#Crystalis | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

demonfox38 · 13 days ago

Text

Completed - Crystalis

Nothing like enduring one catastrophe to inspire playing through another one.

So, here’s a timeline for you:

October 1st, 1997—According to this game, the world we knew came to a fiery, missile-riddled end. Despite this, reality continued.

September 23rd, 2019—I bought "Crystalis" on eBay.

October 1st, 2019—I put the game in my console and discovered it accidentally lined up with the 1997 date. Chuckles were had.

September 20th, 2023—During a yearly video game battery check, it appeared that no save files for "Crystalis" were loading. I grabbed a replacement battery and took the game to my parents’ house for my father to resolder. Procrastination left it untouched until…

June 22nd, 2024—A flood occurred in my parents’ hometown. The volume of water that came with this submerged the entire basement of their split-foyer home, causing significant property and structural damage. (But, hey. At least the foundation didn’t collapse.)

July 1st, 2024—While cleaning up, my father found the games I had left for his repair. Upon opening them up, I determined that all three were destroyed beyond salvaging (of which "Crystalis" was one.)

July 11th, 2024—I purchased a new copy of "Crystalis" on eBay.

There's a funny little trauma that happens after you've survived a flood. Like, you'd think a heavy rain or standing water in the streets would be more triggering after something like that. Which, hey. I'm not big on that, either. But, the real brain zap comes from remembering just how much was lost. Like, reading about religious texts and remembering the copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead that used to be in the basement. Going through record albums at an antique shop and recalling how both of my parents had a copy of the "Star Wars" album before they were married. Seeing pictures of the couch that was older than my sister and knowing it was torn apart and hauled away as nothing more than ruined trash. That's not even getting into the more practical nightmares of dealing with losing all of our vehicles.

Don't get me wrong. Weirdly, I'm glad that I was there to help my parents get through this mess. I was a major contributing factor in getting our pets to safety, and I know I saved some significant items that were in the basement (guns, ammunition, and a good deal of electronics.) But, there was definitely a price to pay for all of that.

I'm just lucky that I can afford the ~$400 replacement car payment…

As a way to cap this shit-tier year off, I decided to finally get around to playing "Crystalis." Seems like direct therapy, right? Beat the game so that, in the event it too is destroyed, I can at least have the memory of having gotten through it once. Keeping that in mind may have paid off not only for myself, but for the game as well. Because, let me be honest. It was jumping on my nerves like a monkey on a couch. But, its potential fate could have ended in a watery grave with a popped, corroded battery splattering all over its PCB. Few games are nasty enough to deserve a death like that.

"Crystalis" is a 1990 fantasy action game released by SNK. In it, you play as an amnesiac, mute dude-from-a-tube who has been awakened in a post-apocalyptic, futuristic version of Earth. And by that, I mean, you have to use elemental swords to shoot magic at creatures that may have once been other animals, but now roughly resemble something from Gary Gygax's sketchpad. The end goal is to stop Draygon (a villain whose name turns out to be very on-the-nose) and his four henchmen from spreading its abusive empire across of what is left of the planet, as well as lassoing the strange floating tower hovering in the sky.

Maybe you can get some wise people to help you. Maybe your counterpart girl-in-a-tube could help you out, too. Ya know. Once she's done being kidnapped.

A layman might describe this game as "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" but developed 30 years in the past. That's missing a significant data point. See, I know what this game idolizes. I know what photos it hides in its high school locker, what perfume it wears, why it styles its hair in the way it chooses. This game adores "Ys II." Maybe it wants to emulate it. Maybe it wants to wear it as a second skin. But, oh man. "Ys II." That's the DNA that serves as the base to this game's genetic structure.

Is it just a vibe check? Perhaps. But, it's making my intuition crackle like a Geiger counter. The field to snow to cave progression, the tower in the sky motif, the people enslaved and set in stone, the missing kid, the weird animals living in isolation and fear, the important female figure that is almost completely useless, the limited inventory, the emphasis on magic…there's just a lot here that brings "Ys II" to mind. I'm not faulting "Crystalis" for this. I know it's not the only game that has done this. (Looking at you, "Lagoon.") I just want it to know that I know. I know. I accept.

Also, not everything's about "Zelda" games. (Although, "Neutopia" is. But, that might be a subject for another time.)

While I find the premise interesting, I don't think "Crystalis" actually does much with it. Without two screens at the beginning and three screens at the end, this may have just been a straight fantasy game. There's not exactly a lot of broken-down cars or city rubble lying around. I wouldn't say it's as graceless as Roger Corman's "Teenage Caveman" when it comes to its messaging or apocalyptic events, but God, is it tiptoeing right up to that line. Frankly, a lot of the environment and enemy design from "Faxanadu" may have worked better for this world than what was presented. But, again—this is not something to drown the game over.

The appeal of "Crystalis" comes more down to its gameplay. For certain Nintendo addicts craving a top-down fantasy game with real-time combat and exploration elements, this will scratch the itch. Personally, I was struggling to get along with it. Exploring the world? Fine. The dungeons were a bit tricky, but it wasn't something that memorization or following an online map couldn't solve. Fighting? Eh…

A few things were getting in the way of my interfacing with this game. First, my left thumb was killing me. Like, if I went over an hour of gameplay, it would scream at me. It's probably some residual damage from going over a hundred hours in "Vampire Survivors" recently. Additionally, I was playing this through my HD TV set. While it does have an AV hookup in the back, it's not exactly Retrotink quality, if you catch my drift. The video feed is lossy with colors. It takes more time to process the image than a direct AV to CRT set would. Between pain and questionable video performance, I was having trouble maneuvering through the game.

Not that those problems are the game's fault. Those are factors well outside of its control. Inflicting my dude with a status ailment any time he so much as shoulder-checked an enemy was, though.

I don't think this game is set up well for typical sword combat. Because getting hit by an enemy will often result in poisoning, paralysis, or calcification, you're going to want to keep back and give yourself room to dodge. Additionally, you are granted projectiles by charging up your sword. So, while you could go face-to-face with some drooling ghoul, you could also just hang back a second and let some elemental volley do your dirty work for you.

Warning: if you do have any light sensitivity, skip this game. The elemental charge for the Thunder Sword is severe.

While I didn't enjoy handling standard encounters, I did find the boss fights in this game to be interesting. Most of them come down to "memorize the patterns; dodge the projectiles." Despite this superficial simplicity, they can often be challenging, especially if you aren't packing enough health and/or MP restoring items. The game is usually good about letting you continue from the boss room, should you be wiped across the floor. Just stick with it, apply some neurons, and victory is usually assured within two or three attempts.

The choice of available save spots is irritatingly low, by the way. It's basically overworld areas and cities. No boss camping for you. You do that dungeon, suck up your failures, and keep continuing, young man. (Of all the things this game didn't take from "Ys II"…)

MP conservation will help you survive more grueling encounters. The game is somewhat liberal with the support spells you get, initially starting you off with a healing spell. It does require you to keep holding the A button until you are maxed out, however. (This will likely drain half of your MP bar in the process.) You do eventually get a spell for reversing status ailments, but not before going through great pains to get it. Barriers are vital for eating boss projectiles at the end, and proper use of the Change spell will net you strong items. Hell, you even get a teleport spell, for when you need to GTFO.

Or, you could just press A+B on your primary controller, then A on a secondary controller. (Assuming you unequip your spells, anyway.) Then, you can just teleport to one of sixteen checkpoints whenever cost-free. Thank you for the oversight, dev team!

You will have to manage your level in order to improve your health and damage output. It's fairly low, only capping out at 16. You will want to max that out before the final two dungeons. Additionally, you should be swapping your swords around from time to time. Some enemies are only immune to specific kinds of elements, so you will want to have the right sword to handle them. (Weirdly enough, some rocks require different elements to break them. I get using the Water Sword to freeze waterways, but needing different elements to break down rocks? Very strange and picky…)

Also, expect to grind for cash. Reality's economy isn't in your favor, and neither is this game's. Although, you really can't hold too many items. It's 8 consumables, 8 accessories, 8 key items, and 8 spells. You'll probably end up pawning off your armor and shields from time to time to make room, as you can only carry four of those. Again—you're going to want to get good at managing your MP. Maybe review what your accessories do as well. God knows I accidentally made the game harder on myself by not using more than the Gas Mask for half the game…

In terms of technical execution, "Crystalis" is…well, I'd say that a static screenshot of it looks better than "The Legend of Zelda" or "Faxanadu." It does suffer from common MM3 mapper rendering issues (think the menu rendering bugs from "Mega Man 3.") There are also several instances where the glut of sprites on screen results in dropped sections or slowdown, particularly with bosses. The music is also okay, but some of the instrumentation is a little high-pitched for my liking.

It's doing much better than the Micronics port of "Athena," at least. I feel like that game is accidentally going to damage my NES every time I boot it up. (As opposed to a Wisdom Tree game, which is deliberately going to war with the lock-out chip. Cursed behavior…)

Speaking of Athena—I saw that purple girl character named Asina. I know what's been botched in translation. (I wonder if Mesia was supposed to be Messiah, as well.) While the translation initially starts okay, it does fall apart towards the end. Particle drops, typos, one NPC making no logical sense. All the fun of 30+ year old translation work…

If this game has a fatal flaw—as in, may have contributed to my first copy being destroyed—it is definitely with the menu design. Pressing the Start button allows you to see your current status and equipment. Pressing Select gets you into the item and equipment screens. Loading a game requires you to hit Select, then Start, then navigate to either Save or Load, then selecting your file. That is some goofy-ass shit. (So is pressing Up + A on a second controller to force a save screen a la Zelda, but that's significantly fewer screens and commands to remember.) Because of this nonsense, I've often wondered if my battery check for "Crystalis" was wrong and I just didn't see that the game and its battery were working. I wonder if it died for nothing.

That's the flood trauma, man. Wondering what more you could have done...

I'm disappointed that I didn't jive more with "Crystalis." I think it's a decent enough game. Definitely, not something that deserved to be destroyed as horridly as it was. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for its shenanigans. It's not like my own human body is a perfectly programmed interface, either. Sometimes, there's just not chemistry happening. (As long as it's not causing a battery to short circuit and explode. Am I right?)

The NES version of "Crystalis" is fairly cheap for a cartridge game, running around $20.00 USD as of December 2024. I've heard that it was on Nintendo Switch Online, but I'm not certain about the specifics of how that works or if it is still available. Given some of the game's annoyances, you may want to find a way to raise the black flag on it. Get it in a program that will let you take save states whenever you'd like. That may significantly help your experience.

But, hey. Don't feel like you have to take my opinion on this. I was the dumbass that spent several hours cleaning off and saving copies of such wondrous NES titles like "Milon's Secret Castle", "Karnov", and "Dirty Harry" post flood. They certainly deserved my mercy less than "Crystalis." Perhaps, its fate as well.

I may have my sentimentalities misplaced.

#post game evaluation #crystalis

6 notes · View notes