Cris Tales

Cris Tales was reviewed on a PS4

Ever had a conversation with a frog? The world that Cris Tales throws you in doesn’t make any sense, but it doesn’t have to. There’s a reason why JRPG games are rarely known for their realism. Cris Tales however is so absurd yet so delightful that it’s a joy to experience, despite the repetitive and mundane turn-based combat.

Travel through time, talk with frogs, and sail on a giant metal shoe. There’s plenty of locations to explore and characters to meet in this whimsical adventure.

What is Cris Tales?

Cris Tales is a JRPG that tells the story of Crisbell, a young naïve girl with bright eyes and red fiery hair who’s determined to save the world with her time manipulating powers. Along the way, she meets up with a teenage mage called Wilhelm, a talking frog called Matias and a whole other roster of diverse characters, both friends and foes.

The first thing you’ll notice about Cris Tales is its hand drawn gorgeous visuals. There’s no denying that it’s a beautiful and imaginative game. Visiting a new location felt like opening up a bag of skittles, filled with all kinds of vibrant colors and palettes. The world it’s set in is so outlandish yet so fitting with its anime style that none of its bizarre elements ever felt out of place. It also boasts a stylish soundtrack with lots of fast and slick electric guitar riffs and melodic piano notes. If there’s one thing that Cris Tales doesn’t lack in, it’s style.

A Tedious Combat System

However, it does lack an enjoyable combat system. The combat wasn’t very enjoyable to be fully honest. It was slow, clunky and often required repeating the same patterns repeatedly with the same enemy types. Almost any satisfaction that came from solving a time manipulating puzzle when beating the various enemy types quickly turned into frustration as you had to solve the same puzzle again a thousand times more.

Splashing water on a boss’s shield and sending them to the future so it would rust or poisoning the enemies and sending them to the future so the poison would fully affect them were interesting concepts when you learn them during the game’s opening sections. However, they quickly became repetitive and tedious to perform.

Having to constantly use Crisbell’s powers, alongside her companions’ attacks, was always a chore. This repetitiveness in its combat made the game unbearable at times, and I had to stop playing it more than once because of it.

What made this issue even more glaring is that every few steps that you take, you’ll get another enemy encounter. It wasn’t long before I was fed up with the excessive number of encounters that I had to endure. For a game that takes about 30 hours to finish, this can be a major annoyance. If you’ve ever been annoyed by the amount of random street fights you had to do in the Yakuza games or Persona games, then you’ll be just as much annoyed here.

Tedious Saving System

Saving is also another issue that Cris tales’ suffers heavily from. I understand that games like these often try to be challenging, but even on easier difficulties, saving is a hassle. I often had to replay a large chunk of my playthrough due to the lack of a save point. You can only save in the world map, or in certain locations, this causes quite a few issues, especially after going through several combat encounters without finding any save spots.

Cris tales is all about time travel, and during non-combat sections, it takes good advantage of Crisbell’s time manipulating powers. You often have the ability of getting a glimpse of the past and future of any characters or areas. You can see which stores will close, certain characters’ fates and even discover chests full of goodies. By solving the game’s side quests, you can even change the fate of entire cities at times. It’s enjoyable to watch your actions change the literal course of history, or the course of the future in this case.

Overall,

The non-combat sections of Cristales are so enjoyable and remarkable. Exploring the different cities and meeting all of the wonderful characters is an absolute joy. However, it’s during the combat sections and the dungeons where the game starts to fall apart. I dreaded each time I had to do another combat encounter.

If it weren’t for its monotonously boring combat, Cristales would’ve been an excellent game. It’s such a shame that this aspect, which should’ve been the game’s strongest points, is its Achilles’ heel. The world-building, the quirky characters and the gorgeous visual style are absolutely worth experiencing, but not when they’re held back by such a boring combat system.

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Special thanks go to Dead Good Media for providing us with a review code.

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You should play Cris Tales if you

• Enjoy old fashioned JRPGs
• Don’t mind the annoying saving system
• Would love the fantasy setting
• Don’t mind the repetitive combat
• Don’t mind the unskippable animations
• Would love the time manipulation powers

Cris Tales Score

6.5/10