Usually, I don't talk smack about games I like, but this one is an exception.
This is a remake of a game I loved back in the Flash era. Sure, now it's made in Unity, so we have better map navigation, and the character portraits got an overhaul. That's where the good ends.
As a JRPG, you have gear and skills. These allows to tweak the characters' stats and skills as you see fit, but in this case...
- Weapons have no set stats. If you want them to have any, you need to loot them or reforge them. If they are of a quality of white, you have a default weapon. And no, the Evolblade saying it is a balanced weapon is not a statement, it's an artefact from the same item from Crystal Story 2, in which the Evoblade did raise all three stats equally.
- Gears comes either as equipment, or skill discs. Thing is, skill discs comes with a skill and likely-related stats when you get them, meaning they already get one up on the normal equipment.
- You can combine gear in the Alchemy shop. If you have good stats on a piece of gear you combine, they may not transfer over on the newly-made piece. Heck, you might get a worse piece of gear. This is also a problem when combining skill discs, but at least the skills being combined is a guaranteed result.
- You have a skill grid. You gain one skill point per level up. With a max level of 30, that's 29 points you get to spend in the grid. Except, there are 25 skills in the grid, and 20 of them can be increased to 3 tiers. That's not so bad, but one character in particular gets the shaft because he is the only one who literally cannot raise his HP this way. Even if you raise the defensive stats, this character will still get shut down in the lower levels of the dungeon when enemy hits 4 random targets.
Now this is mechanically a step-down from Crystal Story 2, but there are other changes that irks me:
- The dialogues have changed. Usually for the better, but a lot of it has been cut. In the original, every time you clear a Stolen X quest, after talking with Koohli, you are then taken back to Smalltown to return the item and get treated to a conversation that did flesh out the characters. These bits have gone down the toilet.
- Kaeli's bio has been nuked. More in-line with her character in Crystal Story 2? Sure. Still a blasphemy.
- The status effects don't affect the enemies the same way they affect your party members. Stun in particular is useless against enemies, since their Stamina bar still fills, while yours doesn't when you get stunned.
- Buffs doesn't work on a timer, but per action. As such, don't be surprised when your Attack buff gets removed after one use of Barrage (attack and stuns a random enemy 4 times).
- Fishing returns from Crystal Story 2. I wouldn't complain about it if there was a key bind to replace having to click on the Reel button.
- No Zombie Defence, which was in the original AND a fun minigame.
- Quests yield no rewards past the boss' loot and the ability to visit the area you found them in, which... don't yield that great of rewards. In the original, finishing a quest also gave the party an extra skill point, which would have worked WONDERS here.
If you want to play this game, by all means, do. It can be a good time for its price, if you don't know what you're missing on. In my end, I cannot recommend playing this game until it gets a serious overhaul and giving Reuben a HP Plus in his skill grid.
