2025 Special - Crystalis

I can't remember if it was 1990 or 1991 when I played Crystalis for the first time. Thankfully, I can remember the first time I completed this game; April 1st, 2025. Yet again it's taken me over thirty years to finish a classic. How embarrassing! It's not a particularly long, difficult or complex game either. If you'll allow me to indulge in an obsolete term, SNK's sole Action RPG is what would be classified as the perfect rental. Or, for the kids who can't wrap their heads around ancient history, then it's the perfect weekend video game. The kind where you can immediately pick up its basics, be transported into another world filled with adventure, and obtain at least one pleasant memory to hold onto. I have some serious guts making such a claim, especially considering I just finished it for the first time a few days ago.

The earliest SNK games on the NES were... bad. Awful, even. Maybe there's somebody out there who had a fondness for Athena, or the terrible port of Ikari Warriors by Micronics, but that somebody positively wasn't me. Their output changed dramatically from 1988 to 1990. Iron Tank, Ikari 3, Guerilla War, and naturally, Crystalis. I might be missing one or two titles, but that is one solid lineup. Iron Tank is a superb adaptation of TNK III, with added features such as multiple paths. Ikari 3 took a terrible arcade brawler and made it work. Guerilla War almost feels like a new game, one that I prefer over the arcade original. I'd like to imagine some alternate timeline where SNK never created the Neo Geo. Instead, they'd find success in the Crystalis franchise as well as other original products for consoles.

Seeing as how I've covered 25 action-adventure games over the past month, one would assume that I'd have gotten sick of them by now. Seriously, just how many sword-swinging dudes can I put up with before the walls start crumbling. Quite a few apparently, provided they maintain some level of quality. The subject of today's review is one of them. Crystalis works on multiple levels. It's instantly engaging, with a tinge of depth to keep the maniacs enthused. The power fantasy extends beyond stabbing slimes to incorporate mastery of the elements; summoning screen-filling explosions, waves of tornadoes, all that other fun stuff. Though there is quite a bit of cave exploration, the game knows when to get creative. Players will see and do a lot in a short but sweet period of time. Again, a perfect rental weekend video game. 

This game has controls that'll instantly activate anyone's neurons. Moving around is smooth with a weapon that is sufficiently punchy. The protagonist stabs very quickly, rewarding fans of button-mashing and auto-fire. Most important is the charge attack. You're going to be charging almost all of the time, and yet there's just the right amount of audio and visual feedback to keep it from being annoying. You'll see and hear the cues, with neither getting in the way of your experience. It's a little detail, but one that I really appreciate. No really, I've been playing Crusader of Centy, a game with a charge move of its own, but it makes this "wruhwruhwruhwruhwruh" sound that drowns out the fantastic music. If only Nextech took a lesson from SNK, am I right? Anyway, the charge attack in Crystalis is great. There's this wonderful rhythm to firing off several projectiles in succession. There's also something of a meta wherein a level 2 charge is maintained just enough to avoid reaching level 3 and potentially wasting MP. I'm a maniac for this sort of stuff.

There are a couple points of contention to this game that I want to visit right now. First is the mandatory grinding. Well, maybe it isn't grinding depending on how you approach it, but it's definitely mandatory. The protagonist will be locked out of one area if they aren't the sufficient level. There could also be an instance where they can't damage a boss if their level isn't high enough. It has annoyed enough people to see a romhack or two, but truthfully, I didn't have a problem. There are a couple primo spots for getting the grind over and done with, my favorite being the plains near the Goa Fortress, where I can unleash blizzards on all of the hapless bow-carrying soldiers. This is one of the few instances of grind time that I don't get tired of.

The second is that enemies are often immune to one or more swords. There are four elemental-themed blades to swap between, and you'll find yourself doing just that to utilize their wall destroying or bridge-building powers. That's all well and good but having to switch weapons to deal with regular enemies might be a sticking point for some. Understandable, but it works for me. Swapping swords never takes long, and enemies still can still be pushed back by a weapon they're immune to. Towards the end of the game, I was running past a lot of monsters anyway (being max level probably contributed to that).  

With those two out of the way, let's get back to the stuff that unequivocally works. The world of Crystalis has caves and castles, but it also has dolphinback riding. There's a toxic forest, mountains to climb, a town where you have to disguise yourself as a woman, etc. Something creative is always happening. You see what the game is going for, spend enough time with it for the "oh that's nice" feeling to settle in, and then just like that it's over. Pristine design. Dungeons are also kept at a very manageable length. Paths branch and there are a couple dead-ends, but nothing too nasty. I'm sure the word pacing has lost all meaning by now, but it's so good here that I have to use it.

There's more to the enemies you'll face than just their elemental immunities. The variety here is really good, with some skillful usage of status ailments. Mutants in this world can poison, paralyze, or petrify. A couple particularly cruel fiends can turn the protag into a monster, greatly hindering their survivability. I prefer this to some games that have a poison dungeon or something and then just forget ailments ever existed. Enemies always having some means of getting under your skin keeps fights interesting. 

Boss-battles tend to be uneven. The toughest nemesis in my play-through was probably the first General, though that could be attributed to the path to his lair being filled with resource-dwindling encounters. Most of the other battles merely consist of dodging a few attacks and then responding with some level 3 charged blasts. This becomes extremely apparent towards the end of the game. The final bosses do tons of damage but can be killed with a couple bolts of lightning. Yeah, not the unequivocal good that I would like to have seen, but the faster something dies, the less I have to complain about. Let's chalk that in the win column.

Crystalis is a classic, a must-play for afficianachos or whomever can appreciate a good-ass game.