Crystal Story: The Hero and the Evil Witch

Usually, I don't talk smack about games I like, but this one is an exception. This is a remake of a game I loved back in the Flash era. Sure, now it's made in Unity, so we have better map navigation, and the character portraits got an overhaul. That's where the good ends. As a JRPG, you have gear and skills. These allows to tweak the characters' stats and skills as you see fit, but in this case... - Weapons have no set stats. If you want them to have any, you need to loot them or reforge them. If they are of a quality of white, you have a default weapon. And no, the Evolblade saying it is a balanced weapon is not a statement, it's an artefact from the same item from Crystal Story 2, in which the Evoblade did raise all three stats equally. - Gears comes either as equipment, or skill discs. Thing is, skill discs comes with a skill and likely-related stats when you get them, meaning they already get one up on the normal equipment. - You can combine gear in the Alchemy shop. If you have good stats on a piece of gear you combine, they may not transfer over on the newly-made piece. Heck, you might get a worse piece of gear. This is also a problem when combining skill discs, but at leas…

It's a decent, straightforward JRPG, remake of a flash game that was on Armor Games, then as a part of Crystal Story II's paid Steam release. Dungeon crawling, using basic attacks and skills to defeat mobs and a boss every five floors. The story is a bit dated and genre standard, but it has some subversive elements that I like. Mercenary Inc is a band of average adventurer misfits who are hired by the blond Hiro the Hero to defeat Rita the evil witch so that Hiro can take credit in exchange for a generous bounty. Hiro is unsurprisingly an incompetent glory hound and Rita doesn't even see the protagonists a anything notable right until they defeat her giant undead dragon at the end of the main story. The remaked skill system is more flash than substance, but it's novel enough.

I really hate what happened with the remake of this game. It is an entirely different experience than it once was. It feels soulless and it just doesn't click the same to me as it once did in the past. I wish Lanstrash should've just released this remake as a separate game of its own.

nostalgia

3/10 Here’s Why Honestly it’s not THE WORST rpg I’ve played if you can even really consider it that but it is ONE OF THE WORST. It wants to play like old school Final Fantasy and it does in graphics and that’s pretty much it it’s super repetitive and pretty grindy. The main story that gets you to the credits is fairly quick if only doing that it’s like 3 - 3 1/2hrs. But upon seeing the credits the post game is horrendous it’s just a go here go there and then a few super tanky bosses ending with the evil witch. The bosses leading up to here of course I had to max all my characters levels so I did that took two hours. And then I spent an hour just going in and outve a dungeon to get the best gear and spells and weapons I could to fight Rita the evil witch. At this point I spent about 4hrs grinding to get suited up for final boss which is longer than the original game to credits took. First time I fought her she whooped me second time she whooped me but in her third phase and all of this grinding was simply for the last achievement of beating Rita. Upon dying several times I reload (it kicks you to main menu every death) and when I reload I’m perpetually falling through the map.. eve…

A quick and simple turn based RPG to kill a day or two with. If you're really strapped for cash, you can just buy Crystal Story 2 - it's both a better game and also has the original version of Crystal Story playable from it's title menu...and it's cheaper!