Viewed purely as a combat game for the gamer brain, this game is alright. The gameplay is nothing groundbreaking and quite repetitive. But appreciating the game for what it is makes this a really wonderful experience. The combat sections are short and you get to choose when you do them, the actual meat is in the conversations between the main characters that gradually unlock and are also viewable whenever you want them to be. I fell in love with the cast instantly, all of them very written with so much heart and feel so genuine. Because of that, the story also gets to the core of what it wants to tell you instantly. There's no beating around the bush, the characters are true and honest and the themes the game explores feel just as heartfelt.

I also need to add: This game is another entry into the growingly popular genre of sci-fi yuri. If you love that combination, you absolutely have to go for it. It's a must.

Crymachina is a game I adore the story and visual presentation of while simultaneously thinking of it as one of my least favorite gameplay experiences. From also playing The Caligula Effect 2, another Aquria-developed RPG, their difficulties don't make any sense. I completed CE2 on the hardest difficulty and found it too easy; I completed Crymachina on Casual and found it irritatingly hard. Random basic enemies should not be able to two-shot you before you can blink when you’re at the appropriate level on any “casual” mode, in my opinion. It should also not be so punishingly trial-and-error in platforming sections (I am never going back to running from the chasing whale).

But everything but the gameplay pushed me to force my way through the ridiculous amount of game overs and late-game grinding to stay at the recommended level. The atmosphere is so heavy and put together phenomenally; environments, music, lore, voice acting, and character portraits all work together to craft something wonderful. It’s a story that reminds me of some other fictions a lot more than Nier Automata, but it’s spoiler territory to explain which and why. Honestly I’d probably love this game a lot if the gameplay was just an exploration of the beautifully desolate Eden, with no annoying battles to speak of.

Although character designs can be casually sexualized and there’s some breast physics going on, play this if you want an intense, human-civilization-pessimistic sci-fi story starring girls shamelessly attracted to other girls.

Also, it runs fine on the Switch, but it does look pretty muddied in handheld.

I feel Crymachina's ultimate response to the classic "What does it mean to be human?" line that robot media must answer is "Defining a human will always be self serving"

A focus on overt gay romance rather than heavy but kinda deniable subtext or player choice influenced romance is good. Seeing Enoa particularly slowly show her emotions and let them flow out all at once is sweet. Alongside this romance is a familial love, one drawn by bonding through circumstances rather than mere blood ties. A family that goes against strict definitions of family and traditional definitions of romantic love must survive against others strictly following their orders, finding strict definitions of what qualifies a human. Why follow these strict rules if they won't fulfill us?
The gameplay definitely sucks though, weird hitboxes and reactions make combat more annoying than anything. I know it's flashier than Crystar, but that at least felt more functional. Worse is that it follows Monark's (Fuyuki Hayashi directed that too) style of allocating experience outside of battle while also adding in diminishing exp gains based on level differences and giving attacks a chance to just miss against high level enemies in an action game.
Aesthetically, the character designs and 2D art are very good, models are kinda what you expect from a low budget JRPG, environments are what you expect from a sci fi spaceship. Somewhat unfortunate compared to Crystar, which I thought had a distinct aesthetic for its afterlife environments. The soundtrack to the game is pretty good though.

I feel like I can't really convey my thoughts on the story that well but I want to say it's about finding your own meanings and goals rather than following things because of who you are or what's expected of you.
Compared to Crystar and Monark, I enjoy it more than Crystar, but a bit less than Monark (I think Monark's gameplay is kinda enjoyable so that plays a big role).

"999 roses surround me. No matter how many times I am reborn, I will always remember you."

Ever since I finished Crystar last year and later heard news of this game's announcement a few months later, it'd be safe to say that Crymachina has been my most highly anticipated game for the past year. And now that it's finally out in English, did it meet my expectations? While I do have a few small problems with it, I would still say yes, absolutely.

Crymachina's story, first and foremost is one of love. While that may sound like a simplification, I'd still say that the love the protagonists share for eachother and their will to live on for the sake of the ones they hold dear is what's at the very core of it.
A strong part of what sets Crymachina apart from Crystar is it's setting. Taking place 2000 years in the future, it is one that absolutely revels and takes advantage of the post apocalyptic Sci-Fi themings in a very unique and interesting way, even if by the end it felt more like a vehicle for the plot more than anything (which I didn't mind.) It explores plenty of space related concepts such as the Fermi Paradox and the dark forest hypothesis and while all the scientific jargon thrown out can feel confusing at first (especially with how much of it is dumped on you), for me personally it never got to a point where it was too much.
Some people might be put off by how fast the plot goes by in Crymachina, which is largely cause of how little gameplay fluff it has but for this kind of high concept story it feels just right, even if it means sometimes you'll have twists thrown at you one after the other, with some being less important than others.
As for the characters, I think Crymachina might have some of the best I've seen in a JRPG. While the main cast is very small, with only 4 members, they all feel extremely human and real, which only makes their struggles against those who would think they don't deserve humanity feel all the more touching. While I mentioned that the cast is driven by love, this is something that gradually blossoms instead of being immediate. The protagonist Leben initially wakes up confused into the world of the game, being driven only by her hatred of humans and love of machines but by the end, the singular thing that's motivating her is her love for Enoa, whom she wholeheartedly would do anything for. Ami and Mikoto in contrast are together from the start, however we only get to see them be more intimate with eachother as the story progresses and as things keep getting worse we get to see just how much each of them would risk for the other. Enoa is honestly my favorite character in the game; her development from only being able to see herself as a cold machine despite her extremely human display of emotions to realizing that she does infact posses a very kind human heart was one of the highlights of the game for me.
I think the only real problem I had with the plot outside of the pacing sometimes is that due to the game overall being less reliant on depressing backstories and whatnot like Crystar was, there are very little flashbacks containing Hajime Ueda art, which were some of my favorite parts of it, so for that to be largely absent here was a shame.
Something I do want to point out though is that while it is true that the two games aren't necessarily related plotwise, they do share alot of thematic roots even if they end up going in completely different directions with them; as such, I feel like playing this with prior experience of Crystar does improve it as there are multiple moments where it feels like Crymachina is purposely tampering with expectations of players who have played the former first, especially at the start.

For the gameplay, I honestly don't have much to say about it. I appreciate that stages now feel properly designed unlike the mostly hollow labyrinths that Crystar's were, but that doesn't mean much with how quickly they take to clear. The actual combat is fine too, even if it mostly just relies on mostly dodging enemies so you don't get oneshotted. I honestly wish the gameplay loop was more prevalent in this as at most you'll be spending 90% of the game reading and the other 10% playing which contributes to the plot feeling like it has no brakes but like stated before, it thankfully manages to make it work for the most part so it doesn't bother me too much outside of just being a slight nitpick.

The last thing I'd like to talk about is the music. Just like Crystar's, it was composed by Sakuzyo but unlike the former it's used in a much better way. Whilst Crystar does have it's share of good OSTs, they largely only get to play once, meaning most of what you hear during the game is just the same few monotonous battle themes, further contributing to the sense of repetition that the game very much suffers from. Crymachina though, thankfully doesn't fall into this trap, with the music as a whole feeling much more vibrant and never falling into the same pitfalls regarding it's usage that Star did. I think the biggest highlight of all though, are the vocal themes. All of the boss fight music + inserts are sung by Enoa (CV: Hikaru Tomo) and they're all honestly so beautiful and great at defining the identity of the game (this can apply to Enoa's character as a whole too) that I honestly couldn't imagine it without them.

While this wouldn't be my favorite Furyu game (Caligula 2 takes that spot), I still think Crymachina goes above and beyond in surpassing it's predecessor and crafting quite possibly one of the best queer stories I've experienced. If you like yuri media whatsoever then I would wholly recommend you play this.

「やさしさで守れるあしたなんかどこにもない」

Anti-humanist yuri SF. All too often stories about sentient robots really only serve to stroke the ego of the humans creating and consuming them -- see the utterly abysmal anime Vivy for a great example of this -- but Crymachina is unwaveringly transgressive, reaching the conclusion that there is no inherent value in "humanity" and going on to posit that human society does not deserve to proliferate if that means trampling on intelligent beings it views as inferior.

As with Crystar, Crymachina's characters are concerned primarily with their own happiness, acting for the sake of the people they hold dear. And yes, the game is unabashedly queer, with characters driven not just by familial bonds but romantic love; indeed I am hard-pressed to think of another JRPG where love is such a strong motivating factor for the principal cast. Leben and Enoa struggle against the system not out of a sense of obligation or duty, but because of their desire for a life with one another, because their future together is being threatened. While the world of Crymachina is built on high-concept SF, taking enough cues from the novel The Three-Body Problem to warrant citing it in the end credits, its conflict remains raw, poignant, and grounded to a degree a great deal of media struggles to achieve.

Where I think the game will prove divisive is actually its runtime. Crymachina clocks in at only 15-20 hours of playtime, so it has to cover a lot of twists and turns fast. I can completely understand someone feeling as though the plot and characters don't have time to breathe, but I personally would argue that the script is tight enough that anything added to it could be nothing more than chaff. On Twitter I stated that it has "Blue Archive pacing," and I meant that in a complimentary sense. Certainly a YMMV aspect of the game, but it personally worked for me.

What I think most players will appreciate, though, is how abbreviated, even cursory, the actual gameplay is when compared to Crystar. You may have to grind a few times, but the stages are short and you are not forced to repeat content ad nauseam; I would estimate I spent only around 5 hours of my 16 hour playtime actually controlling characters. As such, while the game is much shorter than Crystar, I would not be surprised if it actually had more text...

And of course I would be remiss not to mention another one of the game's strong suits -- the audio. Personally I think Crymachina's soundtrack is sakuzyo's best work period, with much more varied compositions than Crystar. It helps that the music is used much better here than Crystar, with fewer and less repetitious music cues letting you appreciate the individual tracks more. As one might expect, the voice acting is also sublime, with Tohno Hikaru's performance as Enoa in particular lending the scenario some real emotional weight.

All in all Crymachina is a very different game from Crystar, but it pleasantly surprised me with its powerful script, acerbic critique of the ugly aspects of human society, and willingness to be fully-fledged romantic yuri in a space where few works meaningfully depict love at all. This is definitely my favorite Furyu game... make of that statement what you will, I suppose.

Like its predecessor Crystar, Crymachina suffers from spotty combat, though it is a big step up from it: Good ideas and decent execution are dragged down by bloated visual effects that impair enemy move legibility; flashiness is prioritized over visual clarity and control over your character which, in a game in which you can easily get one-shotted by many attacks in its later stages, will often see you dying to bullshit. This is compounded by an unintuitive equipment and stat system that is not properly explained and some not-so-well though aspects of design (e.g, one of the characters immediately closes in for a big attack after a perfect evasion, so perfectly evading an attack that persists after its first hit will see you being automatically dropped in the second volley, usually resulting in death.) Still, the moment-to-moment combat, while not the best, is fairly enjoyable.

And once again, like its predecessor, Crymachina shines in its story; It's hard to speak about it without spoiling things, but Crymachina delivers an interesting SF story that intelligently utilizes its main concept (Robots trying to restore humanity) to instead turn social moral codes on their head and speak of the often arbitrary and oppresive ways in which we elaborate cultural and social dogmas. That said, the game would've definitely benefitted from being longer; at just about 15 hours it barely just manages to deliver its main thesis, and does this at the cost of sidelining the background lore and side characters (Trinity!). I would've liked the game to spend more time on these two aspects as I feel would've made what the game is trying to do all that much stronger, but at the same time this is the kind of game that is made on a shoestring budget with what I assume a not very long development process so I won't hold it against it too much.

Robot yuri saikou

I've tried to do multiple writeups on this to try and struggle with how to present my feelings on this while seeming sincere; it's easy to make something impersonal, to try and have that boundary between me as the writer and you as the reader. After all, it already exists; by you reading it through a screen, the words here can't be felt by your hands. You can't change them by yourself. They exist in a different plane, needing technology to observe and interact with it. But to make something that surpasses that boundary and allows you to see my heart, ripped from its cage and displayed for the world requires detail and care, but it also requires a deep understanding of what exactly one is writing. I understand Crymachina as it feels as its heart has been displayed as a gourmet meal, with all the dressings that surround it, but I am not sure how I as a writer am able to deliver this care to you effectively.

But that feels appropiate for Fuyuki Hasashi and FuRyu's newest work; a work that thirsts for and deeply requires for you to see the extent of its love and hate. How it desires deeply for unconditional love yet despises the world it has been brought into, one that detests that love in the macro scale and works towards destroying and minimizing it in the grind to become larger than life. To scam and kill in the literal and figurative in how one gets ahead of others in modern society, and Crymachina understands this and disparages it in a molotov cocktail thrown towards them. Crymachina is both that, but also a tour de fource of love, with how each part of the cast contains love inside them and sprouts in different manners, but never truly considers one irredeemable for harboring that love; because to love is to be human, and to be human is to love, and to love is to exist for it.

Even more impressive is the lengths that Crymachina goes to to be an anti-humanist yet progressive piece of art, as what it truly hates is the humanist ideal represented by contemporary society. Why do we disparage and discriminate against others? We may be carnivores and utilize natural resources to survive in the current age, yet discrimination and to see other intelligent beings as lesser because of a biased criteria is in itself an act against true humanity. Where we are born, who we love, what we eat and what we believe in does not matter to our value as humans, and Crymachina truly despises those who participate in that culture, representing them as hideous horrors. To take some words from the producer's interview with NISa, to claim that people are precious because they're human is willfully ignorant; it is the degree of human they are that matter.

Beyond that, Crymachina's all-female cast comes at its benefit when its story and cast are unmistakeably queer not just in the clear representation of lesbian love, but also in how it compares with modern society's discrimination of it. Mikoto and Ami's relationship are the most clear on this with their unmistakeable codependency, but Mikoto's fear of truly defining it because of its stigma: she'd like to be "cool". Ami, in contrast, being head over heels, desperately wishes to be unashamedly married and in love with Mikoto, and constantly fights against a society that doesn't allow her to be legally married. That is her goal as a Real Human after all: to be a proper family. And that sort of dialogue feels reflective of Japan's current struggle to legalize gay marriage, where Crymachina represents this with two great leads, and yells at the world to accept them.

Leben and Enoa are also a more interesting angle of it in the sci-fi sense in contrast to Mikoto and Ami's unsubtle contemporary dialogue; while Mikoto and Ami are unmistakeably considered to be humans, their label seems more shaky in terms of Leben and Enoa; Leben being a "human" with no past and a hatred for it, while Enoa being a machine with love for humans. This dynamic does continue to evolve in ways I'd not expand on because of spoilers, but their romantic relationship is the peak of Crymachina's representation of love and humanity, becoming representations of Crymachina's entire thesis statement: to be human doesn't matter without love. By experiencing love, by struggling to love, do you become a true human.

And in that framework of love does Crymachina shine. I adored Crymachina's story. I love its environmental design, taking Crystar's similar aesthetic with its coloring and transfixing that on larger scaled sci-fi arquitecture. Its music by Sakuzyo (who I found out while playing made one of my favorite albums!) is also a great accompanying piece, with the boss themes sung by Enoa's voice actress being the standouts. Everything about Crymachina is a true labour of love, and for that, I embrace it through my screen, appreciating it and loving it wholeheartedly.

"Please continue to share your life with us."

A step in the right direction…. Until you trip

I wasn’t that big of a fan of crystar by the end, while its story, ost and artwork was good everything else about the gameplay fell flat. I was hoping with Crymachina swooping around they would iron out some of the issues and we would finally get a good game from FuRyu. Crymachina is for sure an improvement over Crystar but it still falls flat in some departments really leaving this to be a forgettable experience by the end.


Let's start with the good !

Crymachina in a very similar fashion to Crystar has a good story , amazing artwork and a very good OST. This time around I actually didn’t find myself hating the combat as much. It felt more fluid and landing off combos were fun but I will get more into combat later. Furthermore the characters were good and were flushed out ENOUGH by the end making you care for the main cast as they go through this journey of becoming “real humans”. It’s really interesting though because I pretty much like and dislike the same exact things I did with Crystar as I do with Crymachina. It's just this time around Crymachina improves on some of Crystars bad aspects A LITTLE.


Let's get into the bad

While I did compliment the combat it's still far off from being as good as it should be. The loot pool is better in this title giving you side weapons you can use alongside your main weapon which once again is not changeable. Hell this time around you can’t even equip new main weapons that will change its look you only get number upgrades for your main weapons. The side weapons you collect you activate by pressing L1 and R1 and it will start an automatic use of those weapons. Furthermore you collect skills/ buffs that you can equip to your side weapons that will give you more of an edge in fights. It sounds fun on paper but it quickly feels pointless as the game is extremely easy making you not really think about what you NEED to use. These titles could really use some sort of buff / debuff system because everything just feels so basic in that aspect. In addition, while you collect a good amount of side weapons to use there are only a handful of variants which once again you will not care about what you will use by the end. Furthermore the EXP system is downright weird in this game. To explain , you don’t earn EXP until you finish a mission which sounds normal so far right?. Well EXP isn’t automatically distributed amongst the characters you will simply earn the number and will have to give the EXP to the character you want meaning. What this means is if you dump all your EXP into one character not knowing the next mission you will need to use someone else you just screwed yourself over. Thus starting a boring little grind you will need to do to catch them up to the story level because level scaling is extremely weird in this game. To explain , if you are even 1 level below the recommended level the game wants you to play, the monsters will literally 1 shot you like you are 999 levels below. While the grind isn’t terrible it's just weird and doesn’t add anything to the gameplay loop. Moving on , I was really hoping they would improve on level design but somehow it got worse in this game????. To explain, the backgrounds are extremely boring to look at, the level designs are literally now a straight line. Sometimes you will literally just walk down the aisle to fight the boss with no sub enemies on the way. Furthermore , there are side missions you can do by finding coordinate points that you put into a screen. This sounds cool as you feel like you will have to search hard for these codes but they are simply in the archive section for you to get. On top of these side missions are extremely boring and literally are the same really giving you ZERO reason to do these missions.


While the story is nice the way it's presented is pretty boring at times. You will have the usual cutscene fair but this game throws in a “tea” talk section where you get A LOT of the lore/ character learning from. This becomes an issue quickly as these cutscenes ALL LOOK THE SAME having the characters just sit down and do literally nothing. You will not see them move or anything just sit and you read the bubble text which can go on FOREVER sometimes …. Sounds fun right?. Furthermore, the story, while good, ended abruptly, really not leaving me satisfied at all for these characters and everything they had gone through up to this point. You don’t see ANY of the aftermath for anyone past one short true ending cutscene and it just really leaves you hanging. It’s a shame because I really felt like a rug got pulled out from under me at the end for what was a good story up until that point.


They truly can make an amazing game

If FuRyu has proven anything is that they can truly make/ publish an emotional story mixed with great artwork and awesome characters. I Simply believe if they can just really work in the gameplay field and really flush out their combat , world design and level design we can get a genuinely amazing game from them. I feel as if they need to get better devs for the combat portions of the games seeing as Aquaria worked on this title which they make the SAO titles which are not that great. It’s really a shame because this and Crystar both honestly should have been amazing games but really just fall flat in specific fields by the end.

I 100% do not recommend this game at full price however if you still want to give it a go I do think it would be worth it when it gets a deep sale.

This game is messy but really cool. Just download a cheat engine table because it's really not worth dealing with how weird damage gets in the lategame and how you start to fall off the exp curve.

Blisteringly fast-paced and pathologically unable to let its characters have a moment of rest, it balances the consistently-dire stakes with goofy skits that let the cast worm their way into your head. Balances an earnest, potent, and overtly queer and anticapitalist message with a cool lil sci-fi plot that has some neat worldbuilding when they're not directly quoting from Hebrew scripture. I think there's a few points where it cribs a little too heavily from Yoko Taro in terms of how it delivers its punches, but it has a decidedly unique flavor and construction of its own, and I'm an absolute sucker for one of the late-game twists about Eve. Reconciliation is not always an option, and nothing is more pure than killing for the people you love - except for misquoting Tampopo to your crush to seem cool before hyperfixating on shoyu tonkotsu ramen and undoing that coolness factor instantly.

///// Mucho Texto Time (beware)
Tldr: GOOD GAME I LIKED IT LOTS

As a Fan of Crystar this is 120% step in the Right direction Highly Anticipated and worth the wait while some might feel Betrayed as some things where and weren't Present since this game was done by Fuyuki hayashi Familiar goes to unfamiliar Prologue Being eerily Similar with Very Minuscule Gripes towards it

The Sci-Fi Setting is a welcome setting, Nutty Over the Top with lots of playtime goes Mostly Collecting personality data/archives spices things up while not mandatory it adds lots of spice with science mumbo jumbo and Figuring out what happened before is very satisfying to read to Put the Pieces together Very eloquently and Threading the Line between "humanity is shit" and just be more selfish, to just live

while Less Emotionally impactful than Crystar being lacks Sentiments, No, dog to pet, it really makes up for the Simple Message it's Trying to deliver-
Love. something that's pure everyone is capable of receiving while contrasting the muddy and crudeness of life in eden

The Characters Grounded more than Really liked how it started to fixate on their pasts to find out what are they doing here only to realize that the past has no merit when the story that is unfolding is about the now though really would have liked to see more of Hajime Udeas Cgs Sidenote Really liked how Can is voiced by (Reina Ueda) Same Va who voiced the Mc of Crystar

Overall Gameplay is Good stages are short and concise Music Flows Really well With the art of the world it's Trying to Convey Sakuzyo KILLED IT seeing Vocal Tracks from them is a Nice Surprise Punch to the face Really looking Forward To What else Fuyuki hayashi will bring to the table This game gets a Gold star.

"Please Continue to share your life With us".

"999 roses surround me. No matter how many times I am reborn, I will always remember you"

A gold star for its story and characters, I really didn't expect some twists.
Gameplay is not that hard but for a casual gamer it might be, especially the final boss, the music is... strange but really enjoyable, I have to listen again some OSTs.
There is a annoying game loop untill the 4th ~ hour and it might results boring but after that part it starts to become really interesting.
Graphically's ups and down, with some really high peaks.

7/10

Ya hay varias reseñas aquí que resumen lo hermoso de Crymachina en general. Pero queriendo escribir mis propios cortos pensamientos, quede sorprendido por el texto y la historia en general.

Temas como la familia, el amor, que significa la humanidad y por supuesto el deseo de vivir fueron tópicos que de forma personal me llegaron bastante, ya sea por lo bien implementados que están por ese gran elenco de 4 personajes o por como la historia las pone en situaciones donde sus más íntimos sentimientos florecen.

En resumidas cuentas Crymachina hace un uso constante de sus temáticas para transmitir un mensaje fuerte y conciso sobre lo maravilloso que es la vida junto a aquellos quienes amamos. No se desvía de tal tarea de principio a fin, además de tener una banda sonora y visuales preciosos que conjuntan toda la experiencia.

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.

The machine did indeed, cry.

Crymachina is a spiritual successor to Crystar, carrying over plenty of the old game's systems, ideas, and staff which would make old fans feel at home right away but also give them an entirely different experience that often times feel like the complete opposite of Crystar. While this can possibly be a bit of a turn off for returning fans depending on how much they expect this game to be like the other, I believe that anyone going into the game with an open mind would find this different experience to be a very enjoyable, lovely, and emotional experience.

Mechanically, the game is a gigantic leap from the first game in pretty much every aspect. The character models are very high quality and animated very well, accurately depicting their really unique and expressive designs by Rolua. The graphics themselves are also very good and shown off a lot in the really flashy, unique, and very enjoyable combat system which can get quite challenging too. The game also has a different gameplay loop from Crystar, now offering very short linear stages that always ends in a boss fight with all playable characters having their own differing playstyles and offering a nice degree of customization in the form of assistive gear that you call up during combat to cover different situations like hitting from afar, granting impenetrable defense, starting launch combos, etc. Although, the map designs definitely don't feel as expressive as they used to be, which is fairly understandable given the entirely opposite setting with a "grounded" spaceship interior as opposed to Crystar's colorful depiction of purgatory.

The aspects that really took me by surprise though would definitely be the characters and story with how they really went in a different direction from everything I expected. Despite the game still having plenty of really dramatic moments and intriguing mysteries, the game in general has a much lighter tone for a majority of the time compared to Hayashi's previous works. I often found myself with a grin or giggling every time we're shown the characters interactions, whether its among the main 4 or with the rest of the interesting side cast. I also did not expect, but very much appreciate, how hard they went into the sci-fi aspect of the story and setting with a very refreshing far-future world done so well that it really pulls you into the entire thing. The story's various twists and surprises were all handled really well too and kept me hooked the entire time with how well they've put their own crazy spin to the classic concept of machines gaining sentience and emotion and how far those would take these machines whose sole purpose and reason for creation were to simply obey commands they were given.

Admittedly though, the game sadly doesn't hit the emotional highs that I've gotten from Crystar which I feel is a bit of a shame but I'm perfectly fine with considering everything else the game handles really well. It was everything I didn't expect it to be but still really left the best impression on me given what the game was openly going for, and for that it deserves all the praise I can give it and really makes me more excited for the future projects Hayashi will hopefully have which I will definitely be there for.

GOTY.