At the risk of sounding a bit condescending, it makes me a bit sad seeing all the people who drop or otherwise pass on CrisTales just because of some optimization issues. Yes, the loading screens are long and frankly excessive, but the game is by no means unplayable because of it, and they shouldn't stop you from playing such a charming and engaging RPG. For Pete's sake, every time I go to GameStop I see it on clearance for $10. At that price it's a steal!

CrisTales was a game that was vaguely on my radar around the time it came out back in 2021, but as Neo: The World Ends with You was releasing only a few weeks later, I didn't have the time to play it back then. I ended up getting it at the end of the year and finishing it early the next year, and I am so glad that I did.

As many have pointed out, the main draw of CrisTales is its presentation. Art direction isn't really something I pay that much attention to unless it's really unique, and CrisTales ranks among Cuphead and The World Ends with You in having one of the best art styles I've ever seen in a video game. To only mention the art style would be to only mention the obvious though, and presentation is so much more than just the obvious. For one, the game is fully voice-acted, which is incredibly impressive for an indie game with this much dialogue, and the voice acting itself is all pretty good too. The soundtrack is also great, really nailing its relaxing town themes and dramatic battle tracks.

Of course, a large part of an RPG's appeal is in its writing, and on this front CrisTales absolutely delivers. All the party members manage to shine individually and in their interactions with others (well, except for one spoiler character who is kind of lame, but five out of six ain't bad) with Zas in particular being peak party member. Even the NPCs are great: there were at least five NPCs where at varying points I thought, "Man, I wish they could join the party!" and I think that says a lot about the quality of the character writing. Similarly the story really got its hooks in me around the middle of the game, where the game starts setting up interesting plot threads and building up the lore. In that regard, the game's final hours were actually a bit disappointing, as lot of these great plot threads are resolved a bit too quickly in a rush to get to the end of the game to fully explore the implications they leave in their wake, but at the same time, I don't think a botched landing diminishes the quality of the setup, so I would still say that the story is one worth experiencing.

CrisTales is a game I desperately want some kind of follow-up to. As far as I can tell, this is the first game by this dev team, and beneath the flaws they clearly show a ton of potential. It doesn't have to be a direct sequel, but given the chance to make another RPG, if they retain the style that drew so many to the game while improving the performance and writing a more fleshed-out finale, I believe they could have a truly special game on their hands.

In a game committed to such realism in it's storytelling, to the point where firewatch manages to duplicate Henry's emotions within the player far better than many other games, firewatch succeeds in presenting a narrative that someone could truly have lived. That's what makes it beautiful. Firewatch challenges the typical structure of what defines a videogame story, and I'd say Henry's time in the woods feels like how it actually would - merely a brief, slightly delusional, escape from the world. Yet, firewatch withdraws itself to being a restrained and quietly introspective experience, where I feel it could have benefitted from, and I expected it to be, aiming a little higher.