Crystalis

The Good
The story line of this game is a strong point. It's not especially original, but it is very prominent. There are many cut-scene narratives throughout. Your mission is of the save-the-world from the big-bad-thing type; where the final area is a hyper-technological tower floating in the sky.

There is something of an epic scope with all the areas that you progress through. You go through plenty of labarynthine dungeons, mountains, deserts, towns, a toxic swamp -- you even travel the sea upon a dolphin!

To keep things interesting there are several puzzles to solve -- though it can get annoying when you can't advance because of some obscure puzzle.

The Bad
The leveling up process, though not difficult, is very tedious. You must kill monster after monster... after monster. It is not a question of skill, rather one of patience. This underscores the greatest weakness of the game -- it is too easy if you take the time to level up by killing scads of monsters . The monsters are not very bright either, so there's not much joy in killing them.

The Bottom Line
This game provided many hours of entertainment despite some annoyances. Crystalis is firmly in the zelda-style rpg/action tradition, and anyone who enjoys that genre will likely enjoy this classic.

The Good
This game has a great artistic style to it, a rich color palette and quality music. The gameplay is addictively fun, the plot is rich with it's intertwining of technology and magic, and the landscapes are prime examples of 8-bit pixel mastery.

Combat is simple and enjoyable. 4 swords, 3 charge attacks, and a variety of styles of execution against your enemy hordes. While the monsters are mostly simple creatures marching towards you, the difficulty is increased by making you stand still to charge your sword, thus creating a system of bait and hit. Better yet is when your enemies are equipped with their own weapons.

For an added difficulty bonus, you can engage in faster pace melee combat by button mashing your attack rather than charging, making life and death much more prevalent than the defensive bait and hit.

The Bad
Too easy to beat and no hard mode, and not enough actual logic puzzles. Also unfortunate (though perhaps intentional) is cave mazes become very repetitive as all the walls look exactly the same. This becomes almost mind boggling, and would've greatly been improved with a bread crumb system.

But most importantly, no sequel!

The Bottom Line
Crystalis is a fast pace action orientated RPG with an excellent story line. Crystalis is timeless cult classic; a must play for all would-be gamers, developers, or artist

SNK's unrecognized masterpiece RPG provided the essential elements of character building and travelling now mirrored in contemporary games. It appears deceivingly simple, but was beautifully sculptured. In comparison to modern gaming, it can be seen as a fine-tuned crafted artwork, a minimalist approach that took more time to make it short and all the sweeter.

The Good
A very involving storyline and the first with a well-balanced mix of sci-fi and fantasy that I played. The first game I played where they killed off established characters. I remember one scene in the game in particular where you go to this town of wizards and wizard trainees and are told to continue on with your questing, then you get this urgent flash message some time later telling you to return quickly and when you return, the whole town has been massacred. Totally a "No way..." feeling, especially then when it wasn't the standard to wipe out entire towns. Gets you a little more involved than other RPG's of the same time period.

The Bad
Obviously graphics, but thats the great part of RPG's at that time. The storyline had to make up for the lack of technology.

The Bottom Line
Swept me off of my shoes back in the day...I remember playing it for days and always something new was happening. Time to scroll around and explore and gain experience, but its not entirely at your own pace as you are prompted by current events in the game...so much more proactive/reactive play than other RPG's of the same time period. I considered it pretty revolutionary and different, as a young 10 year old master of the RPG.