NWR Interactive > Podcast Discussion

RetroActive 47: Crystalis

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Crimm:
You made your pitches, we made our choices. The 47th RetroActive is for SNK's Crystalis.

Comments posted here may be used in the relevant episode. Recording will likely happen late June/early July

Papasmurff:
Good timing boys. I was actually just looking through the NES online catalog and thinking about starting Crystalis. I don’t know much about the game, but I have heard it compared to Legend of Zelda. I also recently finished Startropics which may be in a similar vein and enjoyed it, so here’s hoping Crystalis holds up!

TOPHATANT123:
I put in 2.5 hours today, and I know that because (cool tip) if you press X from the NES game select it tells you your playtime.

I'm really enjoying it so far and it's exceeding my expectations. The game starts with a neat cut scene and you get to choose a 6 character name. Although I think I messed mine up by putting a space at the end, so now characters take a pause before using exclamation marks or punctuation.

The game controls really smoothly and looks great. So much so it's hard to believe Crystalis and Zelda1/2 are running on the same system.

The combat is interesting as it isn't about spamming. Instead you stand still to charge up then you can move about and line up your shot. The equipment so far has been pretty simple, but there's nothing wrong with that as I have never felt overwhelmed by this game.

Some of what the game asks you in terms of puzzles and where to go next is choreographed and other times it is not. I had to use a guide to understand what the rabbit boots do and how to use the insect thing, but for the most part the game has been easy to get through.

The controls for talking to people are kind of weird. You can easily blast through and miss a bunch of dialogue. I missed what the person said when they first gave me a sword, so I missed the set up to the entire quest. Thankfully y
I could use the rewind feature to go back and read it.

You can save and load the game by pressing + on the equipment screen, I still find it novel saving in NES games.

The game has some clear inspiration from Nausicaa Valley of the Wind. The guide calls the starting area Wind Valley, the setup for the story, the poison area that literally has Ohmu looking enemies from Nausicaa.

Papasmurff:
Finished the game yesterday. It still amazes me what developers were able to accomplish in later-NES era games despite the limitations of the system. My first introduction to NES games as a kid was through Animal Crossing on the GameCube. These were mostly launch window black box games like Excitebike, Balloon Fight, and Ice Climber. Sure, they could be fun, but I basically wrote off NES games as a 30 minute diversion at best. So when Virtual Console came around, it didn’t seem prudent to spend $5 on an NES game when there were far superior SNES experiences available for just $3 more. Since then I’ve played many more games in the NES library, but the NES online games on Switch have been great for getting me to play NES games that I otherwise never would have given a chance.

Crystalis is one of those, and I’m glad I played it. You can tell it’s a 30 year old game, and I definitely took advantage of the rewind feature, but the combat is pretty engaging. I love how fast your character moves around the world. The music is somewhat hit or miss, there were some songs that I though were really good and others not so much. Nothing as bad as the Legend of Zelda’s grating dungeon theme though. I thought the visuals were great. The lightning bolt effects when you do the fully-charged attack with the lightning sword look cool even today. One thing that got annoying was constantly having to open up the menu to swap swords and equipable items, but that’s just a limitation of the NES having so few buttons. I’m not sure what the status of the IP is after the Game Boy Color port, but maybe we’re due for a remake...?

Order.RSS:
Just started this as well, I'm up to the poison forest right now. I like the speed of the game for the most part, but flying enemies and projectiles also come at you real fast. How do you regenerate magic, just through inns and a bit when you level up? I'm often running low on magic since I'm always using Refresh to gain back health from some axe throwing bear.

I've never played a top-down Zelda game so can't really compare, but so far this isn't very obtuse - outside of the hidden statue I ran into completely accidentally.

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