Review jademonkey 2/5 · May 19, 2022
Crystal Project is the distilled mixture of Final Fantasy 3/5 and the Metroidvania formula. You explore a map, fight enemies in JRPG combat, do jumping puzzles, get crystals to unlock new classes, do more jumping puzzles, get new movement options to open up new jumping puzzles, do some more jumping puzzles, and fight never-ending waves of annoying battles that are …
Crystal Project is the distilled mixture of Final Fantasy 3/5 and the Metroidvania formula. You explore a map, fight enemies in JRPG combat, do jumping puzzles, get crystals to unlock new classes, do more jumping puzzles, get new movement options to open up new jumping puzzles, do some more jumping puzzles, and fight never-ending waves of annoying battles that are difficult enough to avoid they may as well be random.
It's almost really good, but the over-reliance on jumping puzzles with awkward JRPG voxel movement mechanics and costly failures, along with the increasingly annoying "random" battles make this a complete slog by the back half of the mid-game. If you don't mind grinding and spending lots of time reviving your guys that got OHKO'd constantly, and also don't mind not having a storyline, you'll probably get a lot out of this. I mean that sincerely -- there's some really good stuff here in the exploration, classes, combat mechanics, etc. Unfortunately, if you have limited patience for any of those issues, you'll probably break down and quit somewhere between 20-30 hours like most of the negative reviews [on Steam].