Cris Tales Review
“An Indie JRPG With Heart.” Written by: Hunter (ReaperHunter23)
Cris Tales was first announced during the week of E3 in 2019. I was captivated by the game's striking artstyle and dramatic narration and then even further intrigued when it was billed as a love letter to classic JRPGs with the additional twist of getting to experience the past, present and future all at once. That’s a pretty cool premise, and I do love a solid JRPG, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting this game’s release. Let’s take a look to see if it was worth the wait.
Image Credit: Dreams Uncorporated
The central mechanic of Cris Tales is the ability to observe and affect past, present and future, simultaneously. This is utilized in both the exploration of towns and dungeons as well as in combat.
The combat system in this game is pretty solid. Its turn based with timed button presses being done for more damage as well as to block incoming enemy attacks. Elemental attacks can play off of eachother. For example: If you hit an enemy with a water attack and inflict the wet status, lightning attacks will do more damage on the following turn.
What stands out most in the combat however, is the previously mentioned time mechanic. During battles, enemies will come at you from either side. If they are on the left, they are effected by the past crystal, if they are on the right they are effected by the future crystal. On its own this has the helpful effect of messing with the age of the monsters you are fighting. Let’s say one of the forest wolves is giving you too much trouble, send it back in time and turn it into a more manageable pup. Or send a guard captain into the future so that they are a withered old man. Additionally time jumping can be used to undo potentially troubling buffs that an enemy might receive. For example: if an Alpha wolf were to give itself a damage buff you could send it to the past and it would undo the status.
So the time mechanic is cool on its own, but the truly cool thing about it is how it can be used in conjunction with other spells and abilities. The game had two examples early on that put a smile on my face. The first instance was in the first boss fight. The enemy had a giant shield that prevented me from doing damage to them. The solution to this was to have Cristopher hit them with a water spell and then send them into the future. This caused their shield to rust and subsequently allowed me to damage them.
The next example was just after Wilhelm joined the party. One of his abilities casts a poison status. So something that you can do rather than ride out the damage over time effect of the poison is send the inflicted enemy to the future and do all the damage at once. The game does a wonderful job of introducing a plethora of different ways that abilities interact with each other throughout the game.
The boss design in this game is impeccable as well. I’m not going to go into details on all of them but, the majority of them truly felt like they were made with the game’s systems in mind. They constantly come up with new ways to keep you on the back foot without making it overwhelming. Even later in the game when I started losing to some of the bosses, it was a matter of adjusting my strategy to be smarter rather than a matter of being underleveled. That’s a big thumbs up from me, I’ve long since lost my patience with grinding, so I’m quite pleased that I did not have to do that in this game.
On the exploration side of things, the time mechanic is used in a manner that is just as satisfying. Whenever you reach one of the towns, you get to see the past, present, and future versions of it all at once. The window into the past is typically used for cause and effect kind of puzzles. Such as: going to the past to plant a seed that will sprout a vine that the party can climb in the present. Its also used for going and swiping plot items that get destroyed in the present pretty frequently.
Usually upon arriving in town it can be observed that the future of the place is looking pretty bleak. Whether its collapsed buildings, flooding, or some other catastrophe. The cool thing about the window into the future is that your actions in the present effect it. It's a satisfying demonstration that your actions are doing something. Rather being told that the NPCs are going to remember what you did you are shown the results of your actions.A great example comes pretty early in the game. You can meet a street musician, who before you help him out, his future seems to show him turning to a life of crime to get by. When you donate money to the guy and actually see his life change for the better in the future it makes the typical “Thanks this will really help me out” line mean something.
That sort of payoff encouraged me to do every side quest I came across. Which in turn rewarded me even further. At the end of each town’s arc you are given a choice between two options regarding the future of the town in question. Both options typically seem to have their own points for and against them but there doesn’t seem to be an obvious good or bad answer. However, if you complete all the sidequests in the area, it unlocks a third answer that is the best answer.
I like this because on top of the individual payoffs to all of the side quests, there’s actual storyline payoff for going out of your way to help everyone. Its a nice reward for going the extra mile. And because each town only has three or four side quests a piece, the inclusion of the third option as a reward for helping people comes off way better than it would have if the game was densely packed with sidequests and helping every NPC you see was a requirement for the best outcome.
Image Credit: Dreams Uncorporated
The setup for the story of Cris Tales is about as JRPG as a game can get. Crisbell is an orphan who one day trips backwards into unlocking the powers of time magic. Upon unlocking those powers she sees a vision of a dire future brought about by The Empress of Time. From there Crisbell sets out to master her newfound powers to stop the Empress Of Time.
It would not be inaccurate to call the story of Cris Tales derivative. That being said, I think it's well written and done in a way that feels like it's trying to tell its own version of a story like this rather than just a slapdash collection of the genre’s most used tropes. It isn’t revolutionary, but it is well done and has a lot of heart.
The shining point of the story is the cast. The starting party has a really believable dynamic that I found myself growing to really enjoy over the course of the story. Crisbell is the kind of bright eyed lover of all things type of character that you would expect a JRPG protagonist to be. I normally am not one to enjoy the overly nice guy RPG main characters that much, but Crisbell has a level of earnestness to her that makes it hard to dislike her. It helps that she does get a solid bit of development, there was one moment in the game where she had some pretty pointed remarks for another character that made her life difficult, but didn’t act vengefully because she still held on to the belief that she should be better.
Mattias is Crisbell’s talking frog companion, oftentimes serving as the voice that focuses the group on their mission. Christopher is a kid who is fighting against the empress to avenge his brother. He has a nice arc in his own respect. And Wilhelm is an ages old time mage trapped in a child's body. I like Wilhelm quite a bit, it would have been really easy for him to come off as just bratty and standoffish, but they handle him in a way that while he comes off as snarky, he has just as many moments to back up that he really is as talented and wise as he’s supposed to be.
There are more party members that I won’t give away and plenty of ancillary characters that you meet along the way that, while they might not all have an extraordinary amount of screen time, they certainly leave an impression with the time that they are given. The menagerie of villains that Crisbell and friends have to deal with are all also pretty cool in their own right.
Image Credit: Dreams Uncorporated
One of the most striking things about Cris Tales is its art style. It has a hand drawn story book aesthetic that pairs nicely with the unique character designs to help set it apart from other hand drawn art styles. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you the number of times I stopped to just appreciate the backdrop of any given area when I entered for the first time. So many of them looked stunning. Whether it was the cool architecture of Narim or one of the other towns. Or the beautiful environments of one of the dungeons such as the Crystal Lake.I even enjoy the pop up book kind of look the over world has.
The environments all have a good bit of variation to them as well, down to the dungeons and the towns. Thankfully, despite its influences Cris Tales goes a step beyond traversing through a bunch of caves and resting at villages with slightly different building arrangements. All of the dungeons look pretty distinct from one another.
And the towns, on top of looking different, all do a good job at establishing themselves as places with their own separate and distinct cultures. It was a joy to come to a new place and learn about the people in it and the problems befalling them.
Image Credit: Dreams Uncorporated
Summary
I believe that this game is a must play. Cris Tales accomplishes what it set out to do with great effect. It managed to make me feel similar to how I felt whenever I was playing a new Final Fantasy game during my younger years. And crucially, it manages to be evocative of those feelings without being a carbon copy. Its cool premise, striking artstyle, stellar soundtrack, and endearing characters all come together to make it more than capable of standing on its own. It learned from the past to make something wonderful for the present.