Amazing RPG Action on the NES: Crystalis - A Review | hungrygoriya

foreign there are quite a few RPGs that  Grace the enormous NES library and while   turn-based combat can be a blast when it's  done well my heart is always best captured   by action adventure games I've played  a few so far that I've really enjoyed   but I was always curious about one touted to  be one of the best by many people Crystalis   the events that set the stage for the adventure  are pretty Grim after a civilization was flattened   To The Ground by War all technological advances  in science were banished forcing people back to   a simpler time this peaceful era lasted for a  hundred years until a magician named Draygon   was tempted by the powers of the old ways  he combined the ancient Technologies with   his magic and crafted a machine that could  emulate his own abilities all in an effort   to Lord over other people in the realm some  of the leaders of the land retaliated against   dragon's efforts by crafting four Swords of the  elements when combined they would form the only   blade capable of defeating the Rogue Overlord the  Crystalis dragon realized this but failed in his   attempts to destroy the weapons he was instead  forced to hide them away and punish the leaders   responsible by stripping them of their magical  abilities one day while studying the ancient text   describing the Great War the leaders came across  a record of a valiant and Powerful magician who   died as a prisoner years prior seeing him as  their only hope they set out to to find him   and bring him back from the dead and his are the  shoes you step into as the player the shoes of a   hero who has long since lost his memory and has  no idea about his Destiny as the world's savior   the first few moments of the game do a good  job of establishing this you bust out of a   sealed cave and scare the pants off of a nearby  loiterer before you zombie on into town in terms   of skill or power you've retained none of it  from your former existence as a warrior and   start out with no levels or belongings to your  name thankfully there are some nice people that   have been expecting you and after meeting a few of  them and getting your first task it's out into the   Wilderness to start the adventure after beating  up on a few of the local slimes and tiger dudes   you'll soon come to realize that there aren't  really too many places that you can go at first   most of the game unfolds this way you'll reach a  new region but you can't go too much further ahead   until you hit up a town and maybe a few caves  for some plot related triggers to unlock the   next chapter saying that crystalis is linear would  be an understatement but I actually really like   when games are planned this way I prefer it over  a wide open world with several ongoing tasks since   that can get overwhelming pretty quick arbitrary  blockades like a non-functioning windmill or a   guy who wouldn't let me borrow his boat were good  indicators that I'd left something undone which   helped me to stay on track thankfully though you  don't just Shuffle between locations on a Mindless   Journey that's completely prescribed there are  lots of things that embellish the quest like a   constant flow of townspeople as well as places  to scour for new items and secrets exploration   and combat are the two main foundations of this  game and both demand some attention to detail   if you're hoping to ever see the game's end making  progress here follows the usual recipe of speaking   to people to trigger quests and then venturing out  to complete them now even though what I was being   asked to do was spelled out in plain English I  still found myself regularly losing track of a   quest thread or two I'm not sure if it was just  me or if there was something occasionally lost in   translation but I can think of a couple of times  where I completely and utterly stalled with no   idea what to do this is undoubtedly a note-taking  kind of game where you'll need to include not   only what your current task is but also who you'll  need to revisit when you find some other important   stuff down the line if you happen to forget some  of those tidbits you might find yourself stuck   for hours until you stumble into the solution  by accident lots of the game is linked together   by various fetch questing but honestly some of  this starts to feel tiresome pretty early on the   people in this realm are incredibly absent-minded  almost every request involves someone asking you   to find something they've lost mostly because  they can't be bothered to go out and look for   it themselves the number of people that need you  to locate one of their misplaced yet extremely   important personal belongings was staggering  to put it lightly it didn't take me too long   to start not so silently judging these folks for  how irresponsible they were and it made me start   doubting whether they were even worth saving from  the crushing reign of draygon at all but anyway   the reason I got so cranky at these people is  because of how thoroughly you had to check places   out it's much more involved than just exhausting  all the dead ends in a Maze-y cave looking for a   big obvious chest plenty of lost items are just  lying around in a random patch of land and to   locate them you had to park your character in just  the right spot making finding stuff as unique as   it was frustrating for me in these situations an  NPC might indicate that they dropped something in   a general space like a nearby cave or near some  water and while you're searching around there's   nothing to let you know that you're in the right  place to begin with since there really aren't that   many landmarks to go off of there's not even any  indication on the ground that something's hidden   there either so all you can really do is make an  educated guess and cross your fingers that you'll   find it I will say that it could have been much  worse like needing to select search from a menu   on every tile like in Dragon Warrior or in the 7th  Saga but regardless it didn't make Quest hunting   a lot bumpier once you know you know of course  but playing for the first time I spent way too   long hunting around all the while doubting I  was even in the right spot in the first place   at least the music was fantastic company while my  brain was spinning on all these fetch quests the   soundtrack is easily one of the most memorable  I've heard on the NES especially because of how   atmospheric it is you fly between The Adventurous  jaunty Overworld tune to what plays in the creepy   caves which also conveniently reminds me of the  theme from The Outer Limits no matter where you   find yourself going in crystalis the music is  always right there to kick up the immersion to   a higher level visually the game is pretty nice  as well there's not a lot of sprite animation to   speak of and I couldn't stop gawking at the  main character's putter feet but the game's   palette is bright and inviting as long as you're  not deep inside one of the many many brown caves   with strangely colored walls I would have liked a  little more variety in those areas since you spend   a lot of time roaming around in them save for the  occasional shop interaction where you get into   this neat little side view the rest of the game  plays from a top-down perspective whether you're   roaming Outdoors visiting towns or combing through  caves the action never really changes modes so to   speak the main character's movement is Zippy and  a tremendous improvement over other games like it   because you can actually move in eight directions  instead of four this makes for some fast-paced   fighting lining up your weapon in games like the  Legend of Zelda or Faria a world of mystery and   danger just pales in comparison to how sharp  combat feels here whether I was attacking or   sidestepping some of the faster flying enemies I  was glad for the extra pep in this little guy's   step the only time I found this speed annoying  was trying to get around in tight confines with   too many townspeople since conversations queue  up by bumping into NPCs it was a little too easy   to initiate them unintentionally on the way by  while most of these folks will repeat their lines   if you speak to them a second time I was worried  about accidentally missing something important by   prematurely canceling some text I didn't mean to  trigger in the first place thankfully this never   happened but either way I much prefer initiating  conversation with a button press rather than   smashing into people a lot of the game's variety  comes from its ever-changing enemy roster and how   it's intimately tied to mechanics involving the  four Elemental swords monsters can be found in   virtually every setting of The Game and you'll  find yourself up against the usual array of   forest friends and cave dwellers right alongside  alien and fantasy monsters while a couple of them   have some tricks up their sleeves most of them  just walk menacingly towards you if they even   care at all other than those aerial enemies  I mentioned I didn't really find the actual   Act of combat all that engaging on its own what  made it compelling was derived from exploiting   a fiend's Elemental weaknesses and resistances  which is The Game's main gimmick so to speak as   you recover the different swords you'll find that  some of the weapons work against some monsters   While others just don't at all now while I thought  that this was a neat aspect its execution was a   little uneven it wasn't so bad when nearly all  monsters in a single area could be hurt by one   sword which makes good logical sense if they're  all living together in a similar climate or biome   but in this case there were quite a few examples  of monsters in the same place having different   resistances which forced constant weapon switching  and just to be clear it's not that an incompatible   sword does less damage than the best one for the  job the issue is that it won't even so much as   put a dent in your opponent if it's the wrong  one to swap to a different weapon you have to   rummage through the menu every time which I  found really bogged down the flow of combat   it wasn't unbearable but in a couple of places  where literally every other enemy was invincible   to one of your swords it was far from pleasant  as a quick side note here you might think it'd   just be easier to run from the monsters you can't  harm and focus on fighting with a single weapon   instead while that's definitely a strategy to  consider I didn't like leaving too many enemies   alive grinding for experience is necessary but  I'll talk more about that shortly I think the   elemental mechanic might have been improved a  lot if you could at least tell something about   an enemy's alignment just by looking at it like  their color for instance these little intuitive   features just didn't exist here meaning that trial  and error was the only way to figure this stuff   out in the end these are relatively small gripes  that didn't really impact My overall opinion   of the game but if this is the worst part of the  fighting the best parts by far are the accessories   that you can equip along with each sword finding  the corresponding ball and bracelet meant that   you could fire off a projectile by charging up an  attack and releasing its Fury from a safe distance   I loved this and I leaned into it pretty heavily  throughout the entire game the only unfortunate   thing about it is that some of the sword's best  abilities use MP I usually save most of my magic   points for healing or teleporting back to town  when I need to but on the bright side the MP based   moves are only accessible when you choose to equip  one of the bracelets I spent most of my adventure   with them off and I can't say how grateful I was  that it was possible to play that way if I'd been   forced into a permanent upgrade after finding  each bracelet and had to time my charge attacks   to avoid using MP when I didn't want to I would  have loathed the fighting without question to   Heap that much nonsense on top of what I already  felt was a rather tedious experience with all   the Sword Swapping may have pushed me over the  edge but thankfully that wasn't the case while   I didn't use them too often I will say that the  MP attacks definitely had their time to shine but   that was usually during rumbles with the various  bosses these encounters felt like chaos incarnate   between this green filling projectiles teleport  supporting enemies and the break-neck speed at   which everything moves it was really tough to  keep up sometimes I usually ended up stumbling   into a fight learning a little bit about it before  quickly dying followed by making the Walk of Shame   back to try again the Dungeons and caves where  these fights are located were often a long slog to   make it through in one piece being a magician you  do eventually get that healing spell I mentioned   along with an assortment of others just by moving  through the motions of the plot but I never felt   like the MP pool was large enough for everything  that I wanted to do the base sword charges were   usually more than enough to get the job done in  regular combat but I didn't hesitate to let loose   with some offensive magic when it was called for  now I did touch on grinding earlier and this game   is far from free of it every enemy kill gets you  a little bit of experience and while the levels   help by increasing your max HP and MP the biggest  benefit is really the money there are a lot of   things to pick up throughout the adventure while  you'll find much of it through exploring most   New Towns present an exciting plot related object  that you'll need to advance as well as fancy new   equipment or restoratives to stock up on and for  those reasons money was always the one limiting   factor that saw me retreating into the wild to  scout out the best grind spots if I could fix one   thing it would be the crushingly small inventory  since I hate dropping perfectly good stuff when I   run out of room deep in a labyrinth either way  I personally don't mind a grind but it was a   shame that the leveling didn't organically keep up  with the pace of the game this wasn't unusual for   games of this era but it would have been a nice  surprise at least when he went shopping you had   the advantage of not only knowing what you were  looking at in the stores but also what everything   did because of the amazingly detailed manual  descriptions I do feel like the booklet gives a   little bit too much away in some of these but on  the bright side most of it only makes sense once   you have the context of the game around you  excellent manuals are truly hard to find but   this one's awesome crystalis is without question  the most polished action RPG experience I've had   on the NES so far it's got everything you'd want  from the genre with great controls and Innovative   combat mechanics even if the fighting itself can  feel a bit stuffy once in a while the cohesive   storyline was also a major highlight for me the  ending didn't really wrap up everything as nicely   as I might have wanted it to but the journey from  beginning to end was certainly a delightful one   that supplied a good mix of humor and tension  along the way if you're planning to play any   RPGs on the NES this one's essential if you want  to enjoy some of the best the system has to offer   [Music]

Channel: Hungry Goriya

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Id: 48xN3BJhr-k

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023