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Cris Tales is a cute puzzle game where you must rescue the different characters in the land of Cris Tales from the evil demons and other spirits that have them locked in a portal. If you want to get an idea of how the game works, here’s a screenshot of how you start it up:
I recently stumbled upon a game called Cris Tales. I saw the trailer on Steam and was immediately intrigued by the geometric graphics, fluid animations and simplistic yet intriguing controls. I bought it and was immediately caught up in the beauty of the game. I’m not too much of a gamer and I was very surprised that I was so entranced by the game.
Cris Tales – is a cute game with simple and challenging puzzles. You play as a fairy, trying to restore the forest. You must pass many fireballs, dangerous gargoyles, and other obstacles. The game has a cute graphics and good music, which makes it more fun to play.
Cris Tales, created by Dreams Uncorporated and Syck and released by Modus Games, is not your average RPG or JRPG. It’s best characterized as a “love letter” to JRPGs, with Chrono Trigger serving as the most prominent source of inspiration. I was fascinated by the game’s eye-catching visual style and use of a time manipulation mechanism from the moment I saw the first video for it. Cris Tales was eventually published after a long wait, much to my pleasure. While I found it to be a pleasurable experience, it is not without faults.
You play as Crisbell, a brave young girl who learns she is a powerful Time Mage in Cris Tales. This implies she has the ability to manipulate time itself. Crisbell and her friends must rewrite their destiny and put an end to the Time Empress’s wicked machinations after seeing the Time Empress’s plot come to fulfillment and leave the planet in ashes. It isn’t the most unique of tales, and anybody who has played JRPGs or other time travel games would recognize the narrative twists right immediately. Nonetheless, it’s still good enough to keep you wanting to play it.
Just a doe-eyed girl and her frog pal with a top hat.
Cris Tales is a turn-based RPG in terms of gameplay. However, there are a few characteristics that set it apart from the others. For starters, you may do extra damage by pressing the attack button again just before your character is going to hit an opponent. You will take less damage if you hit the block button just before an enemy’s strike is about to fall. This is a critical component in surviving fights, as the amount of damage delivered and received is heavily reliant on it. However, not all of the enemy’s motions are clearly telegraphed by their animations, making it harder to time your defensive actions.
Then there’s the show’s true star: time manipulation. This is the second aspect of Cris Tales’ gameplay that sets it apart. Crisbell has the ability to send her enemies back in time or forward in time. This may have a big impact on how you battle your foes. If you’re fighting an opponent in their prime, for example, you may have Crisbell send them back in time and transform them into toddlers, or launch them into the future and make them old. Foes’ defenses are frequently weakened when they are transformed into toddlers or old versions of themselves. If you toss a young adversary into the future, on the other hand, you risk bringing them to full maturity, at which time they are at their most powerful.
You may change the look and stats of opponents by sending them into the past or future.
It’s a great gameplay concept, but I think it’s underused, particularly when it comes to bosses. The first boss fight you face when you initially start playing is against two sisters who are fully armored and wield a huge conjoining shield. Your strikes have no effect at first. However, if you have one of your friends, Christopher, perform his water magic on the twins and then send them into the future, their metal armor and shield would rust, significantly reducing their protection.
This idea struck me as brilliant, but sadly, most of the other boss battles lack as inventive approaches to defeating them. Your time manipulation abilities will mostly be used to make opponents older or younger. It’s a pity, though, since I think Cris Tales might have been a fantastic game if they’d used more creative tactics with other encounters like this. This, I believe, was its most significant lost opportunity.
Manipulation of time, on the other hand, isn’t limited to battle. Crisbell will visit a few different places and meet a lot of new individuals throughout her journey. The screen is always split into thirds once she gains her time abilities, with the past on the left, the present in the middle, and the future on the right. Crisbell can use her time abilities to enable her froggy pal Matias to go back and forth through time (pun intended). As you go through the time periods, you’ll be able to observe how people and places evolve. This also implies you’ll be able to assist individuals in the past and see how things evolve in the future. This was one of my favorite aspects of Cris Tales. Seeing how your choices impacted the environment around you was the most gratifying aspect of the game.
You can view the past, present, and future of the screen in this configuration.
Cris Tales, on the other hand, is not without flaws. Because nothing is indicated on the globe maps, navigating them is difficult and perplexing. There are other information on the map that seem to be additional places you should be able to investigate. It takes an eternity to find out where you need to go. Crisbell walks slowly as well, although not as slowly as Matias, who wriggles, bounces, and flops at a fraction of her usual walking pace if he’s studying anything from another era. Crisbell returning to regions and fighting each monster a second time also seems to have contributed to the game’s duration.
Then there are the excruciatingly lengthy loading times. It wouldn’t be so terrible if you just had to deal with them every now and then, but the game forces you to pause and load a new screen every few steps. Do you want to go somewhere else? This is a loading screen. How about going from the top to the bottom of the map? Screening for loading. Is this an enemy encounter? This is a loading screen. Cutscene? This is a loading screen. Is it possible to walk through a door? This is a loading screen. Waiting for the loading screens to complete will take up a large part of your game, killing the pace.
Despite the fact that Cris Tales has many flaws, I have to applaud its aesthetics. It features a clean yet bright animated visual style that resembles a nicer Saturday morning cartoon. It’s a great match for the game’s tone, and it’s one of Cris Tales’ best moments. Instead of returning to the few towns that are there, I would have like to visit more, but that is just because I loved how each was constructed.
Each of your friends has unique abilities that help Crisbell in combat.
The sound design is also very impressive. The sound effects are excellent, the music complements the animation style, and the voice acting is consistently excellent. The only thing that bothers me about the voice acting is that some of the male characters sound like young girls. I know it’s customary for women to voice young male characters in cartoons since guys’ voices are higher octaves until adolescence, but a couple of the major male characters seem just as girly as Crisbell. I realize this is a minor quibble, but there were a few moments in the beginning when I was unsure who was speaking.
Regardless of its faults, I had a good time with Cris Tales. There are the germs of a great game here, but none of them have been able to completely develop. I’d love to see a sequel that builds on what they’ve already accomplished, since the concept of destroying your foes with time magic in conjunction with other spells is fantastic. If you look into it more, it lends itself to a lot of inventive fights. Cris Tales is a good time as is, even if it never reaches its full potential.
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A stunning and distinctive animated art style. Its high-end Saturday morning cartoon style complements its cheerful tone well. |
It’s unlike your standard JRPG, as it has a time manipulation system that gives you advantages to your attacks and defense if you time them correctly. However, not all attack animations are well telegraphed. |
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The music is competent, though a little forgettable. Although the voice acting is generally good, many of the male characters sound too much like young girls to be convincing. |
The time manipulation feature is a lot of fun and leads to some interesting encounters, but it’s underused. It’s fun to watch how your choices affect other villages, but getting back and forth between them is a pain. |
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Final Score: 7.0 |
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Cris Tales is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.
On Switch, the game was reviewed.
The publisher supplied me with a copy of Cris Tales.
As an example:
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The video below is a review of the flash game “Cris Tales” by “Dreamy Studio”. The game was created by “Dreamy Studio” and “Cris” on “Indie DB”. This video is a review of the game. The next two videos will be reviews of the same game with different strategies to beat the game, as well as other gameplay strategies and tips. You can find the game on IndieDB at http://www.indiedb.com/games/cris-tales .. Read more about cris tales walkthrough and let us know what you think.
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