Cris Tales

There are also many strange moments in terms of directing, when part of the narrative abruptly ends, as if you had missed something. Also the plot is written by 3y old.

[b]Not Recommended[/b] I played this for an hour, and there were so many red flags that I don't feel the need to trudge my way through to see the rest. All reviews seem to agree on one thing: the art is great. In fact, the first 5-10 minutes leave rather good impressions. The cinematics are great, and the art and design are quite striking [i]mostly[/i]. It falters a bit in the first town, mostly in its environments. They just look quite generic and also rather unclear? A house was apparently destroyed, and I struggled to see how it was "destroyed" until the characters pointed it out and I REALLY looked at it. A small criticism of the art in general is that it feels very noisy. It is sometimes hard to tell what I should be paying attention to. Everything pops out with equal importance. With that, now the MASSIVE narrative red flags all over. Firstly, there's no "character" in any of these characters. No backstory is given, no personality is shown, barely any backstory is hinted at. There is NOTHING to make me interested in any ONE of the characters. The main character just goes through the motions, painfully being pulled along by the writer to "the story". Each NPC has nice art, but they have one-liners with zero personality. The pacing feels like it's trying to speedrun way too much. It's bullet point storytelling. Allow me to summarise everything that happens in the first hour: [list] [*] Frog steals your rose [*] You run around town to find him [*] You end up in a cathedral, which is apparently bad to go in alone for some reason. We are never told why [*] Frog is like: I know a time lord guy, let's see him [*] You go to see him, he goes "omg, you're a time lady!", look, you can time lord things! In THE thinnest interaction possible [*] Time lord guy tells you to randomly ♥♥♥♥ off, despite you being really important and "wow" to him [*] You go back to town, see "Mother Superior" apparently looking sad, apparently in an abandoned orphanage she runs. The art does not make this clear at all [*] You go back into town, apparently see some building collapsing because of "rot" [*] You get sent on a series of small "I know a guy, who knows a thing" talking quests, talking to A => B => C etc. [*] You are then told that the magic apple thing you randomly planted back at time lord guy's house cures the rot. ALREADY BACKTRACKING [*] You get it, but ohhhhhhhhh nooo, you can only cure one house with it. One house, of two NPCs with no personality. Oh, such a hard, painstaking decision. I spent more hours contemplating this decision than I did playing the game truly [*] Now suddenly the farm is on fire. You go, farm lady is like "you can't fight!!! that's crazy". MC is like, ♥♥♥♥, you're right! Frog guy is like "I know a time lord guy with a sword" [*] You go to time lord guy, he's like "I know a sword", opens a random portal, you go in, pick up the sword, literally transform and immediately teleport out. In such a transition, it feels like a literal afterthought of "oh ♥♥♥♥, what now?", where the MC narrates a scene that felt like it was cut [*] Now you go back to the farm, two demon ladies are there [*] Random shield guy shows up [*] Battle ensues. There's nonsense here, but we'll get to that [*] You beat demon ladies [*] Secretary lady is like "Where'd you get that sword!?", MC explains, lady responds "wtf, who are those people you're talking about???", "clearly you started this fire and your random friends I don't know are the culprits, GUARDS!" [*] Begin "wtf run" escape sequence, hiding in a building 2 steps away from the farm [*] You escape the city, time lord guy is like "welp, I know a cathedral, they must definitely be linked". That cathedral coincidentally is in the same town shield guy came from [*] Now you're off on an aimless adventure, with no goal [/list] Honestly... there is SO MUCH MORE I could complain about... but that's the brief. From a gameplay perspective, it's painfully mediocre and nonsensical. You time button presses to dodge and deal more damage, a la Paper Mario style. Problem being, this game does not strongly indicate when you should do these things or indicate when [i]you succeed[/i], so it feels about as responsive as a wet floppy fish. Speaking of wet floppy fish, the tutorial boss tries to teach you how manipulating time works. Apparently, if you wet the demon ladies, because they have an iron shield, then send them to the future, it rusts their shield???? Because water clearly does not dry with the passage of time. And that's all the combat I experienced, "two" effectively, one, short battles. It's possible all this changes many hours in, but I saw so many red flags, saw the reviews consistent with that experience, and thus have no faith to try and continue.