I’ve wanted to play Super Mario 64 ever since I was a little kid. For almost all of the years I’ve been alive, I’ve heard the same phrases used to praise Super Mario 64 over and over again. Whenever someone talked about Super Mario 64, they always mentioned how it revolutionized video games as a whole with its jump from 2D to 3D, how much freedom the game gave you, how great the controls were, and how most of their childhood memories associated with the game were spent roaming Princess Peach’s Castle. Because of this constant praise, I kept getting more and more excited to play Super Mario 64, and now that I’ve actually played it, it didn’t live up to any of my expectations.

At least 90% of my time spent playing Super Mario 64 was spent getting frustrated with the game rather than having fun with it. While the controls on land are mostly great, Mario has a tendency to slip as he’s landing on the ground, and while that isn’t a problem in most cases, it makes jumping onto thin or small platforms incredibly annoying. The other methods of controlling Mario, such as swimming and flying, are janky and feel like they’ve been made to work against their levels rather than with them. Speaking of which, many of the levels in Super Mario 64 are straight up not fun to play, as making even one slip-up causes the player to instantly die. This, combined with how the levels feel as if they punish letting the player approach levels creatively and instead reward sticking to the most obvious path, makes me wonder how so many people have championed Super Mario 64 as a game of freedom.

While I do respect Super Mario 64 for how innovative and revolutionary it was at the time, I barely had any fun with the game itself, and while I do know that 3D Mario games have gotten better with the releases of the Super Mario Galaxy duology and especially Super Mario Odyssey, I can’t imagine someone picking up Super Mario 64 and having just as much fun with it as someone did back in 1996.

Fun for the first 36 hour long act, but I won't play another 30-something more hours of this to finish up its generic, thin storyline. I think for the entirety of my time playing this, there wasn't a moment where I felt let down by the combat or the breezy quality that you could feel while making progress through levels and storybeats. But I was always wondering--always--how this game in particular could be loved so much yet be so pleasantly boring? I don't get that part of it. But it was nice to play for nearly forty hours, so that says something.

Crystal Project feels like a proof of concept in a lot of areas. The OST is almost entirely royalty free music, the game's graphics and pixel art have been bought from asset packs, and the story is barebones to practically non-existent.

However, the gameplay is where Crystal Project shines, I think. The job system from Final Fantasy is used to its fullest potential here, with a surprising amount of classes available to level and mess around with, each one feeling unique in some way. The subclass and passive skill systems highly encourage experimentation and the leveling of multiple classes. In addition, the threat/hate/aggro system translates really well to a turn-based combat setup. I had so much fun finding a new boss, figuring out their attack patterns or whatever gimmicky attack they had, and constructing a setup to deal with it.

The overworld exploration (another big selling point for the game) is not as unique or polished as the game's combat systems are, I think, but there's still a surprising amount of care put into it regardless. There are a lot of mounts to unlock that give you overworld abilities, such as jumping higher or gliding through the air. There's secret bosses and treasure chests and even some small side quests hidden in pretty much every corner of the map (which is quite large too!)

I had a lot of fun with Crystal Project. Great game and an easy recommend.

Equal parts interesting and jank. Truly a product of early Kickstarter.

Every cool thing here is countered by something that really needed a QoL pass. Or just an extra couple of "no new features" development sprints. While playing you can see issues stemming from an ambitious team, lead by industry vets, that were all learning UE4 while making a tight budget, multi-platform release. (Seriously, did you know they were trying to also release for Wii U and Vita for a while there?) There is a lack of polish that it would be easy to argue exists because instead of addressing issues during dev, the team instead has to prioritize Kickstarter stretch goals (they even had to resort to getting a publisher anyway because they absolutely didn't budget in enough of a safety net).

I don't regret kickstarting this back in 2015 (holy shit time is crazy), but I wouldn't say it should be high on anyone's list of Castlevania game's they need to play.

I would however love to play a sequel that hopefully learned the lessons the indie scene already figured out. While getting to put the time in to polish the core instead creating public funded stretch goals.