Cris Tales Impressions

After playing about 6 hours of Cris Tales and so far feels like a nice homage to the mid-1990’s era of Japanese Role Playing Games in a pre-Final Fantasy VII world. Something that was just right in length, and has unique mechanics such as Super Mario RPG, and Super Mario RPG Thousand Year door’s mechanic of the flips side which is more like time travel that does cause different outcomes in the game. It almost gives out a Shadow of Destiny vibe, but a lot less obtuse on how to get the desired outcome.

The first striking thing is the art style that can be described as something like Genndy Tartakovsky like Samurai Jack, which is depicted as Real-Time Graphics gives it a unique and vibrant identity. 

You can also draw some comparisons to Chrono Trigger’s events that affect the ending. The lasting effects or lack thereof aren’t clear since I haven’t finished it yet. The meat of a JRPG is the story and so far it doesn’t disappoint. The main character is Crisbell, an orphan who is a time mage, where her town is destroyed by  Empress Ages and her henchman The Demon Systems. Themes such as gulf between poor vs. rich, dwindling natural resources with a Colombian twist.

The other key component of JRPG battles and the battle system allow you to use the future and past to quickly dispatch enemies. As mentioned before, timing is key to attacking/defense.  You have to hit the X button at the right time to do more damage or reduce damage when the enemies attack.

The battles sometimes take a bit long, but you can find the elemental resources once you get the scan spell, making things a lot easier. 

How does this Indie JRPG style stack up? Will have a review up something next month since this is a 40 ish+ hour game.