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
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