Game Review: Crystal Project

Game Title: Crystal Project
Released: March 31, 2022
Game Length: 85 hours
Grade: A-

Prelude

What is it?: At first glance, the game may appear to be your stereotypical Japanese role-playing game with the same type of sprites that are seen in games like Final Fantasy, but the developer pivots the gameplay in almost every aspect. Some people might find the direction he takes irritating or downright frustrating. As if directly inspired from Dark Souls, the game barely has any narration and it doesn't force you into any particular direction. You are, in fact, welcome to exploit the system in any way you can and avoid anything you don't want to fight. There are a bunch of "accessibility" options that will allow you to explore the game with quicker rewards, lower difficulty, and implementations of the more traditional experience people are used to. However, offering content that pleases both those who want a challenge and those who do not creates a lot of friction for those not ready to play with an open mind.

Vision: It might help if I explain a little more. The amount of passion inside this $14 game is very impressive. After trying his hand on a smaller project, Andrew Willman started working on the Crystal Project in 2017. By using a lot of supported sources for the art, music, and animation, he managed to build a masterpiece all on his own. Even though the game was completed in 2022, he still continues to converse with people on Steam, Discord, admit his faults, incorporate patches that help alleviate some of the problems, and create new fun gameplay aspects. He even allows you to play a demo of the game since he would hate for people to spend money on something they wouldn't like.

Trial Caves

Feel for the Game: Much of the early parts of the game can be seen from the demo. Your party will consist of four members personally chosen from six initial classes. You'll be thrown into a world where you can hop around in a Minecraft style environment. You'll be able to collect chests in the world (over 500) that provide you consumables, equipment, or "bags" that increase your potion limits. While the game encourages you to explore every corner of the world, there is no need to fret if you see something you aren't able to reach. Some spots will require you to make further progress in the game before finding the right path or height that takes you to the hidden goods. Make good use of the 128 map markers you can place on the maps you obtain from vendors or storage chests. The interconnected regions found much later in the game will require a number of map fragments from those areas (to which there are more than enough to collect so you don't have to find each one). Any areas you visit will retroactively be uploaded to any maps you discover. They will conveniently keep any higher areas undiscovered until you are directly overhead.

Battle Flames: If you were like me at this stage, you might be simply going through the motions. Concepts are slowly introduced through the characters and signs in the world, but a lot will not be explained until the next segment of the game. Equipment is very limited and there isn't a lot you can do for mixing up your tactics. However, the game drastically changes how you encounter enemies. They come in the form of colored flames that function and move according to their type. Some will run in straight lines, hop high off the ground, or fly in the air. You do not have to fight if you don't want to. It is entirely possible to outrun them, cause them to drift off cliffs and into the water, or "tire them out" by running circles around them. According to the developer, you'll soon discover that some are placed as "traps" to punish those who do not oblige by the "puzzles" laid out in the environment. The color of the flame will indicate their difficulty, with your team immediately attracting those that are bright red or repelling the grey ones that are much lower in level. Bosses will display as larger flames and are either guarding crystals, pathways, or optionally found in the environment.

The Castle

Home Base: After you collect your first three crystals, you'll finally reach the capital of the world. Trust me when I say that there is a lot you can do. If you didn't stumble across one already, there are shrines with stones to teleport you to main hubs (or consumable shards if you don't have the funds). You'll find the Lost & Found vendor that allows you to buy all the items you failed to steal from those one-time boss encounters and various other artifacts. There is a garden to grow enemies from seeds in the back. You can change your name, gender (there are indeed slight stat changes whether you are male or female), encounter training dummies, purchase maps, buy various equipment (that increase their supply when you find more locations in the world), combine lower potions to make bigger ones, and heal your party at the inn. If you find the right equipment (all weapons are found inside the capital), resources, and funds, you can craft upgrades. Once you master a class, you can visit any of the class masters (initial ones are hidden inside the Capital) to obtain accessories that increases the LP gained for that class on other members of your party (and can later be upgraded for fun support items). While there isn't any way to rearrange your LP pools, there is a way to change your Growth for a small amount of currency. If you are a little befuddled on the concept like me, imagine your stats increasing a certain way every time you level as a specific class and now want to "tip the scales" towards other classes.

Duck School: Even if you missed out on some of the information (which is something that happened in my case with the Fish Hatchery), the house full of ducks has you covered. You can learn what the various abbreviations mean like HP, TT, AP, LP, MP, PP, and CT. You can learn more about threat and the sub-menu that displays the meters in battle. There are topics about each of the statistics and when certain ones override others. They will explain how you lose 10% of your gold if you fall in battle or none at all if a boss proves too much. You can learn how each weapon is catered to a particular style and how percentages are calculated. Almost everything told by these guys is invaluable to your gameplay.

Battle Tactics: After you spend a good portion of your time in the capital, your first real test on whether you were paying any attention to your characters comes from the fields to the east. The developer made sure each encounter had the potential of destroying your party as he hates the concept of trash mobs. Unfortunately, this creates a sort of Identity Crisis. If you have been avoiding enemies, you would not be gaining any equipment, earning money, obtaining class experience, or gaining growth through levels. If the enemy abilities are able to defeat any one of your party members within a couple of turns, then the game expects you to have the skill set to lower their type of damage, use the appropriate crowd control abilities (like sleep or paralyze), the right classes to avoid counters, and a way to restore HP & MP for long trips. Since I started the game without a rogue or warlock, barely used the three classes gained through the introductory sequence, and did not know you were able to assign a secondary subclass, my experience was utterly terrible to the point of nearly rage-quitting. So I rearranged my classes, turned on the options to increase all gains by 300 percent, and proceeded to backtrack in order to better my class composition and power standing. I also realized that "equipping the best stuff" never calculated beyond their attack value. It didn't take that long before noticing all the flaws this early in the game. Thankfully, the developer has addressed a lot of these issues in the patch following his query to the players by providing tanks more taunt, making sure some skills never miss, mobs reward more experience, and adding much-needed modifiers to basic skills.

The World

The Path: When you pull up your map, everything that is shown is connected in some fashion. The world is indeed round and allows you to reach locations by traveling in either direction. You will find shortcuts through hidden passageways, reach higher by jumping a specific way off things, and "break sequences" by obtaining things in areas outside the scope of your level. Like in the case of the first three crystals, there are generally a few areas that overlap in your progression. Even when there is a guard or item required to advance, there is usually a secondary or third way available that doesn't require you to find a set number of crystals. However, the way these crystals are discovered are dependent on which mounts you have available at the time. One fast mount will allow you to jump at least one square farther and another strong one will allow you to jump an additional tile higher. While the game does tease you with the ability to traverse through water about 25 hours in, getting an actual mount to check out the depths of the ocean won't come until much later in the game. On the other hand, the bird mount allows you to fall with style from the highest peaks to the not-so-high peaks.

Gameplay: So if you gain a new class after discovering a crystal and every encounter needs your full support, how exactly do you find out what works well with each other? You might want to sit down as there is a lot to consider:

• Weapons - what you put in your hands determines how well your character will perform. The ducks will help you learn more about those. So something like bows will lower your accuracy and books will help increase your mana pool. However, certain class skills can only be used with certain equipment. You can passively learn how to hold weapons only other classes may wield but be unable to use any of their skills. These will be listed in the various trees with some early examples as Monk (unarmed/staff), Rogue (dagger and sometimes rapier), Fencer (rapier/sword), and Hunter (bow). Since magic users don't necessarily use "attack" for their skills, they aren't exactly tied to any particular weapon but would do good with a wand, staff, or book.
• Skill Usage - using an ability always "consumes" points from somewhere. While sometimes it might be good to diversify these, it might also be beneficial to build a character with skills that only build from the one pool. It really depends on the circumstances. The most common attributes are attack skills that draw from a pool that slowly builds up over time (AP) or magic skills that pull from a set amount (MP). However, later on you'll discover a wide range of classes that will also use your health or require various consumables. The scholar class is in a unique position where the magic skills it uses must be learned from enemies beforehand.
• Growth - how much you gain in any statistic depends on what class you are at the time you gain a level. So if you gain 20 levels building up your warrior and suddenly wanted to switch to being a wizard, you'll find yourself lacking about 20 points in mind and mana pool. On the plus side, you'll have about 50 more points in your health pool. These small convergences are generally minor but can add up when trying to be as efficient as possible. How much damage a skill does or how much you heal depends on them.
• Passives - every character is allowed 10 passive points (PP) towards a list of things obtained through a class tree. Most of the time, these will allow you to equip a weapon that the new class isn't proficient in. However, there are several other abilities that can help increase the amount of points you earn in a specific pool, activate abilities when you reach critical condition, or other fun modifiers when conditions are met.
• Battle Essentials - there are certain skills that are only available through specific classes. For example, the rogue class has the abilities to steal, run away from battle, and cause an enemy to sleep during their turn. Using items in battle is only available through the chemist. Other skills have been expanded into more than one class like the warrior's ability to "taunt" enemies or how the warlock class can revive a member, reveal the enemy's health bar, and gain health/mana overtime.

Endgame

Summoner: About this time, you should have collected all the classes through the crystals. However, there are still an abundance of material available to you. I hope you were marking those strange tree locations around the world as now is the time to create a summoner and challenge them. There are ten unique encounters that will provide you with some powerful abilities for the class. Most of these are only reachable with a certain kind of mount.

Quintar Breeding: Perhaps the most excruciating aspect of the game that only 9% have achieved in obtaining, you will need to obtain a Golden Quintar that combines the aspects of speed, jump, flight, and dive. While the developer might state that "nothing you get from completing them is mandatory" on the forums, it is required to turn your mastered seals into legendary armor by jumping across the lava pit inside Jade Cavern. Exploring the world becomes much easier too without the need of switching mounts between platforms. Unfortunately, the process of breeding is excessively difficult and unforgiving. Perhaps the easiest and most enjoyable part is collecting the eggs from the various kinds of quintar located across the world. However, you will need to buy hatching equipment, buy food, and then make them happy by completing races. There are five races and you will not obtain any reward - no happy pet, no prize money, no unlocking the next race - unless you come first. You will need to make sure you jump across platforms without falling down once and make perfect maneuvers against some heavy competition. The good news: there are assist options that allow you to automatically win a race from the start. You will need to combine the right kind of quintar with only eight slots available, win enough races to make them happy to breed, and have enough currency to continue the process to the top.

Dungeons: There are a few optional areas that come to mind that don't carry a crystal but still might be worth exploring. Over by the desert, there is the Ancient Labyrinth that will require a magic-only party. There are three runes that can be found nearby that will inform you on which pathways to take within the hidden temple. Make sure not to be surprised by that parting Meteor spell when the final boss dies. Don't forget to check back to the Sky Arena if you didn't defeat the final boss there. Out in the middle of the sea is the giant Sequoia Tree that will require some careful hopping between water platforms. The Castle Ramparts will challenge you with some revamped bosses you have faced before. You'll discover a certain little surprise at the top that sends you to A New World. If you managed to deliver the three books to the ducks, you'll be able to open up the Boss Gauntlet area. I hope you made everyone Valkyries as you die through the exploding bombs in Valhalla. You'll eventually come to your "final" encounter before completing the game.

Secret Ending: If you have been paying attention to the Archive, you'll notice that there is a wide-range of hidden bosses and equipment all over the world. However, there are a specific chain of bosses located at the bottom of the ocean. You'll need to defeat four of them for their eyes and defeat the conscript within the tram system. This will allow you to fight against another boss that will ultimately drop the Proof of Merit that you can deliver to the final boss for a harder challenge.

Tactics

Miscellaneous: While it can be fun to explore the various classes, there are certain recommendations. I found this list to be quite truthful in the end. I also soon realized that enemy abilities can be accessed in the sub-menus with the name of the skill to the right and what they do in the ability list to the left. You can save wherever you want but you can only change your class and set your home at specific locations. You can pay to find out more about monsters in your Archive. There are 40 areas to explore and a treasure finder obtainable from the sea that reveals all chests in the world on your map. There is no need to be so anxious hopping across platforms in most areas since touching water, lava, tar, and spikes will simply reset you to the last piece of land you touched with no penalty. Family Feature is turned on by default and censors a few monsters.

New Game Plus: Upon clearing the game, you'll be dropped back to the start of the game. Don't go anywhere! Talk to the first Nan there and you'll be able to start a new adventure. You can choose what things will carry over in your "Reawakening Options" like classes, level, experience, and equipment. You can choose between standard, initial settings before the difficulty adjustment in Vanilla Mode, or Chaos Mode. There will be a list of limiters like how many characters you can have in your party. You can then randomize the features of the world. While you can't rearrange the physical world, you can choose to switch things up like items, classes, bosses, or even your spawn location.

Summary

Review: The heart of the game and the passion of the developer helped mold a unique experience that brings a fresh take at the traditional turn-based team party perspective. While the freedom to choose how to proceed in the game is entirely up to the player, there is a huge contradiction between advancing through the world and making progress for your characters. There is an expectation to avoid more powerful enemies that are purposely added to test your mobility. Some enemies test your willpower through attrition when you repeatedly fail the obstacles that are placed in dungeons. Despite being able to avoid almost every encounter, you'll still need to find a way to level up. Equipment can be obtained through random drops, stolen from enemies, upgrading your crafted equipment by finding ore in the wild, bought from vendors, or found in chests. You'll struggle to balance between learning new classes and optimizing the good ones when every encounter, even those from somewhat lower levels, can destroy your party rather quickly without utilizing the right modifiers at the right time. There is no shame using the accessibility options or lowering the difficulty to minimize any sort of frustration you might find in your challenging adventure through uncertain doom. I personally used quite a bit of them. If you aren't shy about jumping platforms, adapting different tactics, and figuring out where you need to go next all on your own, then this would be a great game to try out.