This review contains spoilers
I think one of the most frustrating aspects of retro game discourse is when older games get unfairly criticized or overlooked because of their similarities to other titles. Shmups and fighters are often the largest victims of this as a whole, but another that always peeves me is the dreaded 'zelda' clone. If you put a guy on a top-down map and give him a sword, it's Zelda. And when these conversations occur, people look exclusively for which things they like from that frame of reference, and see the absence of those strengths as condemnation.
Crusader of Centy, despite the constant Zelda comparisons, doesn't have a lot in common with the series. If anything, it's almost an anti-thesis to Zelda, in the way player progression works, the bittersweet tone of its universe, and overall gameplay. It does a LOT of things surprisingly well, though it's also a product of its time, and hits some questionable territory with its writing (and sometimes, lack thereof).
You're this boy Corona who essentially gets 'drafted' by the kingdom at the age of 14. He gets a sword passed down from his MIA dad, and told to rid the land of monsters. There's a very heavy dose of 'patriotism' in the way this game frames its culture: Characters refer to becoming a 'hero' as a rite of passage, the same way a naive kid might fantasize about getting into the military. As you progress, you realize what humans classify as 'monsters' are co-habitants that have been wrongly feared and hunted, and that sets up the rest of the game's emotional conflict.
Centy's storytelling ultimately comes down to three factors: Empathy, discrimination, and the glorification of war, and it has to tangle all of these plot themes into a game where the ultimate objective is to defeat monsters and save the day, like any other 90's game. It's arguably the largest millstone around the game's neck, and something other reviewers have discussed a lot. But to its credit, it's able to use that bittersweet juxtaposition for some really ethereal storytelling. Soon after the start of the game, your ability to talk with humans is stripped away from you, instead leaving you the ability to talk to animals and monsters. You get this really pronounced feeling of alienation, where you never feel completely 'welcomed' in a certain area, and you have to guess what's going on in smaller plot events by cluing in observations from other animals or the character's movement - as much as a 16-bit NPC can move anyway. It's this very isolating sensation that feels completely ahead of its time. I think the story beat that really drives it in is when a slime NPC swaps bodies with you so it can meet the human girl it likes without fear of immediately being killed on the spot by villagers. And in the time where he's got your body, you're left as a slime and get chased down by one of the kingdom's 'heroes': A chauvinistic knight met later in the story who's revered by the kingdom like a celebrity with a closet full of skeletons. Those brief moments of being on the receiving end of the hunting are, oddly compelling for a game of this time period, even if the section it occurs in isn't 'hard' by any means.
Moreso, the game uses this as your way of empathizing with a mistreated non-humans of the game's fantasy setting - both the titular monsters and even NPC animals along the way. There's even a factor of self-growth in the mix, with characters often alluding to desires to surpass their old selves. And so, while it's completely reasonable to make the usual reaction of 'damn, this game is about how killing monsters is wrong, but you still have to kill the monsters. ding!', I think you can sorta take it the other way around, where the conflict between narrative and gameplay is subtextual of the player having to escape misdeeds that have been assigned to them by the game - or in more similar notes, an american who's been whipped into pro-fascist values, and has to forcefully tear them out of their way of thinking and acting.
Though that kinda leads to the game's biggest problem. If you've seen other reviewers, you probably know about the uh, 'ethnostate' ending. The game's ultimate resolution to humans terrorizing monsters, is that humans are a lost cause and the only way to get them to give up fascism is to prevent monsters from ever entering the human world in the first place. For the entire game up to that point - for all the tonal clashes between the game wanting you to kill monsters while making you feel bad for killing monsters, - you can still parse some greater sense of subtext and commentary. But when this bomb drops and the game tries to frame it as this happy resolution, you don't get that lingering feeling of bitter sweetness - you feel cheated. I wouldn't call it a cop-out ending, but it feels like the game kinda giving up on its own message. All this time, the game is cluing you in to how humans could eventually overcome their greed and right their wrongs. It even has a second act ordeal of sorts, where you and another monster clash at the steps of heaven seeking salvation, and the Gods of the universe take this desecration as a 'welp, I guess humans will NEVER stop fighting'. And when that hits, you WANT to prove the Gods wrong. You want there to be a more repentant turn to this tone - or at the very least, go all the way into Depression Zone. Like, if the game's gonna reconcile that humans suck shit, then stick to it and play to that discomfort. None of this 'haha humans never had the opportunity to discriminate in the first place, that means they're good!' bullshit. Damn.
Anyway that's just the story. Gameplay-wise, while the Zelda similarities are there, the emphasis in gameplay is more on the overworld and boss fights. Animal companions replace the conventional 'dungeon items' - equippable, like party members in an RPG, and each gives you passive or trigger-based abilities. None of these are very key-based abilities, either; they all have grander benefits to your core character, like boosting damage, speed, adding traits to your thrown sword, etc. And so I find animals to be a really solid replacement of Zelda's systems, not just because they remain valuable assets outside of their initial discovery points, but because they reflect the game's ludonarrative of communing with life and nature.
Oh yeah you also get a jump, and the game has a lot of really novel puzzles and platforming scenarios built around that. Odd comparison, but if you liked Landstalker's ideas but wanted its platform-focused dungeon design to be more fleshed out, you might like this a lot. There's a lot of really great moments where you utilize momentum and weather to work through the stages. You even get further jump distance based on your speed buffs, which leads to some really fun scenarios where you reach Sonic-esque speeds off of icy inclines. Also makes world traversal a lot less stressful.
In criticisms, while I like the game's ideas and system's a lot, I think the 'feel' of gameplay is rough. Corona has acceleration to his run, and his sword swing feels like mush compared to the snappy feedback of LotP's brisk slashes. The intro of the game is also where the game's structure is the most vague; because of the lack of an immediate goal or adversary, it's hard to tell where to go or what to do until after, say, the second bossfight you encounter. My first time playing this game was actually a year ago, and I dropped it specifically because of those bad early impressions. All I can say is, don't let the early-game jank put you off.
In the end it's really unfortunate this game sets up so much for itself mechanically and narratively, yet ends on such a weak plot note. For a game that puts all of its cards into depicting the moral horrors of humanity - including you, as a character in the story and the player, - it makes no effort to take either side of the equation. It could've gone the depressing route of making humanity completely unsalvagable, or it could've tried a cheesy Disney-esque ending: Both would've been preferable to this halfway-step that ends up really uncomfortably alluding to segregation. But in spite of that, it's still a really good top-down Adventure game to 'play', and I think the story moments that occur before the end lead to some very provocative introspection. A victim of naive writing tropes and having to play to the corporate 'status quo' of the time, but it still manages to excel in the wiggle room between its cracks.
Crusader of Centy, despite the constant Zelda comparisons, doesn't have a lot in common with the series. If anything, it's almost an anti-thesis to Zelda, in the way player progression works, the bittersweet tone of its universe, and overall gameplay. It does a LOT of things surprisingly well, though it's also a product of its time, and hits some questionable territory with its writing (and sometimes, lack thereof).
You're this boy Corona who essentially gets 'drafted' by the kingdom at the age of 14. He gets a sword passed down from his MIA dad, and told to rid the land of monsters. There's a very heavy dose of 'patriotism' in the way this game frames its culture: Characters refer to becoming a 'hero' as a rite of passage, the same way a naive kid might fantasize about getting into the military. As you progress, you realize what humans classify as 'monsters' are co-habitants that have been wrongly feared and hunted, and that sets up the rest of the game's emotional conflict.
Centy's storytelling ultimately comes down to three factors: Empathy, discrimination, and the glorification of war, and it has to tangle all of these plot themes into a game where the ultimate objective is to defeat monsters and save the day, like any other 90's game. It's arguably the largest millstone around the game's neck, and something other reviewers have discussed a lot. But to its credit, it's able to use that bittersweet juxtaposition for some really ethereal storytelling. Soon after the start of the game, your ability to talk with humans is stripped away from you, instead leaving you the ability to talk to animals and monsters. You get this really pronounced feeling of alienation, where you never feel completely 'welcomed' in a certain area, and you have to guess what's going on in smaller plot events by cluing in observations from other animals or the character's movement - as much as a 16-bit NPC can move anyway. It's this very isolating sensation that feels completely ahead of its time. I think the story beat that really drives it in is when a slime NPC swaps bodies with you so it can meet the human girl it likes without fear of immediately being killed on the spot by villagers. And in the time where he's got your body, you're left as a slime and get chased down by one of the kingdom's 'heroes': A chauvinistic knight met later in the story who's revered by the kingdom like a celebrity with a closet full of skeletons. Those brief moments of being on the receiving end of the hunting are, oddly compelling for a game of this time period, even if the section it occurs in isn't 'hard' by any means.
Moreso, the game uses this as your way of empathizing with a mistreated non-humans of the game's fantasy setting - both the titular monsters and even NPC animals along the way. There's even a factor of self-growth in the mix, with characters often alluding to desires to surpass their old selves. And so, while it's completely reasonable to make the usual reaction of 'damn, this game is about how killing monsters is wrong, but you still have to kill the monsters. ding!', I think you can sorta take it the other way around, where the conflict between narrative and gameplay is subtextual of the player having to escape misdeeds that have been assigned to them by the game - or in more similar notes, an american who's been whipped into pro-fascist values, and has to forcefully tear them out of their way of thinking and acting.
Though that kinda leads to the game's biggest problem. If you've seen other reviewers, you probably know about the uh, 'ethnostate' ending. The game's ultimate resolution to humans terrorizing monsters, is that humans are a lost cause and the only way to get them to give up fascism is to prevent monsters from ever entering the human world in the first place. For the entire game up to that point - for all the tonal clashes between the game wanting you to kill monsters while making you feel bad for killing monsters, - you can still parse some greater sense of subtext and commentary. But when this bomb drops and the game tries to frame it as this happy resolution, you don't get that lingering feeling of bitter sweetness - you feel cheated. I wouldn't call it a cop-out ending, but it feels like the game kinda giving up on its own message. All this time, the game is cluing you in to how humans could eventually overcome their greed and right their wrongs. It even has a second act ordeal of sorts, where you and another monster clash at the steps of heaven seeking salvation, and the Gods of the universe take this desecration as a 'welp, I guess humans will NEVER stop fighting'. And when that hits, you WANT to prove the Gods wrong. You want there to be a more repentant turn to this tone - or at the very least, go all the way into Depression Zone. Like, if the game's gonna reconcile that humans suck shit, then stick to it and play to that discomfort. None of this 'haha humans never had the opportunity to discriminate in the first place, that means they're good!' bullshit. Damn.
Anyway that's just the story. Gameplay-wise, while the Zelda similarities are there, the emphasis in gameplay is more on the overworld and boss fights. Animal companions replace the conventional 'dungeon items' - equippable, like party members in an RPG, and each gives you passive or trigger-based abilities. None of these are very key-based abilities, either; they all have grander benefits to your core character, like boosting damage, speed, adding traits to your thrown sword, etc. And so I find animals to be a really solid replacement of Zelda's systems, not just because they remain valuable assets outside of their initial discovery points, but because they reflect the game's ludonarrative of communing with life and nature.
Oh yeah you also get a jump, and the game has a lot of really novel puzzles and platforming scenarios built around that. Odd comparison, but if you liked Landstalker's ideas but wanted its platform-focused dungeon design to be more fleshed out, you might like this a lot. There's a lot of really great moments where you utilize momentum and weather to work through the stages. You even get further jump distance based on your speed buffs, which leads to some really fun scenarios where you reach Sonic-esque speeds off of icy inclines. Also makes world traversal a lot less stressful.
In criticisms, while I like the game's ideas and system's a lot, I think the 'feel' of gameplay is rough. Corona has acceleration to his run, and his sword swing feels like mush compared to the snappy feedback of LotP's brisk slashes. The intro of the game is also where the game's structure is the most vague; because of the lack of an immediate goal or adversary, it's hard to tell where to go or what to do until after, say, the second bossfight you encounter. My first time playing this game was actually a year ago, and I dropped it specifically because of those bad early impressions. All I can say is, don't let the early-game jank put you off.
In the end it's really unfortunate this game sets up so much for itself mechanically and narratively, yet ends on such a weak plot note. For a game that puts all of its cards into depicting the moral horrors of humanity - including you, as a character in the story and the player, - it makes no effort to take either side of the equation. It could've gone the depressing route of making humanity completely unsalvagable, or it could've tried a cheesy Disney-esque ending: Both would've been preferable to this halfway-step that ends up really uncomfortably alluding to segregation. But in spite of that, it's still a really good top-down Adventure game to 'play', and I think the story moments that occur before the end lead to some very provocative introspection. A victim of naive writing tropes and having to play to the corporate 'status quo' of the time, but it still manages to excel in the wiggle room between its cracks.
MagneticBurn
2 years ago
https://youtu.be/QDqAtRlQr4s