As a big fan of FFV, I've long been aware of more modern job system games like this and recently felt a pull to give the demo a try. Unfortunately it just didn't really grab me? The job system didn't open up into interesting abilities and combinations fast enough and the barebones world and characters didn't do much to pull me in.

Some minor quibbles which are not nearly such sweeping statements and yet I feel still warrant comment: The platforming is really unnecessarily finicky, so many jumps take the absolute limit of your range. Yet I imagine if they were a full block shorter you'd probably frequently overshoot. I guess the voxel world design is something of a limitation here, if jumps could be maybe half a block narrower they'd feel a lot smoother. Also, managing aggro in the early game is a pain in the neck - your mages are slower than your tanks and liable to do more damage, so they'll just attract attention and get gibbed. It's a bit frustrating.

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.

Crystal Project is an unfortunate one for me because on one hand I love what it's going for but on the other hand holy HELL it's bogged down by so much tedium and annoying design choices that feel very intentional and because of that becomes such a SLOGGGGGGG to play

I'll just get what I like out of the way first so I can get into the actual nitty gritty BULLSHIT I wanna talk about. I think the bosses are fucking awesome. They use the mechanics of the game to create fun boss fights that all feel unique, they're fun to build around and very seldom feel like they actually rely on RNG. I've had a ton of bosses that came down to my last character being put in a clutch or kick situation and that's badass. BASICALLY, I LIKE COUNTERBUILDING BOSSES. THIS GAME DOES THAT WELL.

Ok now time for the booboo ass shit i HATE abt this game. I THINK THE EXPLORATION FUCKING BLOWWWSSSSSSS. At the beginning I was down with it but progressing a bit more I was like damn, this shit stinks! Why's that? Well it's for a LOT of reasons. For one, I think the platforming kinda sucks most of the time and isn't fun. This may be considered quite controversial as most people I've talked to like the platforming aspect of the game a good bit. My biggest problem with the platforming is you'll often be put into situations where if you fuck up one instance of platforming you'll have to redo the entire thing due to how respawning works, that sucks. Another issue to go alongside this is a lot of the time I feel like the perspective is kinda fucked, so I'll often have to work around that which just adds to the tedium of platforming, not fun stuff. I also think the amount of encounters in areas can be super annoying especially when I don't like the normal encounters that much in the first place (we'll go over that later). Lastly, and this is probably my biggest issue with exploration, is that for some god forsaken reason they decided to make maps things you have to unlock??? Normally in super roundabout ways???? Like I get that's part of the exploration but exploring a game like this without having a map fucking blows and makes finding out where you're supposed to go next EXTREMELY tedious. Btw it's kinda up to you to find out where to go next, which I get that's part of the fun for some people but for me personally I just found it added to the tedium. This isn't a problem depending on who you are I just found that aspect of it to be annoying.

Anyways with that out of the way time to get to the actual combat. Combat is weird for me because on paper I like it and it does a lot of things right. You always know how much damage you'll do, how much delay you'll have so on and so forth. Very little is left to the imagination and nothing feels random and that's cool, I wish more jrpgs would follow suit with this. My problem mostly stems from the teambuilding options not feeling very satisfying to play around with. What I mean by this is that most jobs really don't have much fun options and it feels like the creators tried VERY hard to create something impossible to break the game with. Which is fair and I get that but at the same time this mindset restricts the classes so much to the point where I wasn't really excited to see what tools a class would give me. Most of the time upon seeing a classes skills I'd just be like "yeah ok" or "this class seems kinda bad". For a game BASED AROUND PLAYING WITH CLASSES this is NOT GOOD. If I don't shit my pants upon getting a new class literally what are you doing. I get this game is trying to create a balanced experience but it feels like I am being offered breadcrumbs instead of fun and unique classes to play with. Even the Bravely Games, which I am very lukewarm on, did this well. Yeah those games were easy to break but it's up to the player to break them, and I'm 100% fine with that because each class felt extremely unique, fun to play with and almost always felt worth using, as opposed to here where they do not.
Aside from the teambuilding options kinda sucking I found normal encounters to be tedious as all hell. Yeah bosses are sick but most of the time you'll be fighting the same encounters with an oddly high amount of HP and can do a pretty big number to you. I get wanting to make normal encounters difficult but I feel as if this misses the mark HARD and just turns them into an absolute slog. Even worse is that areas have a LOT of encounters and more often than not in dungeons they're very difficult to actually avoid meaning you'll have to go through a LOT of them which SUCKS when encounters take as long as they do. Overall not a good time.

Tldr: I like the bosses and game has some cool ideas but most of the ideas are kinda executed like shit which made this super tedious to play and made me decide to drop it.

Crazy to me that this was made largely using royalty free assets, the character models, music, everything. And yet it still has this really nice singular charm to it! If you yearn to play an RPG but are concerned about delving deep into world matters and story, don't worry this has you covered. Story aspects are largely barren but if you are going in looking for something like that this is perfect and real cozy.

One big part of the game is gaining new platforming upgrades, letting you navigate the world more. I love this mechanic. Grind some enemies, upgrade and change classes, search the area for little hidden rooms with treasure.. yeah. Really dig this. I think its pretty cheap too.

This is a game that I really honestly wanted to like a lot based on what it tries to accomplish but unfortunately, it ultimately falls flat in al to of ways for me. From reading the other reviews it does seem to be intensely hit-or-miss and so I'll sing my praises and air my grievances and allow one to draw their on conclusions.

First and foremost, the boss fights in this game are a thing of beauty, and honestly, a game designed around these would be beyond fantastic. The game does an exceptional job of showing you the various mechanics and how they interact amongst your party...and then using those boss fights to push that to the limit and make you really think about how to use what you've discovered.

Similarly the combat is generally fairly engaging and difficult, but all the enemies are on-screen so avoiding them can be doable. The stronger you are in comparison the less likely they are to give chase so you needn't really worry about having to fight weaker enemies while traversing through old zones.

However, the weak points in this game, for me, is exploration. If I were 15 or 16 again, back in high school, with an entire summer off to just immerse myself in this game I would absolutely love it, I cannot deny that in any capacity. But the exploration requires some very precise platforming and shifting of different animal mounts which do different types of movement and when you reach points without maps and you have no idea where to go, all you can really do is guess and see if you're right or wrong.

Beyond that, the game prides itself on its open world and to be fair, when I first started it was quite impressive to journey and to be able to find out where I was going and just learn piece-by-piece where everything was located, and getting to explore. But as time goes on, it becomes less and less apparent of -where- you need to go and -what- you need to do. You end up feeling kind of aimless, and that doesn't bode well for wanting to continue.

Lastly, while the classes are interesting, they all feel as if they're derived from the same cloth. They don't really feel distinct enough to warrant an interest in going to hunt all of the different classes out there and that leads to some complacency and lack of interest as well.

There are a lot of really good ideas here, and I'm shelving it for now but I will eventually come back and update the review, but I might be playing with a guide just to avoid the aimless wandering without direction.