Game: Crystal Crisis
Genre: Puzzle Fighter
System: Nintendo Switch (also on PS4)
Developer/ Publisher: Nicalis
Age Rating: EU: 7+| USA: 10+
Price: €29,99 | £26.99 | $29.99
Release Date: 28th May 2019
Review code kindly provided by Nicalis
Face off against a whole cast of foes as you combine blocks and shatter crystals in this intense head to head puzzler. If you’re familiar with the puzzle fighter genre – Puyo Puyo for me – then look no further.
Unleash The Power Of Crystals
The game is pretty simple to get to grips with – though I recommend doing the tutorial anyway – you combine coloured blocks on your board and then shatter them when a matching crystal appears. You can save your crystals and plot more devastating blows in the form of chains to your opponent, but be weary that they’ll be doing the same. Atop this, matching blocks builds your burst meter that allows each character to perform their various special moves to gain an edge over the competition.
It’s easy to get the hang of things, and the difficulty becomes pretty manageable as you gain experience with the system. For me, it all got a little too easy. Story Mode and the various Arcade Modes grew quickly samey as my formula went largely unchallenged, albeit a few unlucky streaks. But you can always head online or play locally against others to really challenge your skill.
Fights, Characters, Action!
Behind the puzzle boards, you’ll witness characters duking it out as you make matches and launch your powerful burst moves. It’s fun, flashy and serves as a nice backdrop to the repetitive nature of the game. There is a whole roster of characters from the game and indie scene both from the start and unlocked. Each have their own attacks and COM players have their own play style for you to devise strategies against.
Though there is variety, I found that there wasn’t much to learn in way of strategy against the COM. Because of that I think the game leans a little too hard on the challenge provided by other humans, but the base package does at least provide plenty to explore and discover.
What To Do…
The game has 3 main game modes; Arcade, Story and PvP (Player Vs. Player). Arcade mode contains in itself a few separate game styles. The main playstyle, with its difficulty increased by way of fighting a longer string of opponents. Inline Mode, which ditches Crystals and becomes a simpler ‘colour match’ style. There is also Tag Mode which allows you to choose 2 fighters, each with their own boards that you can switch between in an attempt to best your opponents. It’s actually quite nice to have a few modes in which to choose from.
Story Mode contains a set number of fights and a small series of brief cutscenes. Significant increase in content here would have been greatly appreciated, but it’s important to remember that this style of game relies largely on replayability. That said, the brevity really exposed the loose narrative which was a shame.
One final detail would be the settings which allow you to change the colours of your menus and blocks which I thought was a nifty addition, so kudos to the developers for that! Notes on the audio and visuals would be that the art style is solid and beg no complaints, but the audio is nothing spectacular. I noted no performance issues or lags in framerate even though I played largely in handheld mode.
The Verdict?
I personally found this game really difficult to play. While I have no major complaints about it, I suppose that left it as a very average experience for me. I feel an invested fan of the genre may garner more value from its solid package. For me alas, it did nothing to turn my head or capture any lasting interest. I give it a thumbs up as a well made game, but it sadly wasn’t for me. So because of the fact it’s well made and might provide nice gameplay online for you, I gave it and I like it.
