Cris Tales
We admit to being out-punned by this game
The words “turn-based battle” basically constituted a taboo for a few years, but they are back in big way, as new players discover JRPGs and genre veterans seek games that remind them of the classics from decades ago. Colombian developers Dreams Uncorporated and SYCK took things a step further and decided to make a JRPG flavoured with influences from their Colombian homeland.
The story is quickly told – Crisbell, a young orphan, finds out she is a chosen time mage, able to use the power of time crystals. Together with Matias the frog (very dapper in his top hat and bow tie) and a group of other companions, she sets out to visit a number of cathedrals across the world to eventually become powerful enough to defeat the evil Time Empress.
Cris Tales’ unique selling point: time travel. Not the Chrono Trigger kind that’s confined to certain points within the story, but a system that allows your hero Crisbell to manipulate time both in battle and outside it. In towns, the young girl is framed by a triangle, with areas outside the triangle representing the past on the left-hand side and the future on the right. Similarly, enemies flank you in battle, allowing you to send them into the past or the future, depending on which side of the screen you view them on. This way, foes can become frail with age, soft with youth or, if you’re unlucky, stronger with experience or youthful vigour.
TIME BANDITS
Manipulating time is a fun idea that turns out to be a lot less interesting in practice, because it comes with several caveats. In towns you can only enter a different time by using froggy friend Matias, who can interact with objects but only move so far from Crisbell’s position. In battle there are very few ways to use time magic to make a meaningful difference, mostly because it is fiddly to combine it with other characters’ abilities – Crisbell generally needs to use a time crystal, then someone has to use an ability, and then Crisbell has to break the crystal again. In the time this takes you’ll beat most enemies by conventional means.
Cris Tales makes a genuine effort to introduce variety – each of your party members has their own skills so that they play fundamentally differently. For example, Cat Lady Zas pulls surprise weapons out of her bag and decides on magic attacks by using a giant wheel of fortune, while fellow time mage
Willhelm employs living root pals called Yucandra to perform his magic with. Additionally, battle depends quite heavily on a timed attack and block system, which is absolutely crucial to survival, especially in the first few hours. After that you’ll still come up against moments that feel either too difficult or too easy, but you’ll at least know a
Enemies flank you in battle, allowing you to send them into the past or the future.
healing spell to help you over any tricky points.
TRAVEL AGENT
Cris Tales’ world is small but full of interesting sights, inspired by Colombian architecture. Every location you visit is gorgeous, whether it’s a town with massive spires piercing the sky or a rainbow lake. Cris Tales is uniformly beautiful and offers some good level design thanks to the depth its 2.5D graphics give locations. Since there aren’t many enemy types, and the number of random encounters is quite high, you’re likely to get bored of each locale before the end, however. These are problems most JRPGs have, which is why many play games in the genre for the stories, not the combat. Unfortunately, Cris
Tales can’t score points in this regard – the story stays as flat as its initial concept. There is no character development to speak of, and stylistically there isn’t much to the writing either. But while ultimately your success in saving the world depends on how many side-quests you’ve fulfilled, through them, Cris Tales shows that helping the small people is what really matters, even though your help amounts to little more than a few fetch quests.
This is no doubt a nostalgic trip, but Cris Tales isn’t a game that can live up to its influences. Its more interesting systems remain underdeveloped, as do its characters, and what’s left is a beautiful, ambitious game with simply too much competition to stand up to.