Crystar is one of those games where you see a trailer of it that shows no gameplay of it just only the game's introduction that leaves you to question what the game is even about. Eventually more information and trailers regarding the game finally comes out and people eventually started to know what the game is. Crystar is an Action RPG by the developers at Gemdrops that was released last year in Japan for the PlayStation 4 with this year is when the west would finally get our hands on it not only for the PlayStation 4 but also the PC as well on Steam. It is a game with the central focus on crying tears, sadness and sorrow with that being portrayed as a way of growing stronger and on paper that sounds odd at first but becomes something that fits fine for a decent Anime Action RPG experience. For the most part the game is a well told tear driven storyline that is mostly hampered down by the repetitive gameplay which will cause players to draw out their tears.
As protagonist Rei Hatada who hardly ever goes to school she finds herself trapped in purgatory alongside her sister Mirai and shortly after arriving there she ends up killing her in a fit of rage and then has a tearful breakdown over it. Rei then signs a contract with two demons Mephis and Pheles and then becomes an Executor and then becomes tasked with collecting seven crystals of Idea to be able to gain revival for Mirai. Later on though the main characters go through other moments involving a woman in black Anamnesis, one who calls herself the Revenant Princess and also memory reservoirs which give out each of the characters' backstories with those moments having a hand drawn out artstyle to them. Crystar's writing is actually really good and the English Dub voice acting is surprisingly really good even though the game's music tends to drown out that the characters are saying. Thank goodness for the subtitles and also the game does give you the option of choosing between the English voice track or the original Japanese Voicetrack options with English subtitles.
As you would expect from the game you can expect to see a lot of characters crying as there are plenty of tearful and emotional moments that will give players some feels that will make them feel sorry for the characters troubles in which players will feel sorry for them. Like I said the game is heavily involved with crying tears and for the way the game handles that is actually pretty well handled even if some moments are bound to be very upsetting for a PEGI: 12+ rated game. The main characters are actually really likeable and have quite a decent attachment to them while also having a fair amount of character development going for them. Sen Megumiba the best character in the game chooses to fight alongside Rei as a means of wanting to upholding Justice by not only following the Laws above everything else as influenced by her father, caring for the innocent whilst also punishing the evils of the Revenants to pursue the Justice she believes in making her a strong character. Rei herself is also a surprisingly decent character and a decent protagonist, although she tends have her share of breakdowns whilst going on and on about wanting to obtain her sister's revival but she is doing this to hold her sister Mirai's hands again and gain her forgiveness for killing her which is fair enough. She does also give out feelings for those she fights and later on afterwards gains resolve to hold her own against those who dragged her to purgatory making her a very emotional character. Crying tears doesn't just carry into the storyline but it is frequently used as a game mechanic as well. For starters pressing L1 on the controller will make your character start crying tears out which fills up the Tear Gauge on the bottom left of the screen at the cost of your character's SP, during their cries you hear each character say dialogue about what they could have done to have prevented this or that from happening if they weren't so weak among other things and when the meter is full the Tear Gauge is then used to summon your guardian who aids you in combat kind of like summoning a Strand in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure where those guys aid you in a fight. Three characters have their guardians which assists them in battle until the meter is depleted and the guardians themselves can also inflict a counter attack sometimes which helps out quite a fair bit. You can also use the L1 button again in the state to unleash the final attack which deals massive damage before the guardian disappears. The Fourth character Nanana instead transforms into her Aberrant transformation where she inflicts massive damage and unleash her special attack before turning back to normal but she has no counter attacks as seeing that she has no guardian.
Tears are also used for purification as well. During the course of the game you'll encounter enemies called Revenants which are the souls with the black halos above their heads and also have self conscious and are trying obtain revival in their own way by attacking other souls or living humans that have been dragged into purgatory that includes Rei and her companions. By killing them in battle they leave out a torment which gives out one of their last moments they have before they died in the real world which can be purified when in Rei's bedroom. When you chose to purify torments Rei will dig out a book which I assume to be a rather sad story that is very depressing and emotional she starts breaking into tears turning the torments into Sentiments which acts as the weapons, armour and accessories that your characters can equip for battle. What is unique about the Sentiments is that each weapon or armour Sentiment will have a sentence which corresponds to the character such as Rei having regrets, Kokoro wanting vengeance and so forth, it adds a bit of extra character developers and it's nice touch to have in the game. They can be upgraded by combining two of the same name alongside having plenty of Essence and required thought materials which make your equipment stronger which not only makes your character stronger in combat but also helps complete the sentence that each Sentiment is written. If you are also lucky you'll also might unlock Sentiments that will have one or two customization slots which with the Thought Materials can add effects to the Sentiments like increased Health, stats or protection to a status effect like bleeding, confusion or paralysed or the ability to recover a small portion of health every 10 seconds. While it helps to make your equipment as efficient as possible but however you don't control over what effects you get which is both a good and bad thing. It's a good thing because you might get an upgrade you want but it might also give you an upgrade that you might not want so you end up using a fair bit of your resources getting the upgrades you want. It's not really a big deal or anything just something if you really want to upgrade equipment effectively.
On the gameplay side of things Crystar is an Action RPG upmost and foremost where the objective is to go through each of the game's Ordeals which are these maze like dungeons where you go from the beginning of the map to where the teleporter is taking you to the next area defeating enemies known as Specters and Revenants along the way. Some floors will just require you to go to a spot on the map where an event will occur and also you get a boss fight to do as well. Defeating enemies earns experience points in which levels up your characters and increasing their strength and there also items scattered around in each area to collect. Like I said killing Revenants will drop a Torment which can be purified into Sentiments but also provide thoughts they had when they were alive providing some tragic backstories such as a young little girl who was abandoned by her parents, one person who died from overworking, one who committed suicide from his regrets among others and just like with the main story the backstories are actually very heartbreaking and quite sad and emotional to read into. Just like with adding upgrades to Sentiments you also don't know what Sentiments that you are going to get either because the shops in the game will not provide weapons or armour and instead you have to purify Torments in Rei's Room after getting at least up to the max of ten Torments from the Revenants you killed and crossing your fingers that you get the Sentiments you want at your current point in the game. Again not really a deal breaker but something to note when upgrading equipment more effectively. I also like that when you kill a Revenant and get a Torment, the last thought clouds the screen as well so that you can see their last thoughts they had in the real world, especially when your starts crying or when Rei is in her room as well.
When you are not doing the Ordeals you spend time in Rei's room where you can read up on the archives, listen to music, purify Torments, call Rei's friends (only when indicated), save or load your progress and lastly play with Rei's dog Thelema which is warm both for her and also dog lovers everywhere. Selecting this option allows you to watch Rei rub her dog around and saying lovely things to her. It's adds more to Rei's feelings and it helps to calm down after going through an Ordeal and having to witness tragic events unfolded.
Crystar's combat system is actually pretty good and feels somewhat similar to Devil May Cry in some way, you use Light Attacks and Heavy Attacks which are two separate attack buttons and your characters can use special attacks by holding down R1 and pressing the four main face buttons on the controller that activate each special attack that is mapped to on the controller as long as they have enough SP to use it. You Dash with R2 which is great for dodging and can lock onto enemies with L1 and using the Right Analog Stick while locked on switches targets which is handy in situations where you have multiple enemies to deal with at once. Instead of having four characters on screen at the same time instead you switch between your available party members with the D-Pad at any given moment. It It's a good system because it prevents the combat from being too chaotic, switching to another character while the inactive character you were using can restore some lost health given extra strategy and lastly you do not have to deal with useless AI control teammates who just stand around and just do nothing. The combat does have a bit to depth to it as each of the four main characters have their own fighting styles allowing you to experiment and go for a playstyle that you prefer. Rei has a good balance of stats and attacks, Kokoro hits really hard with physical attacks and has high Health Points but some of her skills require a charge up time which leaves her vulnerable to enemy attacks, Sen is quick with her two swords and has pretty good stats but levels up a lot slower then the other characters and Nanana is effective at long range with magic attacks making her the most damage dealing character in the game but has low Health and Physical Defence stats. Enemies can be knocked down or can also be flown into the air where you can follow up by jumping into the air and juggling combos at them before slamming them down with a heavy attack. Combine this with the different character fighting styles and also being able to use a character's Guardian and Nanana's transformation and use their ultimate attacks then you got yourself a half decent combat engine with great amount of depth and plenty to play around with.
There are a fair number of boss battles to contempt with at the end of the Ordeal, many of them are be complete damage sponges who take a ton of hits to be put down. All bosses have a rather easy to pattern which involves a boss just hovering around before they do an attack which can be avoided rather easily. Sure a boss might deal a ton of damage with spells that can follow you around if you too close as well as inflicting status effects but however the game allows the use of auto items where it uses an item to automatically heal a character if health reaches low or if a character gets inflicted with a status effect without needing to use menus. Crystar isn't really a hard JRPG and it can be beaten on Normal with a fare amount of levelling up and upgrading equipment on Normal and if you are taking your time to work on the Memoirs of the Dead then you won't really find the game all that difficult till you reach the last few bosses at the end of the game. If you truly want to be challenged with the game play on Hard Mode or try playing with low level characters.
Crystar does have its major issues which does let the game down, it is a very repetitive game and it tends to reuse and recycle both enemies and environments throughout the game. I know that it is an Action RPG and you do have to grind to level your characters up and it isn't really fair to pick on the game for that but however the enemy variety is really lacklustre and tend to use the same monster designs over and over just with reskins. There is a boss that you'll fight later on that shoots rings at you and looks like that of a wizard sort of mage type enemy but then afterwards it's then reused as just a regular enemy only with a minor reskinned look. Another thing that ends up being recycled multiple times are the environments where in some Ordeals they literally copy and paste floors from previous Ordeals only with one or two things swapped around, even Optional Ordeals are just some of the previous ordeals just copy and pasted while others just combine parts of the areas from other ordeals put together and they just feel lazily designed. Thankfully you can switch to having the map in full screen rather then the right side of the screen with a press of a button otherwise going through some of the lazily recycled maps a chore. I know that this game is set in the afterlife of purgatory but it doesn't excuse that there are hardly much effort into designing different areas with a different layout to them.
At least the game looks aright for the most part. Running on the Unity Engine the character models are quite detailed and the anime art style by Riuichi is actually really well done and a lot of the special attacks aren't too bad as well. Putting aside the recycled environments the Ordeals you go through have some nice details to them as well with my favourite being the fifth Ordeal the foolish question, foolish answer where it has those two tall towers around and the view from the top is just beautiful. The performance is quite smooth for an Unity Engine game and it runs at 60 Frames Per Second with the performance only dropping when plenty of smoke fills up the screen at once making it a decently optimized game. The soundtrack in the game is pretty relaxing stuff with smoothing clam tunes when you are exploring some of the Ordeals till then later on the game the music tunes become dark, upsetting and serious that really fits the depressing tone of the game and it is really good stuff to listen to.
Crystar has got a really good tear driven and emotional storyline that will give plenty of players the feels but the repetitive gameplay and the lazily recycled environments do let the game down and that's a shame cause a lot of effort was put into the storyline and characters. Tears and sadness in JRPGs isn't anything we haven't seen in the genre but however the game makes full use of crying tears and throwing all kinds of heartbreaking emotional moments in the player's face and the overall execution does make the game unique in that regard. It is difficult however to recommend buying at full price on top of the DLC outfits that are on the PSNStore as well because the gameplay is repetitive with reskinned enemies and recycled copy and pasted environments being reused over and over, plus some people will find some of the storyline elements that the game's going for to be too upsetting for them. On a gameplay stand point it has a good and challenging combat system with plenty of depth to it and at least the game has a decent length to it. Playing the first storyline path will take at least 20 hours but you got to go through the game again to unlock the two other storyline paths which shows off the other storyline outcomes but you only go through a small portion of the game to unlock the new events. After doing all that you then have the true ending path where you take on the final ordeal for the final boss plus also unlocking the optional endless boss rush mode where you face off against boss in an endless succession with each time you clear it making them stronger till the fifth time you do it. In total that will make it 40 to 50+ hour long game unless you take your time and complete the Memoirs of the Dead as well as unlocking the other Trophies/Achievements that you can do as well.
Overall Crystar isn't really a bad game and it sure plenty of sad moments worth experiencing. If you are at least willing to get the game which I do recommend regardless of the issues it has then I would wait for a price drop before taking the journey into the afterlife. The game may not be the next Persona 5 or the next Tales of Berseria but it is an enjoyable game for those who likes the idea of tears being used as strength with some decent gameplay to it. The positives of Crystar's tears outshine the repetitive gameplay and environments and if you are going to buy another Action JRPG for the PS4 you sure can do a lot worse off but it does show that even niche RPGs can be very creative and original at times.
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Game Score: 7.0/10
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Game Title: Crystar
Platform: PlayStation 4
Developer: Gemdrops
Genre: Action Role Playing
Age Rating: PEGI: 12+
Release Date: 30th August 2019 (Europe)
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The Good Points:
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Good storyline with some great character development
The tears and sadness themes work really well in both story and gameplay
Switching between party members allows for strategy and party management
You can pet your dog Thelema
The Bad Points:
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Repetitive combat
Enemies and environments are lazily recycled
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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