May '23 Monthly Game Club - Crystalis

tokucowboy

Alright, I cranked that thang up. Just in case it’s useful to anybody, I tried both the NSO (US) version and the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection version; both have good CRT filters and I appreciate the SNK version having a borderless option, but I ended up going with the NSO one because papi needs rewinds

Visually, I love it. It’s so chunky, the intro rips, and I really get a kick out of the goofy, Fleischer-esque cartoon perspective thing with the player character’s feet (I named him Simea, the default name from the Game Boy Color version). How come so few sprites did stuff like that on NES? The signposting is also pretty darn cromulent for an NES RPG – I understood what I needed to do up through the first major quest (the windmill situation), and that’s more than you can say for a decent chunk of its contemporaries. I got the wind orb power and am not sure what’s next, though – old dude in the cave (Zebu? Zima? Xevious?) is telling me to use my power on the rock wall, and when my wind orb didn’t work on that as I expected, I bounced off my first session. But I will hop back on and kill some more Tony the Tigers for a single experience point each very soon

Funbil

tokucowboy I got the wind orb power and am not sure what’s next

I also immediately left the cave dungeon to return to him since that wall was so alluring. Upon my return, I realized that wall looks a little more like crystals than rocks; for a tip, I’ll say you’re not done in that windmill cave dungeon yet!

thebryanjzx90

tokucowboy never played this on the original system but I emulated it back in the nesticle days, and somehow I remember what you just described as pretty much exactly being my first and only time playing it.

I wanted to play this again but I couldn’t get any NES emulation working in retroarch. I need a good stand alone emulator not a fan of retroarch in general.

tokucowboy

Funbil Yep, good tip – I figured that out in last night’s play session and am in the second town, trucking along

I’d also recommend anyone playing check out the instruction manual, you were meant to read this on the car ride home. Gives a whole lot more narrative context, and tells you what some of the items actually do (i.e. I just got the Rabbit Boots and had no idea)

SCPTmatt

Is it at all appropriate for me to link a podcast episode of mine where we discussed this game for an hour?

Regardless, here were my biggest takeaways:

I loved the simple leveling/gold system and reliability of enemy spawns. I only had a few instances where I needed to grind, one of them longer than it needed to be due to misunderstanding some enemies XP drop.
The charge attack system makes for a pretty fun sort of rhythm in battle. It gets mildly tricky when you have level 3 weapons because charging all the way to level 3 uses mana that you’re likely trying to hold on to for a boss. So getting through normal areas means charging shots just enough for level 2 but not charging to level 3 which doesn’t feel fully intentional but is it’s own kind of fun.
I was playing with a guide for the most part which meant I usually knew what I needed to do against bosses. I like that they’re a fun balance of difficult until you figure out their trick then they’re usually very easy to dispatch. However there are some level requirements for bosses that aren’t always clearly explained and that can be a minor frustration. But leveling is usually fast if you do it in the right areas.
LOVED the final area. It was a neat conclusion to the game. At times I would forget how many sci-fi twists there were in this game and could trick myself into thinking it was all fantasy, but the ending definitely reminds you of the overall tone.

Last note: oh my God the bats though. I still have nightmares about the bats and other flying enemies…

rejj

Is there any (meaningful?) difference between the original NES release and the SNK 40th version?

hellomrkearns

rejj apart from quality of life stuff, I believe it’s the same game.

kyleprocrastinations

I tried crystalis a couple years ago and played up to the poison forest thereabouts before getting distracted. I started a new file today and made it up to about the same place. It’s a good time, I think it’s safe to say we love non-zelda Zeldas here. I like the push and pull of the sword charging. It reminds me of the mana games. Without looking it up, I assume this predates those? We’ll see how far I get now until I get distracted by a non-non-zelda Zelda.

phylaxis

I don’t know a ton about snk games or follow their lore, but I think the sages you meet throughout crystalis are all cameos of characters from previous snk games? I know Athena is in there (but mostly cuz that song “psycho soldier”)

kyleprocrastinations

I played a bit more and got a tiny bit stuck. I went to find a quick answer and the first result was this:
http://mikesrpgcenter.com/crystalis/walkthrough.html
I love how bare bones and straight to the point this guide is. I was able to skim just to the point I was stuck and find the solution super quick (I just had to jump with the rabbit boots). But then I was thinking this site looks pretty old, and looking back at the updates its been around since at least 2001. Is mike’s rpg center like a known resource that I’ve just never come across?

Toph

Playing Crystalis brings me back to a time and place I remember fondly. My brother’s room was where the NES was as it was his and it was the ONLY reason I was allowed to be in his room as a kid. I’d watch him and his good friend Scott play a variety of games all while listening to Pearl Jam’s “Ten” album. To this day if I hear “Even Flow” or “Why Go” flashes of Final Fantasy areas pass through my brain like some kind of deeply rooted survival instinct. I remember Crystalis distinctly because it was one of the games I was allowed to play. I would thumb my way through the manual and read about the spells and locations and would sit and try to draw the different icons for the armors and items it depicted. I’d choose the CONTINUE option on the title screen and it would skip the intro cutscene and just drop you in the cave where the game starts. There’s this echoey thud that occurs when you do this and it depicts your character just sort of falling and smacking the ground fully ready for adventure and kid me enjoyed that more than the intro. Now thats pretty much where kid me’s experience with the game ends and I did not play Crystalis again until my teenage years when it would become one of the few games I’ve played in my life where I was genuinely angry with the bad guys and their antics.

Spoilers:

The reason I felt this terribly uncharacteristic rage towards the Draygonian Empire?

This rabbit.
I can genuinely say I felt terrible for this little guy. He’s just waiting for his buddy to come home and you have to be the one to tell him his friend is dead, and not only is that bad enough but you do it while disguised AS HIS FRIEND (THANKS SNK CRIMINY).
When he asked me to avenge him I had never been more motivated than that moment to keep playing and do everything in my power to crush the Draygonian Empire.

Kez

thebryanjzx90 I would go with Mesen. You just need to install the .NET framework to run it on Windows.

mindleftbody

I started Crystalis this morning. I wanted to finish other games first but it was kind of slow going and I didn’t want to miss out on my own nomination so I’ll finish them later. I spent some time grinding to level 4 and made it through the first dungeon to Brynmaer. The movement is quick and responsive, I like it. The monster sprites are really nice. I glanced at the Mike’s RPG Center link and liked how that walkthrough is laid out, I’ll probably use that going forward thanks @kyleprocrastinations. Lots of famicom action this month, I have been enjoying the famicom thread that @saddleblasters started and have gotten into playing those Famidaily YouTube videos that @◉◉maru posted about while I work.

kyleprocrastinations

Hey, what did y’all name your guy? Mine is Jeanco.

mindleftbody

kyleprocrastinations

lol

tomjonjon

kyleprocrastinations

Kez

kyleprocrastinations When the game doesn’t provide a name I usually try to look up if a canonical one exists. For this one, I found the name “Simea” online and went with that.

I don’t really like to use my own name and always find it super annoying/jarring when I do, and making up names is tough too cause it’s the start of the game and I have no idea what sort of names people have in it yet!

treefroggy

Anyone playing the gameboy color version?
When I get around to playing this game again, I’m going to use the recent-ish delocalization patch that makes it GOD SLAYER again.

slugpaste

I recently (okay, 2019, but it feels recent) replayed Crystalis for the first time since I was a kid, when it was pretty much my favorite NES game. This was the SNK 40th version on PS4. The rewind feature was helpful and I used a guide in a couple spots. I had no guide the first time around, of course, and I remember getting stuck on a boss near the end for a long time because I didn’t have the right item to do any damage.

One annoyance with the SNK 40th version is that the sound emulation isn’t perfect. The music cuts out or doesn’t loop at times. I also had minor issues with movement controls occasionally, but it’s otherwise fine. Still one of the best games out there.

Gaagaagiins

Bad News: I started a play session of Crystalis a little bit ago, and got as far as the forest with the little funny guys. Unfortunately, then my silly little doggy ran up to me with her ball in her mouth, and somehow in her craziness I slapped the wrong key on my keyboard, and it closed the emulator… unfortunately I was also zoned right in for that play session and hadn’t saved my state. And, well, that kind of thing really kills my motivation to play a game, unfortunately.

I like the game, though, for all its archaic clunkiness. You gotta love that snappy movement.

The more weird thing I have to share is that I am quite certain I read and re-read some kind of guide for this game (specifically the apparently butchered GBC version) in what was probably a Nintendo Power years and years ago, because certain aspects of it seem weirdly familiar for reasons I can’t explain otherwise. Is there some kind of ultimate/rainbow sword that you can get at some point? There being multiple elemental swords is what really stands out in my very hazy memories of the game.

I wonder if I were to track down the Nintendo Power guides for this game, I would remember it…

Kez

Gaagaagiins Is there some kind of ultimate/rainbow sword that you can get at some point? There being multiple elemental swords is what really stands out in my very hazy memories of the game.

To answer this question.. full spoilers: Yes, sort of. There are 4 elemental swords you gather throughout the course of the game, each sword has two power ups which allows you to charge them up longer for bigger attacks. Right at the end of the game, you merge all the swords into one sword: Crystalis. You only use it for the final fight, and it doesn’t have any particularly cool powers compared to the others. Just one charge level and it shoots a sort of orb projectile at the final boss.

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