Review #175: Crimson Gem Saga

 Oh, this game. Man, this game. I... This game. Words falter me.

 I love JRPGs, they are my jam, my thing, mah thang. Crimson Gem Saga is one of the worst JRPGs I've played in a long, long time, getting to finish this game was a struggle in and of itself, I even had to take a 3-4 month break since it got so repetitive, so dull, so boring. But y'know me, I just have to finish games, Rune Factory and Demon's Souls not withstanding, they are happening. Sometime.

 The story puts you in the role of Killian, a Chevalier who is late to his own graduation. Killian has a habit of oversleeping, playing on the "waking up late" trope that Crono popularized, and has a bit of a complex about second places, since that's where he usually lands. Eventually he wounds up with a rag-tag group and a quest to gather all the token McGuffins, the "wicked stones", before the token bad guy does. While the story does have its moments, particularly near the end of the game, overall it was pretty boring. It tries to make fun of common JRPG tropes, but at the end of the day, it ends up swimming in them. Terms are poorly explained, characters don't get much development, and you don't even get to fight your Rival(And Killian even makes a small joke about it)... I didn't feel motivated to see the quest through due to the story... nor due the gameplay, but more on that later. Even worse, the developers, or the publishers, were so arrogant as to think that this would be a part of a franchise, which means it ends on a cliffhanger with multiple plot threads hanging loose, and questions unanswered, and the game was so bad that they will never be answered. Probably.

 The game plays like any other turn based RPG, you have items or spells, and can choose to attack, defend or try to escape from battle. The game also has spells that require other party members to cast, which for some reason they thought that it was a selling point, which it isn't, that work as any other technique, except that it costs Mana from all the characters involved. Now then, where should I start tearing this game apart? Let's see, firstly, at the beginning of the game, Killian is VERY slow, and if an enemy sees you, you are basically screwed. Y'see, there's three ways to start the battle: Initiative, Enemy initiative or normally depending on when you touch the enemy goblin sprite(All battles are represented by a goblin, go figure). You gain the initiative by touching an enemy from behind before it sees you. A battle starts out normally if you touch an enemy after it sees you. But an enemy gets the initiative if it touches you a little while after seeing you. Y'see, Killian is so slow, and the range at which an enemy can see you is so large, that you'll start most battles getting hit, and ALL your characters get hit. It's not fun, it's annoying. Later in the game you can buy Mercury Boots that make you faster and allow you to get to the goblins more efficiently, but they are really expensive, and they might as well be a necessity.

 The game is a grindfest. Really. You need to grind for Experience, Skill Points, Money, Medallions and Gems. The game even lets you explore the first floors of the game's last dungeon since the start of Chapter 2, they want you to grind, they expect you to grind. First of all, Experience points, enemies are really strong. As in really, really strong. Enemies love to gang up on one of your characters, one single critical hit can mean the death of one of your character, since it allows them to hit you more times. On the flip-side, this also works for you, if you score a Critical hit, a button prompt appears on screen, and if you press X on time, you will score 1 or 2 more hits. That's nice. Regardless, random encounters will always be a threat, the game expects you to grind up to level 40(Starting at around 20) on chapter 2 before you can, more or less, comfortably finish it. On the other hand, bosses are really, really easy. I've said this time and time again, but if the random encounters are harder than a boss, you are doing something wrong.

 Then comes Skill Points, these are shared between characters, and are used to learn spells for each character. I never really had trouble with SP, but you might need to grind for these. Then comes Money, at the start of the game, it isn't really an issue, but in Chapter 2 you get your first chance to buy the Mercury Boots, and you need these, so you are gonna have to grind for money. The last chapter also gets incredibly expensive, it will take hundreds of fights to be able to buy equipment for all six characters. Oh, and you want to buy equipment for everyone, as characters leave your party at a moment's notice, and this even applies for the last dungeon. Medallions are used to level up your individual skills, and they come in four varieties: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. You need a bronze to level up a skill from level 1 to 2, a Silver to level them from 2 to 3. No skipping. Medallions are rare drops, and you need to level up your skills if you want to stand a chance during random encounters, so... yeah, get grinding. Lastly, gems are used to change the affinity of your weapons, I never really needed them, and since you are gonna be switching equipment, I never really felt the need to change the affinity of most of my weapons, only on rare occasions when they weren't dealing any damage due to resistances.

 Now then, I'm gonna tell you the secret to playing this game. First of all, these are the only skills that you need: Everyone must learn Grace of God, Killian, Gelt and Acelora must learn their Ultimate attack that hits all enemies, Spinel and Lahduk must learn their ultimate attacks that hits one enemy for massive damage, Spinel and Killian learn to need their dual technique, and Henson needs his mutli-hitting wind spells before he leaves the party, and once he returns... you don't really need him anymore. All the other skills, which there are many, you won't ever need. Except maybe the healing spells for Gelt and Killian. Now then, Spinel and Killian's dual technique deals 15-20% of the enemies current HP in damage, which you will abuse during bosses. Grace of God you will only need on the bonus bosses that have attacks that can wipe your whole party in one turn. Killian, Gelt and Acelora will spam their ultimate Attacks on random encounters so that you can grind fast, easily and safely, while Spinel and Ladhuk will be your boss killers. You can't buy mana potions, but your health and mana get refilled after each level up, and the enemies drop mana potions all the time. THIS is how they expect you to play the game. It's repetitive, it's boring, it's a waste of time. It's hilarious, because the game starts obnoxiously hard, but by the end of the game you get such strong equipment that the last bosses will have a hard time killing you. Seriously.

 Oh, I'm not done yet. Dungeons are very mazelike, with many forks that take you to different places, while at the same time having multiple exits that lead to the same places, seriously. A lot of the time they will have you going around hitting levers, switches or the such, going from one end of the dungeon to another. They aren't fun to explore, and the corridors are designed in such a way that they all look the same. And if you thought the dungeons were the only blunder, think again, during the story you will have to go from place to place for arbitrary reasons, you'll end up doing something like: Go to A, then go to B, then go to A, then go to C, then back to A and finally back to B. It's not fun, it's boring, it's repetitive, just like the battle system.

 The graphics are nice, kinda. Sprites are very colorful, and look good... sometimes. Some animations are clearly lacking frames, while others, like the Zombies, look downright beautiful. Most of the time they are pretty bad though. The music was very forgettable, and it doesn't even loop, when in dungeons or towns, the music will just stop for a few seconds before starting up again, it's hilarious, in a bad way. The voice acting is really good though, shame that the dialogue is so asinine.

 Crimson Gem Saga was a game I hated, I despised. It bored me to no end, and it'll be a day too soon if I never see this game again. I've heard that this was a massively improved sequel to 'Astonishia Story', which makes me wonder just how can a game be worse than this. This is a game that doesn't respect the player, it doesn't value their time. This is not a good game, avoid it like the plague.
 1.5 out of 10