Should you play Crystalis?

 Should you play Crystalis?

Sick ass game. You wake up in a cave, go straight into a town, and while asking around, you get directions and your first sword. I like how the game is open right away but has some direction. You’re told that you should talk to the wise man in the north, you find the dude in a cave, and he tells you to get the windmill working again. A separate NPC in town will tell you that an alarm flute can wake people up, but not where to get one or where to use it. After some exploring you will find a store in town that sells an alarm flute. You buy that and go to the windmill cave to find the guard is asleep. Wake him up with the flute, get the key to the windmill and then you can activate it which opens a cave out of the starting valley. 

I love this shit. This game sets the expectation that you will be told what to do but leaves it up to you to figure out how to do it. No hand holding, no quest markers, and not even a quest log. Talking to everyone in each town can get you some clues, but it's up to you to put together the solution. 

My favorite version of this puzzle comes later in the mountains. There are slides that let you return to lower parts of the mountain, kind of like going down ledges in Pokémon. If you run up one, you will slide back down before you reach the top. After talking to one of the wise men, they will tell you, “The ice slide at Mt. Sabre is not only for sliding”. A good hint but it doesn’t solve the puzzle for you. Experimenting with the tools at my disposal in a small area of the map led to figuring out the solution on my own which was very satisfying. 

This game’s approach to storytelling is unique. The first thing you are told is the legend of the land, that humanity destroyed themselves with weapons of mass destruction and decided to abandon technology for magic. They made a tower in the sky that will save humanity if evil returns. You were a hero put in cryosleep for the day when you are needed to save the world from evil. 

Throughout the game you learn that the legend isn’t quite correct. You uncover bits of history from NPC’s during your quest and learn that the actual events don’t match the legend. It’s really cool how the common folk’s legend has changed the story over time, like a generational game of telephone. I cannot praise this approach to storytelling enough. 

The cons to this game is that late in the story the puzzles are too esoteric. An NPC says he lost his statue by the river and wants you to find it for him. You have to stand on one very specific tile near the river that looks identical to all the other tiles around it and only after speaking to the NPC to find the statue. This type of “puzzle” feels more like a time waster, rather than solving a problem. This is when the game can get frustrating and it is worth using a guide. 

Should you play Crystalis? Yes. The puzzles in the first half of the game are super satisfying to figure out, but towards the back half of the game rely on so much trial and error that I used a guide to get through it. The story is intriguing to uncover. The action gameplay is really good. I like how many equipment options you get by the end to augment your combat. Nothing will be more satisfying than summoning a lightning storm using a magic sword to completely annihilate a single blob. 7/10