I wish Cris Tales didn't have anything going for it--namely I wish it wasn't so pretty, and I wish it didn't establish the framework for an engaging battle system. I wish these things because I'm finding it difficult to tolerate playing it and it's making it more disappointing.
I think the first flag went off for me when I saw my first "battle transition." I don't think I've given it much thought before, but the RPG battle transition is actually an important emotional trigger for playing these games. At times, understandably, that emotion is frustration as you just want to get somewhere and don't want to be bothered, and as someone who generally doesn't mind them I absolutely understand the distaste for random encounters. But when it's "working" it puts a stamp of excitement onto conflict. The screen spins or tears or whatever effect the developer has created, and you know something's about to go down. For a very long game that's figuring out how to get you on par with the forces you're facing, I think you need that motivation to carry you.
I put "battle transition" in quotes for Cris Tales because it's just a loading screen. Of course all battle transitions are loading screens effectively, but it's identical to any loading screen the game has, such as moving to a new area or just a cutscene wrapping up. A huge white splash screen dissolves into view, Crisbell running in the corner to let you know it's thinking real hard. Until the battle starts, nothing about the sound shifts. I don't even want to get into how filling the screen with white every single time a battle starts is a hell of an eye strain--but let it be known, it is!--but I want to focus on how it robs one of the most subtly important parts of an RPG of any impact. The music tries to do work once battle commences, and it's a good score, don't get me wrong, but it's honestly too late. Battles in Cris Tales feel less like a hurdle to overcome and more like a limp inevitability, and I think the presentation has a lot to do with that. And yet, like many JRPGs of old, it has a lot of these encounters, sometimes spawning them as quickly as 5-10 steps after your last one. You'll be fighting [or running] a lot.
And if you choose to engage they're going to take longer than they should since the developer has put in place an overcomplex hybrid battle system. It mixes timing elements from something like Mario RPG with its own time mechanics, which at first sounded exciting. But it's crucial for button timing windows to feel intuitive in this sort of system, and I'll be damned if I ever truly figured anything out in my 5 hours with the game. It's hilariously compounded by the "transitions" feeling so inert, because you'll look at a loading screen for 4-5 seconds and then, as it turns out, the enemy has the first move in your encounter and oops did you have time to process what you were responding to? Probably not! But even if that problem didn't present itself, none of the timing feels correct or consistent.
And then there are the time mechanics, allowing you to throw enemies into the past or future and back, presumably for numerous strategic reasons--speeding up time to increase the damage rate of poison, throwing enemies into the past so they no longer have a buff, and so on. But, like every minor element of the battle system, it takes a precious amount of time to set up and execute, so for regular encounters it's pretty likely you won't want to bother, and for boss encounters they're going to be immune to like 80% of what you have access to, or they'll have their own obnoxious mechanic that will deflate your interest in time manipulation real fast.
Everything in this game takes forever. Even exploration takes forever. Crisbell has the power to see into the past and future, which is cute for narrative implications but isn't cute when you realize it means there are three places to open treasure chests or find key items. [But only for towns, conveniently? I guess her time powers don't matter in exploring dungeons, at least not to the point I played. Probably for the best.] And because it would be too easy to just let Crisbell warp herself to the past or future, she instead sends her unfathomably slow frog companion, so you quickly get into the habit of getting as close as possible to where you want the frog to appear in the other timeline before you send them because the frog hopping speed is unbearable.
It breaks my heart because it's gorgeous to look at and pleasing to listen to, and there's the slim possibility the combat really opens up. I just know that if it does "get better" it'll be because they added more complexities to the mechanics, and is that really better in this case?
I think the first flag went off for me when I saw my first "battle transition." I don't think I've given it much thought before, but the RPG battle transition is actually an important emotional trigger for playing these games. At times, understandably, that emotion is frustration as you just want to get somewhere and don't want to be bothered, and as someone who generally doesn't mind them I absolutely understand the distaste for random encounters. But when it's "working" it puts a stamp of excitement onto conflict. The screen spins or tears or whatever effect the developer has created, and you know something's about to go down. For a very long game that's figuring out how to get you on par with the forces you're facing, I think you need that motivation to carry you.
I put "battle transition" in quotes for Cris Tales because it's just a loading screen. Of course all battle transitions are loading screens effectively, but it's identical to any loading screen the game has, such as moving to a new area or just a cutscene wrapping up. A huge white splash screen dissolves into view, Crisbell running in the corner to let you know it's thinking real hard. Until the battle starts, nothing about the sound shifts. I don't even want to get into how filling the screen with white every single time a battle starts is a hell of an eye strain--but let it be known, it is!--but I want to focus on how it robs one of the most subtly important parts of an RPG of any impact. The music tries to do work once battle commences, and it's a good score, don't get me wrong, but it's honestly too late. Battles in Cris Tales feel less like a hurdle to overcome and more like a limp inevitability, and I think the presentation has a lot to do with that. And yet, like many JRPGs of old, it has a lot of these encounters, sometimes spawning them as quickly as 5-10 steps after your last one. You'll be fighting [or running] a lot.
And if you choose to engage they're going to take longer than they should since the developer has put in place an overcomplex hybrid battle system. It mixes timing elements from something like Mario RPG with its own time mechanics, which at first sounded exciting. But it's crucial for button timing windows to feel intuitive in this sort of system, and I'll be damned if I ever truly figured anything out in my 5 hours with the game. It's hilariously compounded by the "transitions" feeling so inert, because you'll look at a loading screen for 4-5 seconds and then, as it turns out, the enemy has the first move in your encounter and oops did you have time to process what you were responding to? Probably not! But even if that problem didn't present itself, none of the timing feels correct or consistent.
And then there are the time mechanics, allowing you to throw enemies into the past or future and back, presumably for numerous strategic reasons--speeding up time to increase the damage rate of poison, throwing enemies into the past so they no longer have a buff, and so on. But, like every minor element of the battle system, it takes a precious amount of time to set up and execute, so for regular encounters it's pretty likely you won't want to bother, and for boss encounters they're going to be immune to like 80% of what you have access to, or they'll have their own obnoxious mechanic that will deflate your interest in time manipulation real fast.
Everything in this game takes forever. Even exploration takes forever. Crisbell has the power to see into the past and future, which is cute for narrative implications but isn't cute when you realize it means there are three places to open treasure chests or find key items. [But only for towns, conveniently? I guess her time powers don't matter in exploring dungeons, at least not to the point I played. Probably for the best.] And because it would be too easy to just let Crisbell warp herself to the past or future, she instead sends her unfathomably slow frog companion, so you quickly get into the habit of getting as close as possible to where you want the frog to appear in the other timeline before you send them because the frog hopping speed is unbearable.
It breaks my heart because it's gorgeous to look at and pleasing to listen to, and there's the slim possibility the combat really opens up. I just know that if it does "get better" it'll be because they added more complexities to the mechanics, and is that really better in this case?