Crystalis (1990)

Preliminary: I was going to play the official NA release since there weren't many graphical changes etc except in the title screen. But I did some research and I see the dialog and plot was changed quite a bit in the translation to avoid any religious discussions and whatnot (no wonder Digital Devil Story wasn't released in NA! so much pagan symbolism in that lol)

A bit nervous cuz 1990 NES hasn't been doing it for me, but hey, an ARPG. Can't go wrong right? Hopefully the music is good and it keeps my interest, as ARPGs tend to do, and I hope it doesn't get too tedious and the walking isn't too slow (I see there is a built-in cheat for a Fast Walk... why not just have us walk fast? Why did NES-era programmers love the idea of slow walking as an intentional part of the game?)

Cute enough Look so far. Pretty impressive for NES, almost teetering on the SNES vibe with the colors and the UI

Oooo diagonal movement and the walking seems plenty fast! Surprised Fast Walk was a built-in cheat ha. I'm not in love with the music but it's good for NES music.

Early Game

The Wind Valley concept is reminding me of Nausicaa which I love so much. And the first cave music was quite good (tho overall the music is just good for NES). And I'm instantly hooked after a night of thinking I'm too tired from daytime socializing to connect with anything! The combat isn't the greatest thing but I feel the same way about the NES Zeldas too. And the UI reminds me of Link to the Past and other upcoming ARPGs! The first level grind was quite long but so far so good.

But meh the music in the cave I revealed after getting the windmill to work is, frankly, bad. And other NES datedness things are creeping up. Like why does the Bear take that many hits? That's not a challenge, that's just a challenge of patience :-p I'll continue this tomorrow cuz I am excited about an ARPG I've never heard of, but if this music keeps up and the Look/Play doesn't do something special besides okay ARPG combat and my usual RPG/grind hook, then it's time to move on.

I really liked the windmill key "quest"vvery classic item retrieval process, and it's that adventure game format that will likely keep me kept more than the music look or rpg grinds.

I like the town music and I like how the people actually give relevant hints/clues and there are Inns in the towns, unlike most early action-adventures, etc. etc. I just wish I liked the Sound and Look better. I suppose I like this purple at least

Ngl tho the combat kinda sucks. Esp on the world map. It's just so bland and clunky. And the challenge with the enemies is patience as you have to hit them so many times. And now I'm positively convinced this Training Studio sequence is broken or something. I am mashing attack as fast as I possibly can and even leveled up to level 5.... Still, can't beat him. Boring and lame. Oh I see, RNG played a role in that. I just kept entering and reentering and without pressing any faster, I won. Very lame.

Ok yea this did get ideas from Miyazaki films. I refuse to believe they didn't ha. That is what's keeping me going, cuz this is just reminding me of the worst parts of Zelda 1 in terms of its combat and sword placement. The projectile idea is nice, but we shall see if I finish this one... Hopefully these Link to the Past/Tomba type retrieval quests keep me going, this town where they hate human scum but asked me to save the lost child reminds me of Tomba and I like that :-p

Wow yea the enemies in this Swamp Forest, the Insect Flute, Nausicaa much???

Mid Game

I noticed collision masks were quite sloppy but there were outright glitches at parts lol I kept walking through a lady in Nadare's Hotel, but I eventually got her to talk to me.

Welp, I got to the Waterfall Cave and called it quits. This has all the worst elements of Zelda: tedious dungeon crawling, frustrating combat mechanics, and easily missed events blocking your way later. The sometimes mediocre, sometimes bad music worsened it. I realized, why am I pushing through when great action-adventures and ARPGs are coming up? I see why it is beloved to some, and I wanted to like it more since it integrates RPG and action-adventure well and was clearly influenced by Nausicaa--a favorite movie of mine--but the execution just isn't there. Indeed, the idea about different elements affecting different enemies is a neat idea (tho completely immune was just a blatantly bad idea), but again the execution just wasn't it. Moving on.

Look: 7/10 Some nice colors but mostly just okay NES Look.

Sound: 6.5/10 No.

Play: 7/10 Hooked me at times, but the tedium built and the mediocre combat bogged down the game.

Feel: 7.5/10 With [blatant] references to Nausicaa and Castle in the Sky, the Feel was certainly boosted. Plus, an ARPG. I always have a Feel for ARPGs. I would've not spent this long on a shmup or strategy game that frustrated me this much, that's for sure! Haha.

Attachment: 7/10 A part of me wants to give it another try but mostly no. Like I always say, maybe if the Look was remarkable/not dated, or the Sound had a few stellar tracks, or the combat/grinds were more hooking--but it all just lacked. If it weren't for the Feel of it and desire to like it more, this likely even would've been a 2 tbh.

Overall: 7/10

Completion: Saved the villages in the Mountain, was going to the Waterfall Cave.

Playtime: 1h 30m

Beat. I had no idea what to expect going into this game and was very pleasantly surprised. It was like the forerunner to the great SNES action RPGs; Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, and Terranigma. Again I found the default speed on my emulator too fast to the point where I more often ran into enemies than properly hit them. I wonder if my emulator runs faster than the original NES. I used 30 frames per second slow motion mode for most of the combat, and found it quite manageable. The game did suffer significant slowdown when there was a lot on the screen. I found regular sword attacks good enough for most enemies. If they had projectiles I flanked them with each hit. It was not until the human enemies with swords that I exclusively used ranged attacks, because their weapons were just as long as mine. I also found it useful to charge up ranged attacks against annoying flying enemies, and it was not very often that I bothered to go all the way to the mp costing magic attacks.

In the beginning I skipped buying the basic armor and shield, instead saving up for tier 2 stuff. Later on I bought platinum and ceramic armor, and the mirror and Sacred shields. Money was no trouble to get and I had over 10k at the end, with nothing to spend it on. I reached max level near the end of the game by grinding those robot enemies that could only be hurt by the starter sword. It was unnecessary because I ended up having to kill a lot of enemies without any more levels to gain. Too bad there were not more levels to go up to give the game more optional content. I felt that most of the game had a very good level of challenge, with good variety of enemies and danger. Despite using save states, I had to use the healing magic regularly. I loved the design of simply holding down the cast button to convert mp into hp until I stopped pressing. The bosses were fun and well designed, though the final 3 were too easy. They could have had way more health and more dangerous attacks. I messed up by going to the 2nd last boss before the 3rd last and spent 30 minutes trying to kill him. I thought there was no way he had that much hp. Turned out the 3rd last guy lead to an item that was needed to make the 2nd last guy vulnerable. Maybe the game should not have let me go so far wrong, but I could have teleported out of the unwinnable fight. The final 2 bosses could only be harmed at specific times and had intricate bullet hell style attacks to dodge, but they just died too quickly once I figured out what to do.

I was very impressed at how they crammed so much game into so few buttons. It felt ahead of its time and probably would have been better suited to the SNES controller. Start was to access a stats screen, which was not that useful. Select accessed the inventory and was incredibly important for switching weapons, spells and gear, and saving was accessed by pressing start here. It was a little annoying for enemies to be immune to 1, 2 or even 3 swords, forcing me to use the inventory mid combat, but it was good that every sword was needed for the entire game. The best accessory was the warrior ring for removing the charge up time on the weakest ranged attack, turning the game into more of a shooter. I used that for most of the end game and the 3rd last boss. The power ring made magic stronger, but I only used it for the 2nd last boss who was immune to all other damage. For the rest of the game (including the final boss) I used the iron necklace to reduce damage. Before I had that I used the shield ring, but armor seemed to be way more important than the shield. The spells were both useful and creative. I mostly used the heal and status cure. Barrier was good during boss fights because a couple seconds of properly timed barrier to avoid damage cost less mana and time than healing the damage. Fly was fun to bypass some annoying parts of the game, and shape change was really cool even though it had no combat application. So there was 1 button to attack and use item (meaning I had to make sure no usable item was equipped when I wanted to attack) and the other was for magic and the jump boots. While it did take a bit to get used to the double functions, it was very efficient use of the limited buttons.

The biggest flaw was the lack of in game maps. Some of the areas were quite large with a lot of similar looking screens, and there were Metroidvania elements of backtracking to previous areas to use a new item or spell to get past an obstacle. It made me resort to reading a walkthrough as I played (usually after completing an area), and especially using maps for the end game. It was unnecessary to have the magic orbs as a separate equipment slot that had to be changed when it could have automatically activated when switching swords. Other than that I did not like how the different swords, armor and shields all looked the same on the character. This was the type of game where those minor graphical changes would have added a lot to the game. Different colors for each sword, and more armor graphics with each better suit rather than the lame cloth he looks to wear for the whole game. This was an amazing game for the time and I would have loved more content and sequels that made more elaborate use of the item and magic mechanics.

9.0/10

(This is the 7th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Crystalis is an Action RPG / Action Adventure game that initially released on April 13, 1990 in Japan for the NES. It was re-released for the Game Boy Color 10 years later and it's celebrated by many for being an "underappreciated NES gem".

The NES version is the one I played, and there are major differences in both versions in case you want to try it yourself. The Game Boy Color version has an almost completely new soundtrack that is worse in my opinion (1), from what I've seen it plays less fluidly and has lower resolution (2), a story sequence was altered (3) but most importantly, the Game Boy Color version is actually way more helpful in guiding the player and actually explains to you what the story is about (4).

STORYTELLING

So what do I mean by that last sentence? Well the issue I had with the NES version was that apart from a very brief introduction to the world in the menu screen, there was just about no explanation as to who you are or why you are fighting all these monsters and doing what these people told you to do. Every hour or two you'd get a line or so of information on what this game is about, but nothing substantial up until the end of the game, where all info would be dropped at once.

In the GBC version, there is a much longer intro sequence explaining why you were summoned and what the lore behind all those items and people is that you find and meet. Every time you find a useful item, one of the characters also would show up to tell you what it can do. Plus, characters also tell you a bit more about what to do next and there are much more intermissions filled with monologues on this world and its lore. Due to the other differences I listed which I actually dislike compared to the NES version, I still am glad I stuck with the NES version I guess.

So what's the story about? You play a hero that you name and that has been frozen in time for 100 years after a war in 1997 nearly meant the end of civilization. The survivors decided to abandon the ways and technology that led to this war and created a floating Tower, where they would live, gain power to control the world (to make sure no harm was done anymore) and to study the ways of magic. You and a companion of yours, Mesia, are now awakened 100 years after the war because an evil magician called Dragonia used his abilities to grow in power and fill the land with Monsters, to ultimately enter the Tower and control everything that is left of the planet.

Four magicians that will become your helpful companions in this world used their abilities to create four Swords of different elements. They used these to attack Dragonia, but he was able to take the Swords from them and scatter them throughout the land. With no additional way of defending themselves through magic, a safety put into place 100 years ago for a worst case scenario triggers and awakens both you and your companion Mesia. What you have to do now is find all four swords, which form the ultimate sword called "Crystalis", and use it to kill Dragonia and end his reign of power.

Throughout your journey, you meet these magicians and can use a skill called "Telepathy" to request hints from them. There are other characters as well that aid you in your quest, like the fisher that lets you use his boat if you find an item of his. There is also a guy called Kensu, who does help you out a lot but loves to play hide and seek and must be found many times to finally give you what you need.

In the NES version, you speak the absolute minimum with all of these characters, but in the GBC version, there is a lot more dialogue and detail to the lore. Since I played the NES version and won't play through the GBC version, I'm going to rate the NES version, which has none to little storytelling for most of the game, and not finding out the true reason for what you are doing for a long time isn't that motivating. It kinda pays off in the end though. There aren't that many twists and turns in this game, there is little environmental storytelling and overall, the package present here is average.

GAMEPLAY

As per usual for the time, gameplay interruptions are rare, so the action is pretty much constant. You start the game by gaining the Sword of Stone and you play the game by attacking the many different monsters with a thrust attack. Most of the enemies don't attack back but rather either walk in a pre-determined direction or into you, which damages you. Unfortunately, the enemies usually have a pretty tight hit box, so you have to do some positioning beforehand before you attack. It's not rare for you to do a 360 spin to try and position yourself in a way that opens up an attack for you without exposing you for damage by the enemies. Your hitbox sadly is much larger than it should be, so even if your character isn't actually touched, you will still take damage. This can become frustrating over the first couple hours as you try to figure out where the game wants you to attack from, but once you figure it out, it works most of the time as you want it to.

There are four swords of different elements to find in the game, and as a result, monsters with resistances and weaknesses to specific elements. While this is a good thing as it brings variety to the fold, it happens often that a room has two enemies with different resistances. Since there are no hotkeys, I would find myself equpping the Sword of Fire, killing an enemy, equipping the Sword of Water, killing an enemy and so on. This would not only throw me out of the action but also quickly become tiresome.

In addition, some enemies cannot be harmed at all until you reach a certain level. Worse even, bosses have the same effect. How does level 11 make you able to attack a character when level 10 means they are invincible? I don't know. But imagine my frustration when I tried my luck at a boss for 20 minutes, only to fail with each element because of a level difference. "Kill it with fire", a guide online said, which I used lavishly, though not only due to combat questions. When fire didn't work as well, I looked it up further. Turns out, I really had to be level 11 to hurt the boss, but my save state was right at the boss fight, so I couldn't back out. Luckily, I had a back up state from 30 minutes before, because otherwise that would have probably been the end of my run.

Leveling becomes harder and harder because the XP requirements grow exponentially, whilst I found that the XP you get by later enemies wouldn't increase quite as fast. This meant I had to grind for 30-60 minutes at multiple points to progress further, which even the most skilled walkthroughs incorporate online. Grinding has seemingly become a core feature of JRPGs since, and it's no more fun here than it is in Final Fantasy games for example, though at least here you don't have to load in and out of battles.

Dying in this game is very easy and checkpoints do not exist, so you have to save often to be able to actually beat this game. By now I'm used to it having played a bunch of other games from 1990 with similar requirements, but it's worth pointing out.

The game has a lot of different environments to explore, but often it requires you to do the same thing, just with a different element. There is however a snow area for which you will need Rabbit Shoes to be able to jump up a hill and most notably, there is a poison swamp, for which you will need to find a Gas Mask to not take damage from the poison.

Unfortunately, when I say "explore", I mean that you usually try to find a way forward and battle enemies. You do have to find "lost items" here and there, bring it back to someone and get something in return that enables further progress, however it's not like these items are shown anywhere on the map. A pendant for example is in a random spot in a cave and you find it by accident when walking over that exact pixel. There are some non-essential items to find, like healing herbs or teleportation boots, and secret locations to find those in.

Overall, gameplay is repetitive and exploration opportunities are limited, but it's enjoyable enough due to enough enemy variety and the core combat being fine once you figure out how to not take unfair hits all the time.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE

There is no voice acting. The sound design is good, but nothing special. You hear the same sounds in dozens of other RPGs or Action Adventures from that time.

The music is really good, but this compliment is only for the NES version. The overworld theme simply sounds fun, cheerful and catchy. My favorite track has got to be on the "sea" level. An above average soundtrack that can definitely be listened to outside of the game.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN:

The game has solid graphics for the time and makes good use of color, but doesn't stand out beyond that at a time filled with games that look similar. There is a good variety in locations and especially the poison swamp is worth pointing out here again, but the majority of the game does take places in same-looking dungeons that simply use a different color based on the pre-dominant element.

ATMOSPHERE

The game mostly has a cheerful atmosphere in line with a lot of upbeat music, but it sometimes contrasts with the events in the game, like when the people of Leaf are kidnapped and you wander the desolate town with the same cheerful music as per usual. Even during the moments leading to the game's final battle it still felt too cheerful and sort of out of place due to the stake's involved per the game's storytelling. That said if you're looking for something to play that may have raised stakes but a more lax soundtrack, you'll be happy with Crystalis.

CONTENT

The game does take 10+ hours if you use guides here and there and are a first time player, but a few of those hours are spent grinding and you do hold the "attack" button for most of it. If you enjoy that, you'll probably enjoy your time with this game, which even with that playing time is much shorter than the RPGs of its time and therefore may be worth a try at least.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN

The game plays rather linearly even though you can visit multiple locations at once. If you do visit those locations, you usually can't hurt the enemies, so there is no point to deviate from the main road. That main road involves doing the same thing usually and often walking through the same-looking corridors that simple have a different coat of paint. There is variety in locations here and there and the sea level offers a unique battleground at least. The final few locations are also much more unique in design, but the way the final chapter is designed is not necessarily my cup of tea, as it's boss fight after boss fight after boss fight until you meet the final boss, but wait, it's not the final boss, here he is, the end.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION

Most of what this game does has been done before this game came out and not all it does ages well. It's a good game for mixing these elements together and making this an enjoyable adventure overall, but I wouldn't say it set a new benchmark or brought anything new to the table, though its graphics were praised at the time along with the "depth", as in how much there is to do. As mentioned previously, some of the depth is stuffed with repetitive filler and therefore not simply a positive, unless you really are enamored with all core concepts here and don't want the game to end.

REPLAYABILITY

After a first playthrough, there isn't much that you can really do differently.

PLAYABILITY

The game works perfectly fine at all times and plays pretty fluidly.

OVERALL

This is a solid Action RPG / Action Adventure with very catchy music, varied environments and mostly enjoyable, though flawed combat. It's definitely worth taking a look at if you've enjoyed similar games like Zelda games or Final Fantasy, but it lacks depth and logic to its storytelling even when it does get going late into the game, key items are placed in arbitrary locations making progress very difficult and tedious without a guide and there is a lot of mandatory grinding required.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME

• Martin Alessi for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 13 (Aug 90): "A post-apocalyptic storyline with cinema displays mixes with one of the best search, solve and save the world games in recent memory."
• Chris Bieniek for VG&CE, Issue 20 (Sep 90): "the main thing that sets this title apart from most other [RPGs] is its tremendous depth. I've never seen a game with so many places to explore"

I can see it being the basis for action RPGs, conceptually the things that are outdated/bug me the most:

-you can't damage enemies that are above your level ( it's not displayed anywhere) (AND bosses lock you in so the only option is to just die)

• you can only damage enemies with the corresponding element and their color scheme doesn't always match it (god forbid you're fighting two at once, at least there is knockback)

This is an action RPG (along the lines of Legend of Zelda) for the NES, which stands out for being an SNK title (before they became synonymous with fighting games) and for being something of a cult classic (often making "hidden gems" lists for the Nintendo system). Like in most of these sorts of games, you are a hero who must save the world. There is slightly more story for this one though -- this is 95% your standard fantasy world with RPG dungeons and monsters, but 5% sci-fi as it's set in a post-apocalypse and is clearly inspired by the Ghibli films Nausicaa and Laputa (Castle in the Sky).

There aren't any puzzles to solve in this game, so all you do is explore and attack monsters. Your character moves quite fast, which is nice for the exploring but a pain for the attacking. The game always felt generous toward the monsters, who constantly seemed to hit me well outside my character's sprite. Meanwhile I would have to rely on either the tiny reach of my flimsy sword, or sit still for a couple seconds while I charge up a flimsy hadoken. You're in for the long haul with this one... It takes a while to kill most normal enemies, and you're going to have to kill a ton of them to keep leveling up. The grind is real!

The biggest pain though is the fact you have to keep switching swords and spells to deal with enemies properly. If you have the wind sword but the current enemy you're facing can only be damaged by the fire sword, you're going to have to open your menu up and swap weapons. Then the next enemy you face might require the wind sword. So back to the menu... I couldn't stand it after a while.

The game is also surprisingly linear, so there isn't actually much reason to explore for much of the game. It does the standard "you'll need (Thing) to get past (Natural Barrier / Magic Door / Whatever)," but also sometimes will just straight up tell you "you're not strong enough for this area yet" and kick you out. As for the dungeons themselves, they get to be sprawling mazes, so it can take a really long time to get through many of them.

Along with the various elemental hadokens you can charge and shoot at enemies, you get a variety of other magical spells to utilize. Some of them are for traversal (e.g. freeze streams to cross them) while others help you with the next task in the plot. Telepathy lets you get advice on what to do next from helper/mentor characters in the game. (Sometimes helpful, sometimes not -- but it's nice flavoring regardless.) And a shapeshifting spell lets you turn into other characters, which I found especially clever. I'd be interested in seeing this concept expanded upon a lot more in an RPG one day.

In the end Crystalis is one I can say has some solid positive bullet points on paper, but in practice I found actually playing it to be repetitive and tedious. If you love old-school Zelda games and don't mind the grind, it's worth checking out though. The easiest way to play it is in the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection (on all modern systems). It's also a game included among the NES games available for Switch Online subscribers. Either of these will include rewind feature, which can make the combat a lot more manageable.

Kinda neat arpg. Mostly interesting in terms of what it accomplishes for its time rather than anything else. You have a pseudo-zelda 1 combat with spells and rpg-lite elements on top, but enemies are pretty slow and not so interesting to fight for a while. The bosses are cool but a lot of the game ends up being rather grindy in terms of pacing, continuously beating easy enemies up as you go (why shouldn't you? it gives you xp) and challenge doesn't really stay consistent.

If you're looking for a retro slice of arpg life it's worth looking at, but of course, it hasn't aged too well now so skippable otherwise. (5/10)

The difference between NES Crystalis and GBC Crystalis:

= NES Crystalis =
People: "Go forth."
Hero: "To do what? And what is my purpose?"
People: "Eh, maybe we'll get around to telling you tomorrow."

= GBC Crystalis =
People: "Ah, Hero, you've found a leaf. I've prepared a 300-word essay for this occasion, on the purpose of that leaf, where you must go next, and another reminder of what your quest is."