Game:

Crystalis (1990)

Duration: 1:22:39

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Originally recorded: September 4, 2022
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I knew this wasn't going to take me long. But it always feels arrogant to make declarations of how quickly I finish a game. And despite the fact that there was more left to Crystalis than I expected, I still managed to finish the game before midnight. Just like I predicted last time. Still feels pretty arrogant to treat something like that as a foregone conclusion though.

The final two areas in the game were... less interesting than anything that came before. At least the pyramid's front segment had a sense of stealth to it, dodging enemies that hit like a truck and could transform me into a defenseless monster with projectile attacks. After that, there was the segment from the back of the pyramid that was essentially a looping maze, where I had to find the correct stairs to progress. Then, once I got to the tower itself, I essentially had to go through a gauntlet of enemies that felt more like something out of a contemporary beat-'em-up than what you'd expect out of an action RPG. I mean, I guess at the least, they both did something different from the rest of the game... even if it wasn't really anything worthwhile.

The bosses, on the other hand, wow. Considering the fact that I literally wasted both of my "get out of jail free cards" on the boss rush during my last stream, I was expecting things to escalate, so I prepared for war. Imagine my surprise, when I was definitely overprepared for what awaited me. The Power Ring definitely hits like a truck -- high damage output has always been king in my experience when it comes to these old-school ARPGs and Crystalis did not deviate from that formula.

The entire final section felt like a bit of a non-sequitur though. I mean, even if we could already assume that the player character and Mesia were from the more technologically advanced past, based on where they both emerged from, there was a lot of non-sensical lore dumped on us at the end. So, like the lead wise man was actually an android from the same civilization as the kids? And now we have to destroy the tower's central computer because it somehow got word to destroy the Earthbound settlements... which I'm assuming came from Draygon... who was also either manipulated by, took command of or just outright was the head wise man's evil side? Like... what? Might just be a consequence of translating standards from the early 1990s, but the whole thing just came across like gibberish to me. The final boss itself felt a bit less imposing than the two I'd fought earlier in the night as well.

Still, that didn't really end up souring me on the game itself. It makes me wonder what might've happened if SNK had treated the AES like more than just a dumping ground for all of their arcade games... or if the NeoGeo CD had had more original titles. Could we have gotten a Crystalis 2, one that would've improved on the first game's already solid base? Since SNK announced that they're actually making a sequel to Garou: Mark of the Wolves, I think a Crystalis revival is my new "dream game" from the company. Honestly, I had so much fun with this, I'm honestly considering streaming the (from what I've heard, inferior) GBC version at some point in the future. I'm curious just to see how all the changes they made affected the game's overall quality. But that's for another day.

Having said that, I'm not done with SNK just yet...