The player controls a beautiful girl named Rei Hatada, who in order to “revive” her dead younger sister Mirai Hatada, makes a deal with the devil of the other world that is limbo. The story will progress as you fight the souls that drift about limbo. Also, by defeating specific enemies, “Danmatsuma Thoughts” will appear, which by “crying to purify” will develop the protagonist mentally. In accordance with that, you can obtain weapons called “Shisou,” or “Mental Armor.”
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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.
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.
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.
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
being a woman is so hard, I have so much respect for everything they go through
the dub for this is racist and a hate crime, I will not elaborate.
Your enjoyment of Crystar will depend on your ability to turn off your brain during the combat segments, because the gameplay is absolute ass. If you can do that, however, you will find a powerful Faustian narrative that repurposes concepts of Ancient Greek philosophy and literary theory to deliver a metatextual story-about-stories about healing through trauma and becoming a better person through catharsis.
Sen is so cool I wish she was my husband.
Sen is so cool I wish she was my husband.