Crystar Review – For a dead sister!

If you haven’t seen Crystar on a platform other than Switch, I’ll take a look at the beginning. It is an RPG developed by Gemdrops and originally released by the company in Japan in October 2018 for the PlayStation 4 console only.

I’ll also tell you right off the bat that Crystar is telling us the very compelling story of a high school student, Rei Hatada, who is trying to get her little sister Mirai back. Which is quite problematic because Mirai is just dead. In the game, they are classified between dungeon crawling, combat, and storytelling pieces that aren’t always just about your personality. At the same time, in Crystar, you will encounter sequences that act as a pause between exploration and combat, during which you can relax, gain strength and prepare for the next battle. But don’t count too much on Persona.

• Platform: Nintendo Switch (peer-reviewed version), PlayStation 4, PC
• Publication date: April 1, 2022 (August 30, 2019 for PS4, August 27 for PC)
• Producer: Gems
• Distribution: NIS America
• Genre: RPG
• Czech location: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 4.2 GB
• Game time: 50 hours
• Availability: 12+
• Sales version: box / digital
• Price: 1,399 CZK

Sleep in the dungeons

The Switch console is rightly perceived as not very powerful gaming hardware, so it has a lot of games on its account that it will find here and, most likely, will not even launch. But Crystar proves that even larger parts can work on this console hybrid. This gives JRPG fans a nice opportunity to play their favorite genre outside the home.

The plot, cut out of the trash, but in fact is not much different from other JRPGs.

As I mentioned in the introduction, in the game we follow the fate of Rey, who is in Purgatory looking for the soul of her sister Mirai. However, you will get to this mysterious place unwittingly thanks to the mysterious Princess Revenant, but you will not stay in touch with her. On the contrary, you will be approached by a pair of completely different demons named Mephis and Pheles, who pretend to be local administrators. Thanks to them, Rey gets her own armor-forged bodyguard, and also learns how to counter other common Revenants and other very unpleasant monsters who live their afterlife here. But you will also come across innocent souls that will cause you completely opposite feelings. Ray, too, will eventually find friends here, and together with them, of course, will set out to destroy Princess Revenant, giving Mira a second chance at life.

A plot cut from the trash, but essentially not much different from other JRPGs that I have probably played or you have played. And if you already own a few of these games, the story can feel relatively predictable in some parts. And it happens to you several times that you evaluate certain moments of the plot even before they happen.

Girls pull on one rope

In addition to the sister looking for Rey, other girls will fall into your hands, and I confess that I liked them more than the dead heroine herself. Every girl has a distinct trait that makes her a more charming creature, whether she’s the more or less self-proclaimed older sister of Kokoro, the very serious student council president Sena, or the completely “fucked up” and fun-loving Nanana. Also, if you’ve seen the anime, you’ll quickly get used to the characters.

If you’ve watched anime, you’ll quickly get used to the characters.

At first glance, Crystar looks very simple, but this is just a successful mimicry, because it has real depth. If you approach it in such a way that you obviously “turn off your brain” and just run around dungeons and brandish a sword, something important may elude you. Moreover, not all enemies are the same, even those that look the same at first glance. Some withstand much more, and this method forces players to identify resistant enemies first and eliminate easier targets first.

The second option is to fill the Supermeter with hits, and once that meter is full, Rey or other characters will be able to summon their guards. This enhanced state increases your attack power for a limited time. In this state, you can also perform one ultimate attack, which can destroy several weaker monsters at once.

For me personally, the one that paid off the most was bringing the individual girls together. The strong Kokoro can only hit one target with his fists, while Rei and Sen are armed with slashing weapons. They are not that strong, but they hit everything in that direction, and then Nanana is a typical classic ranger. All girls still have a few SP-consuming abilities, but their effectiveness is either truly amazing or, conversely, widespread. Successfully combining all the options, I guarantee you that even on the highest difficulty and a large number of enemies, you will not die in battle.

Shadows in Paradise…or Purgatory

It’s nice that the fights did not cause technical problems and the frame rate remained stable even when using special functions, during area actions, superiority of enemies, or all together. But the Switch hasn’t been immune to boss fights. During the final impact, after which the monster was hit, the console got slightly stuck. The pause was on the order of tenths of a second, but was always noticeable.

What worries me more is objects bouncing around while exploring Purgatory dungeons.

What worries me more is objects bouncing around while exploring Purgatory dungeons. And there are not many. It is most pronounced in sections without turns, where you often see the end of the road, but it suddenly continues. Or buildings suddenly appear instead of clouds and enemies jump onto an empty area. This technique, which does not draw everything at once, is very often used to reduce the load on the system. But usually it is hidden by walls or darkness, but here we move in sunny clouds, so everything is much more noticeable.

Despite these performance issues, I’m sure Crystar will find many supporters on the Switch. At the same time, however, I recommend the game to anyone who has not yet played it on another platform, where there was a slight degradation in graphical details. But then again, you have all the DLC for one investment.

Thanks to NIS America for providing Crystar for review. You can also buy the game from the Xzone.cz store.