Game:

Crystalis (1990)

Duration: 22:51

1,575 views

12

Nathaniel plays and talks his way through Crystalis for the Game Boy Color, which is a remake of the NES cult classic RPG. Part 4 of 10.

Our noble protagonist Jack returns to Portoa to shake down the queen for a reward after having freeing her from her previous life as a permanent pigeon perch. Um...for cave pigeons. The queen bestows upon Jack a magnificent new shield that looks an awful lot like friendly verbal encouragement. Jack leaves Portoa empty-handed, provided you don't count the things he's currently holding in his hands.

Before long, Jack meets Rage, some poor schmoe who was duped into standing in a lake for a hundred years. From him, Jack gains the Ball of Water, which I strongly suspect is just a fancy name for a water balloon, and then he enters a tree with a huge television set inside that's stuck on whatever channel is playing that movie where the heroine automatically assumes she's been abducted.

Realizing it's been a whole three minutes since he last set foot in a cave, Jack rushes into a nearby labyrinth that ultimately pops him out into a clearing. There he discovers the Kirisa Plant, which looks nothing like a plant and everything like a random treasure chest in the grass. Presumably this is a natural defense mechanism against predators.

Jack returns once again to Portoa and enters the armor shop. In a tense exchange, Jack trades some of the money he's captured for a Platinum Shield the shopkeeper has been holding hostage. No one is injured, so Jack goes back out to the field to correct that mistake vicariously through some unsuspecting monsters.

Some other stuff happens, but it's dinnertime now, so I'll tell you later.

...

OK, I'm back from dinner. Our intrepid sword-waver makes his way into yet another hole in a mountain and proceeds to threaten the stability of the cave by knocking out every rock wall he can. In the heart of the cave, beyond several barriers that only his magical sword can destroy, past countless (assuming you don't know how to count) poisonous and paralysis-inducing monsters, Jack finds the Fog Lamp that some middle-aged boatman from Portoa casually lost track of. This is completely plausible.

In the hopes that the Fog Lamp is more like a magic lamp that you can rub to generate fog, Jack hands over this precious item to its owner in order to learn its secrets. The boatman, not understanding how this whole assistance-and-reward process works (like everyone else in this town), instead gives Jack permission to borrow the boat that's been sitting outside, unguarded, this whole time.

Jack climbs into the boat he could've easily taken without permission and travels 40 feet across a stream with water that probably doesn't go up past his knees to end up at a shack on the edge of the Angry Sea. There he learns about all the quests he'll have to complete in the near future, but at least they sound more promising than fetching another MacGuffin Lamp.

Jack steps out of the shack to discover, with horror, that he's out of MP to use Teleport and doesn't have the Shell Flute to summon the dolphin he should've rescued in the secret passageway behind the Queen's chambers. Therefore he's stuck on this tiny island forever.

Oh, oops, Jack's summoning the dolphin now and he's got plenty of MP.

Jack and his unnamed aquatic mammal parade around the sea awhile in search of treasure. They soon discover the Love Pendant the guy in the shack says he lost, which is suspicious because the Love Pendant is found floating neatly in a box in a water-filled cave you can only access with a dolphin. Something tells me this dude is in league with the Fog Lamp guy.

The dude, who looks suspiciously like the Wise Man Kensu (which we know from using the Telepathy spell to mentally prank call random people like him), turns out to BE the Wise Man—hey, where'd he go? Crud. Finding that Kensu is no longer in the shack, Jack gives up on this section of the game and goes back to the Brynmaer area, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty much offensive stereotypes. With the power of his Sword of Water, Jack creates an ice bridge to Amazones, a place where the women outside are insulted by his presence and the women inside only want him for his money.

With a little magical chicanery, Jack breaks into the leader's house and loots her basement. It's not as bad as it sounds. He absconds only with the Blizzard Bracelet, and nothing of interest transpires after that.

Brought to you by GameCola.net.

Other Statistics