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.
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.