The problem with first impressions is that you can only make one. Dreams Uncorporated runs into that problem with Cris Tales, a freshman foray into the world of JRPGs with inspirations “by timeless JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Valkyrie Profile, and modern classics like Bravely Default and Persona 5.” I think, for the most part, Cris Tales might be one of the best-looking games I’ve ever played. Stylistically stunning, Cris Tales has incredible character design and enchanting cities and dungeons to explore. Unfortunately, Cris Tales is also mired down by some of the worst optimization and bugs I’ve encountered in quite awhile.
Cris Tales
Developer: Dreams Uncorporated
Price: $40
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Stadia, Nintendo Switch (reviewed)
MonsterVine was provided with a Switch code for review
Cris Tales tells the story of Crisbell, a young-ish orphan girl who is tracked down by an adorable frog. The frog steals her rose, takes her for a wild goose chase around town, and eventually shows her that she has time powers. I dig the story in Cris Tales. Cris Tales‘ story is pretty simple and severely lacks a sense of urgency. But, while the overarching plot does little to keep me pushing forward, the stories in each town proved intriguing enough to keep me going. Likewise, the characters are fun and interesting. Many of the character designs in the game are preposterously gorgeous and the voice acting is quite good considering just about every line in the game is voiced.
Artistically, Cris Tales knocks it out of the park. My complaints regarding the art style are minimal. I really don’t like the overworld map. As a style choice, I think the map looks ugly, uninteresting, and out of place in the world of Cris Tales. Each dungeon and each town have a kind of messy style that really resonated with me. I was a little disappointed with the enemy variety considering there are many palate swaps. I found myself mostly fighting wolves and slimes. Boss variety was interesting and Crisbell’s time powers allowed for some very slick looking animations in the game world.
All characters being voiced, including all NPCs, gave an enjoyable and easy feel to the story. Cities seemed a little more lively despite a low NPC count, and even side-quests felt more impactful having side stories voiced. Crisbell’s voice was sickly sweet and the wholesomeness in her voice made me want to move mountains for her. While I found the writing for both Wilhelm and Christopher, Crisbell’s first two companions, annoying, the voice acting was actually top notch.
The screen is split up into three triangles. The center triangle is where Crisbell stands and shows you the present. On the left we have the past and on the right, the future. I wasn’t thrilled with this setup. Walking around town and seeing NPCs in their past, present, and future stages was incredibly cool. The amount of work that must’ve gone into creating three forms for every character must have been immense. Likewise, when scanning enemies in battle you’re shown three different forms, meaning they created three forms for each enemy NPC as well. Incredible. I found splitting up the screen and having all three times on the same screen interesting but frustrating when it came to needing to see a certain time period or hopping back and forth.
I say hop because Matias the frog, a gentlefrog with a top hat, is the only one who can go back and forth in time. Crisbell can see through time, Matias can actually go back and forth as long as he’s near her. Annoyingly, Matias is slow. So you’ll go back in time and if you’re not really on-top of where you need to be or Matias is lagging behind, it can be a bit of a slog to get some things done. You’ll mostly be using the time travel in town to complete specific objectives or find chests. If Matias is too far away from Crisbell, the game will stop and a box will show up saying he needs to be closer to Crisbell in order to time hop. He’s already so damn slow and it’s frustrating to have to wait for him to catch up before you can do another slow thing. Conceptually though, it works out and is an interesting mechanic.
And most of that stuff is pretty great. The art, the writing, the character design, and the voice acting were all really great stuff. But all of those things start to fade into the background once you start hitting the real issues with this game. My only hope is that these problems are localized entirely to the Switch version and aren’t as pervasive on other platforms. Though I suppose time will tell.
First, I’d like to state that this does try to maintain that traditional JRPG feel and how it does that is by having random battle encounters in dungeons. I have absolutely no problem with that as a concept. It does become an issue when you have loading screens before and after battles. It becomes an even bigger issue when those loading screens are 13 seconds long. Yes, I timed them. And yes, just about loading screen INTO battle was roughly 13 seconds. Loading into cities was actually worse, clocking in around 20 seconds. These times were clocked while the switch was docked and the game was installed on the system memory.
Let’s add a little insult to injury. Loading screens aren’t the only issue with battle. Cris Tales itself doesn’t run that well on Switch to begin with. The battle system uses timed hits. Timed hits being a system that has you hit a button while the character is attacking to provide either a follow-up attack or add extra damage to your attack. Almost all abilities use this function. You can also hit a button to deflect or parry an attack. Deflected attacks deal slightly less damage and parried attacks do even less and can usually nullify a status effect if the attack parried would usually apply one. Depending on the location though, the frame rate might not be able to keep up providing an inconsistent animation time for timing your timed hits. When attacking, you can either get a close or critical feedback response. Close means you were close and dealt a little extra damage whereas critical is double damage and status effect applied if one exists. The battle system is predicated on the game running well and one thing it does not do on the Switch is run well.
I do want to gush about the battle system a bit because it’s a lot of fun. I don’t know why they included MP as a resource in Cris Tales because they give you a ton of it and really low-cost spells. But there’s a lot of fun you can have with the status effects. Some really basic stuff like soaking someone in water and using lightning to stun or deal extra damage was fun but with Crisbell being able to manipulate time, you’d be able to poison someone and have it take full effect in a single round of combat. Willhelm, a nature mage, can throw or plant these plant creatures known as Yucandra. If you plant them you need to wait for them to grow before they blow up and either deal damage or heal. I loved planting a heal Yucandra early on to have a bonus group heal pop-up later in the fight. The real fun though was planting an exploding Yucandra and using Crisbell to manipulate time to send the enemy’s side of the screen into the future and have the Yucandra be fully grown and deal devastating damage.
Another big issue I ran into was the promise of Crisbell being able to make big decisions in order to affect the future. Cris Tales even starts you off by making a small decision early on, determining whose house to provide the house healing salve to, changing the future for one family and resigning another to their fate. This is conceptually a neat idea. The next town asked Crisbell to help them make a decision and instead of a pop-up asking me to make the decision, Crisbell just had unvoiced text on the screen and I couldn’t choose an option. Pressing the ‘okay’ button to move on had Crisbell respond as if she had made a decision, but I wasn’t given the option. Cris Tales is riddled with bugs that really killed any excitement I had for the game. I was treated to missing sound effects, soft locks, quizzical NPC responses based on what was happening in the plot, and a boss fight that I was able to complete in about 5 moves without the boss running out of HP. I entered a boss fight, applied poison and speed to my teammates, planted a heal potion for later and when it was the bosses turn the game glitched and just ended.
The Final Word
I wanted to like Cris Tales. There are parts of Cris Tales I really adore. Cris Tales COULD be a good game. Unfortunately, it’s not a good game as of writing this. I would avoid Cris Tales on the Switch until there’s been some patching done or you’ve tested it on another platform.
MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
