story, really cool albeit somewhat repetitive visuals on the stages, great OST, and an overall wonderful presentation that just oozes with soul. Sadly the whole thing is topped off with fairly boring gameplay which honestly did ramp up for me sometime midway through the game so I still ended up having a pretty enjoyable time in that aspect. Definitely worth picking up if you're perfectly fine with jank in your games and want a crazy emotional rollercoaster of a ride.

Also Nanana best.

I'm playing in hard more, and where I'm currently at in the game, the experience so far has been neither good nor bad. Allow me to explain:

Firstly, let me talk about the gameplay, it starts off pretty tasteless, the game acts like a combo heavy hack and slash, but none of the skills chained from basic attacks without baiting the opponent off of their grounded invulnerability or purposefully stopping before the basic attack finisher and then using a skill after (all endlag included). 10 hours into the game and I finally got more skills and options to work with, but the feeling of having to forcefully interrupt an attack to get skill hits is very unsatisfying for me... This has led me to resort to basic attacking and dash cancelling (without endlag) to reset the basic attack chain and repeat this cycle until the enemy is dead or I have to dodge.
This is somewhat fine, but when I see the abilities that look like they should chain together and don't it just feels a bit irritating.

And secondly, the story later in the game gets a bit anti climatic, moments in the game that I think should be tenser and have more emphasis, however, this didn't happen and I find that really annoying.

But it's not like it was just bad things.
The protagonist's designs are really cool and I love their armor (excluding the one that doesn't have armor), even if I think they could show a bit less. The UI for the game looks really good and I love all the decoration that went into it, especially the in-game HUD, the multiple diamond shapes (biased) and the how elegant it all looks.
The english voice acting is actually not that bad, especially when the characters have to scream, the VA's for this game did a really good job. Though this makes my previous point about the game being anti climatic even worse, because even if the voice actors tried their best to sound emotional, the game did not give it enough tension to feel immersive.

Even after all this, I still find the game entertaining, the beginning of the story after the prologue, even if a bit cliché or predictable, still felt really emotional and somewhat real.
If you like magical girls or are interested in this game, I say you should give it a try, but it's not a game for everyone. I'll post another review when I get to finish the game or get too pissed at another missed opportunity.

Is your heart still asleep?

Fine. It can wait for a bit. My wish doesn't have to reach you just yet. Not until you wake up.

Whether yesterday was unhappy. Or today is unhappy. Or tomorrow will be unhappy...

For every tear that is shed... rather, because tears will be shed, there may still be smiles in the future.

There's no law that enforces kindness in the world. The world is empty. The world is unreasonable. But, however, because of that...

You must give meaning to your tears through your will. You must give meaning to the sadness and pain you endure. Because it'll be unrequited. Because it is unfair.

Most importantly, use your tears to smile. I'm sure your future will be wonderful.

So give meaning to the tears.

You get exactly one paragraph on mechanics from me: It's repetitive cornmeal. I don't care HOW much of a mechanics-focused action game or RPG labber you think you are: You aren't finding anything special here. Trust me, I tried. All you need to know is that everything works in a (to my experience) bug-free manner, but the actual design is still frustrating (such as attacks not properly snapping to enemies and with imprecise controls). You spend way more time in repetitive dungeon-crawling than the systems' depth support, so if you play this game, you are doing so for experience of playing the story on offer. Hell, I even recommend setting the difficulty to easy so you spend less time on the dungeon crawls.

That aside, let's talk about other stuff.

There's no way I can be objective or measured about this: Crystar is one of my favorite games of all time because of literally everything besides the act of playing it, and that's saying something coming from me, someone who's about gameplay first and foremost always. The game presents a compelling story about death, grief, mourning, and how sorrow can transform us for better or worse. And it does so with fleshed-out characters that never feel too far into anime stereotype territory and a plot that isn't afraid to do great and terrible things to them. What's more, the plot is both complicated and sensible, with threads being resolved in intuitive ways full of twists that don't even feel like ass-pulls (at least for the bits that really matter).

This is to say nothing of the presentation: The English voice dub is excellent, so much so that I hesitate to think of playing it in Japanese on my next playthrough (especially when the game has that age-old problem of not translating combat dialogue and whatnot, which I feel gives a degree of context and personality to the characters). Brianna Knickerbocker absolutely kills the role as the main character Rei Hatada, with every sigh, gasp, sniffle, sob, and line delivery perfectly capturing how she's feeling at every moment. The rest of the cast does some real heavy lifting too.

The Sakuzyo soundtrack is also a delight, delivering tracks ranging from sadly beautiful to exciting when the time calls for it. And the art is just genuinely gorgeous. Both these things especially come together in Rei's room, the main menu that may seriously be my favorite main menu in video games now, presenting little "slideshow" vignettes of what a depressed, heartbroken Rei does at home in her room all day.

As someone experiencing a great deal of grief right now myself, this game just hits different, now. All its themes of depression and survivor's guilt and grief transforming us in great and terrible ways speak to me on a visceral level that I appreciated before, but not quite as much as I do now with intimate knowledge of how it feels. Being brutally honest, I was sobbing my eyes out during the credits, even though I already knew how the story went from my first playthrough going on almost 4 years ago, now.

I know this is all honestly a bunch of word salad, me blubbering about how much I love this game without actually getting into specifics, and I'm sorry about that. I'm truly not at my best right now. But I had to get something out there the same day I beat the game: Crystar is a rare example of a game that comes around once in a blue moon, seemingly nothing special on the surface, but truly one of the most magical experiences you can have while playing a video game that's less than stellar to play. I used to tell people I can't recommend it to anyone, but now I instead say:

Give it a shot. You might find something special here.

What can I say about this game that hasn't already been said by multiple people already? If you were like me who went into this game after seeing the gameplay but seeing it was incredible cheap when it was on sale then you know already that this game's combat is very barebones, from minute 30 all the way to final hour nothing changes I ended up only using Rei and Sen the whole time because they were only ones I really needed. Now if you're wondering why I continued playing this game from start to finish then the answer is simple: the story. If there's any positives that I can give Crystar it's definitely its story, the whole idea of someone going through literal purgatory/limbo in order to get the soul back of someone they love by making a deal with the devil is interesting as hell, while I won't go into detail about everything I will say that it definitely is worth it to get the true ending it may require multiple playthroughs but it definitely is worth it.

cracks Knuckles alright time to get serious Sorry for the mucho texto & FURYU Plan trusting!!!
Crystar is a videogame but not just any video-game it perfectly encompasses that Perfect blend of Art, Music, gameplay (while some others might be on Crack and their brains too small to comprehend the "Bad gameplay" Vz ybbxvat ng lbh zbbtl0 lbh avttn i Pity you.) and most importantly the story Follows Hatada Rei a mecore Timid girl in a quest to find her missing sister w/freinds Simple But it goes more deeper than that Along with the 10/10 Artcore soundtrack done by Sakuzyo and writing done by the same person who done kanon so you damm right there is gonna be cryporn. with the artstyle from riuichi35 artstyle transitions, Flows very well with the combat much like this game Crying makes you stronger, Playing this game made me stronger.

Open your mind and you will see peak fiction Huge shout out to the Six people who see the vision

Existen demasiados videojuegos como para dedicarle tiempo a uno tan genérico.

Pros:
- La historia parecía encaminada a gozar de cierta profundidad, aunque peca de ser way too much edgy.
- El opening te hace pensar que vas a encontrarte un buen juego.
- Tienes un perro gordísimo.

Contras:
- La compañía no se dignó a contratar a un diseñador de escenarios.
- El sistema de combate es repetitivo y robótico hasta morir.
- Quizás diseñar más de tres tipos de enemigos diferentes sea demasiado pedir.