Cris Tales PC Review

Cris Tales has a lot of promise in the opening hours. A beautiful JRPG that slowly introduces time travel elements, interesting characters, and consequential choices. It tries to maintain this momentum but slowly drops over time but never flatlining. This is thanks to creative time-travel puzzles and well-written characters but the repetition of using the same concepts eventually hurts the experience. Cris Tales is a brilliant RPG with a lot to offer, especially for retro fans of the genre but depends too heavily on the same things.

Cris Tales seems like a Disney film, talking frogs, robotic creations, and magical elements. This is complemented by the clean pristine look of the game, even the currency is marbles. Like a Disney film, you'll go into various locations that only could exist in a fairytale-like a city inside a volcano, sail around in a boat made from a metal woman's shoe, and temples that rise from the water. 

The main character is Crisbell, an innocent and optimistic protagonist who is willing to help anyone without a second thought. It isn't long before Crisbell discovers she can shift time and others with similar magical abilities exist as well. You'll encounter an enthusiast frog, an immortal child, more mages, and many more. The game ensures that each character has enough time to speak to establish who they are what role they play in the game, narrative, and gameplay-wise.

The story itself involves saving Crisbell's home of the Crystallis Kingdom from the Empress of the Ages. It's not an inventive tale but it's well-written and performed. The voice actors did a fantastic job bringing each character, main and secondary, to life. The issue comes at the end of the 40-hour adventure where the game focuses on revisiting old areas for what seems like extending the life of the adventure.

Visually Cris Tales is impressive. The art direction always looks phenomenal and the characters are well-animated and designed. The intricate layers to the visual presentation are the most alluring part of the entire game as it encourages the player to see what will be next on this adventure.

The time travel system does have a vital role outside the narrative. The most obvious is that the game shows the past, present, and future. This is a cool idea and it constantly provides a look of what's to come and once you change that future it immediately becomes apparent. This does also highlight one of the most annoying parts of the entire game, Matias.

Matias is not an annoying character, he's oddly always cheerful but it's his function in the game that's vexing. You have to use Matias to jump between periods, usually to grab a key item or interact with something important. The issue is that Matias follows Crisbell around at an extremely slow pace. The number of times I had to wait for Matias to catch up so I could perform this time jump was aggravating and kept happening.

Cris Tales is a turn-based RPG and it's well designed. Players have your standard attacks, timed defenses, and unique talents. Time magic allows you to alter events during combat to accelerate poisons or break down enemy armor. The opening section gives you all the interesting ways this can be implemented, which is shockingly low considering during the 40-hour adventure no other creative ways are available. Especially in the end game where your basic attacks do the job without having to jump through more hoops.

Enemies are well-designed but like many issues in Cris Tales repetition starts to bleed in. You'll fight the same enemies just with different elemental remixes showcased with different colors. In turn-based RPGs, enemy variety is necessary especially with boss fights where the same issue exists. Common enemies are one thing, but boss fights need variety, and you'll fight the same bosses in the finale. It's just unacceptable for an RPG to do this.

Cris Tales has a lot of positive elements but they start to fall apart at the end. Much of the title's end game could've been stripped down and the game would've benefited from this. The great cast of characters, visual design, and the promising combat system has a lot of positive features. It seems that the developers decided to try and extend the game's life by adding unnecessary tasks towards the end. Turning what could've been a great 25-hour fantasy adventure into a 40-hour adventure that fizzles out at the end. Cris Tales is a worthwhile RPG to experience but you'll have to endure a lot of redundancy.
 

Adam Siddiqui,
Managing Editor, NoobFeed
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