Full video review: https://youtu.be/vkGv0GEtTtQ
Humanity has been wiped out and now androids are working to restore it. The only problem? They don’t understand what humanity truly is.
Gameplay & Combat
CRYMACHINA is another one of those visual novels disguised as an action JRPG. While there is gameplay, about 75% of your time is going to be spent reading or listening through character dialogues and cutscenes. I personally don’t have a problem with this as a big VN fan, but this should be made clear upfront for those expecting a full-blown action JRPG.
The combat is real-time and mostly revolves around spamming the same few inputs as it’s effectively a two button hack and slash without any fancy combo strings. The entire game I found myself just using the same combo over and over. Light attack string, heavy attack to raise them into the air, light string, heavy attack to bring them to the ground, light string, and then a finishing move to end the combo.
That’s literally all I did for the majority of the game’s bosses. There are some where I needed to dodge more often, but most I was able to simply stun lock and repeat this combo over and over until the fight was over. It is not a difficult game by any means and there is no “hard” difficulty to set it to.
It’s weird though, because while I was able to do that to most of the bosses, when I did get hit it was usually for like half of my HP. And a lot of the bosses straight up can just one shot you. So it does hurt if any enemy actually lands a hit, it’s just that hardly ever happened in my case. The difficulty balance is just all sorts of weird here.
The core to the combat is also a bit weird. There’s a decent enough amount of feedback when I actually hit an enemy, but when I am the one being hit, it is oftentimes hard to even notice. I’ll be fighting a boss and suddenly have half of my HP and I’m like, “when did I even get hit?”.
The combat at least does good in some areas - mainly the different weapon types and the dodging and countering feels good too, it’s just brought down by how simple and monotonous it is.
Level Design
The level design is just outright terrible, lazy even. The entire game is literally hallways and platforms in a cyberspace-like environment. There is virtually no exploration outside of maybe an additional hallway to a chest, there’s no complex structures, just hallways, pillars, walls, emptiness really.
It’s so bad that some levels are literally just a straight path to the boss room. You walk forward, kill a few random enemies that spawn, and keep walking forward and suddenly you’re at the boss room which is just a slightly wider hallway. It took maybe 1 minute to reach that boss room, so what exactly is the point of even having the stuff prior to it? It’s like the game is trying to maintain this illusion of substance when there really isn’t any.
Game Loop
The entire experience is mission-based. You enter a level, run to the boss room, kill the boss, and are sent back to this hub area - all menu-based by the way - where you get a story cutscene, mandatory character dialogue scenes, the chance to edit your loadout, and then you need to head back in to the next mission. The loop is very defined. Nothing really breaks this formula and really, it’s kinda dull as a result.
Story
The story is really the only thing propping this game up. I’ve played other games from this developer and they can be very hit or miss, so I was a bit surprised here. We get a full-blown post-apocalyptic story that deals with the deeper meaning behind relationships and even broad topics like humanity without feeling like it was written by an edgy middle schooler like Monark was. I’m not going to make the case that it’s some super involved, multi-level story, but for JRPG standards, it’s fairly interesting.
Maybe a lot of that is due to the setting - basically a futuristic world where humanity was wiped out by a world war and androids are attempting to restore humanity, but struggle to understand what exactly being a “real human” entails. I am a bit of a sci-fi nerd, so that setup definitely pulled me in.
The real winner here though is the pacing. CRYMACHINA is faster-paced, but not too fast. There are slower moments of character building, but they come in bite-sized pieces and don’t overstay their welcome. The twists and turns of the main story are weaved in with these character building moments and it’s actually quite a good combo. The studio did a great job balancing the pacing there.
Length & Replayability
The game also isn’t too drawn out. It can be completed in just 10 hours if you’re doing just the main content. There are side missions, but the game is so easy that I didn’t even touch those until the end, there was just no need to. There are some additional, optional dialogue sequences too. Overall, you can probably squeeze maybe 20 hours if you do all of that content, maybe even 30 if you want to go the completionist route and kill all of the optional bosses and such.
That said, it’s not too replayable and I can’t see myself returning to the game in the future. Not that that matters to me personally, but I know others value that aspect so it’s important to note.
Graphics & Music
I guess the character designs are cool and the music isn’t that bad either, but the graphics, the cutscenes, and really just the overall aesthetic are not really that good, barebones even. This is obviously a low budget JRPG and it shows in pretty much every area.
Performance
I played through the entire thing at 4k max settings hovering around 144 fps on my RTX 3080 Ti. But again, I can’t say that was surprising given that this looks like something from two console generations ago. There’s a decent amount of settings to change too, so there is room to play around with if you’re on lower end hardware.
Overall
CRYMACHINA is a decent story wrapped up in some truly boring gameplay and a cheap overall aesthetic. The combat is monotonous, the difficulty simply isn’t there, and the level design is just outright awful. This is saved a good bit by the story, with its cool setting and solid pacing, but unfortunately, that is coupled with the rest of the game and it’s honestly just not worth it, at least at full price. This is a budget JRPG with a premium price tag and I would 100% recommend waiting for a significant drop in that price before giving it a look.
Humanity has been wiped out and now androids are working to restore it. The only problem? They don’t understand what humanity truly is.
Gameplay & Combat
CRYMACHINA is another one of those visual novels disguised as an action JRPG. While there is gameplay, about 75% of your time is going to be spent reading or listening through character dialogues and cutscenes. I personally don’t have a problem with this as a big VN fan, but this should be made clear upfront for those expecting a full-blown action JRPG.
The combat is real-time and mostly revolves around spamming the same few inputs as it’s effectively a two button hack and slash without any fancy combo strings. The entire game I found myself just using the same combo over and over. Light attack string, heavy attack to raise them into the air, light string, heavy attack to bring them to the ground, light string, and then a finishing move to end the combo.
That’s literally all I did for the majority of the game’s bosses. There are some where I needed to dodge more often, but most I was able to simply stun lock and repeat this combo over and over until the fight was over. It is not a difficult game by any means and there is no “hard” difficulty to set it to.
It’s weird though, because while I was able to do that to most of the bosses, when I did get hit it was usually for like half of my HP. And a lot of the bosses straight up can just one shot you. So it does hurt if any enemy actually lands a hit, it’s just that hardly ever happened in my case. The difficulty balance is just all sorts of weird here.
The core to the combat is also a bit weird. There’s a decent enough amount of feedback when I actually hit an enemy, but when I am the one being hit, it is oftentimes hard to even notice. I’ll be fighting a boss and suddenly have half of my HP and I’m like, “when did I even get hit?”.
The combat at least does good in some areas - mainly the different weapon types and the dodging and countering feels good too, it’s just brought down by how simple and monotonous it is.
Level Design
The level design is just outright terrible, lazy even. The entire game is literally hallways and platforms in a cyberspace-like environment. There is virtually no exploration outside of maybe an additional hallway to a chest, there’s no complex structures, just hallways, pillars, walls, emptiness really.
It’s so bad that some levels are literally just a straight path to the boss room. You walk forward, kill a few random enemies that spawn, and keep walking forward and suddenly you’re at the boss room which is just a slightly wider hallway. It took maybe 1 minute to reach that boss room, so what exactly is the point of even having the stuff prior to it? It’s like the game is trying to maintain this illusion of substance when there really isn’t any.
Game Loop
The entire experience is mission-based. You enter a level, run to the boss room, kill the boss, and are sent back to this hub area - all menu-based by the way - where you get a story cutscene, mandatory character dialogue scenes, the chance to edit your loadout, and then you need to head back in to the next mission. The loop is very defined. Nothing really breaks this formula and really, it’s kinda dull as a result.
Story
The story is really the only thing propping this game up. I’ve played other games from this developer and they can be very hit or miss, so I was a bit surprised here. We get a full-blown post-apocalyptic story that deals with the deeper meaning behind relationships and even broad topics like humanity without feeling like it was written by an edgy middle schooler like Monark was. I’m not going to make the case that it’s some super involved, multi-level story, but for JRPG standards, it’s fairly interesting.
Maybe a lot of that is due to the setting - basically a futuristic world where humanity was wiped out by a world war and androids are attempting to restore humanity, but struggle to understand what exactly being a “real human” entails. I am a bit of a sci-fi nerd, so that setup definitely pulled me in.
The real winner here though is the pacing. CRYMACHINA is faster-paced, but not too fast. There are slower moments of character building, but they come in bite-sized pieces and don’t overstay their welcome. The twists and turns of the main story are weaved in with these character building moments and it’s actually quite a good combo. The studio did a great job balancing the pacing there.
Length & Replayability
The game also isn’t too drawn out. It can be completed in just 10 hours if you’re doing just the main content. There are side missions, but the game is so easy that I didn’t even touch those until the end, there was just no need to. There are some additional, optional dialogue sequences too. Overall, you can probably squeeze maybe 20 hours if you do all of that content, maybe even 30 if you want to go the completionist route and kill all of the optional bosses and such.
That said, it’s not too replayable and I can’t see myself returning to the game in the future. Not that that matters to me personally, but I know others value that aspect so it’s important to note.
Graphics & Music
I guess the character designs are cool and the music isn’t that bad either, but the graphics, the cutscenes, and really just the overall aesthetic are not really that good, barebones even. This is obviously a low budget JRPG and it shows in pretty much every area.
Performance
I played through the entire thing at 4k max settings hovering around 144 fps on my RTX 3080 Ti. But again, I can’t say that was surprising given that this looks like something from two console generations ago. There’s a decent amount of settings to change too, so there is room to play around with if you’re on lower end hardware.
Overall
CRYMACHINA is a decent story wrapped up in some truly boring gameplay and a cheap overall aesthetic. The combat is monotonous, the difficulty simply isn’t there, and the level design is just outright awful. This is saved a good bit by the story, with its cool setting and solid pacing, but unfortunately, that is coupled with the rest of the game and it’s honestly just not worth it, at least at full price. This is a budget JRPG with a premium price tag and I would 100% recommend waiting for a significant drop in that price before giving it a look.