Crystal Project

I’m not sure why this game jumped out at me so much. Yes, I have a huge soft spot for lo-fi games, but at first glance Crystal Project doesn’t have much in the way of either visual pizzazz or quaint retro charm. It just looks like a combination of Octopath Traveller-inspired character designs in a Minecraft-esque 3D voxel-y world. It’s very straightforward. However, I did do a tiny bit of reading about the game and it turned out that exploration plays a big role. Also, there is a Final Fantasy-styled system whereby characters can change classes and even have a sub class. This feature can apparently lead to the game opening the door to all sorts of exciting broken builds, which I generally tend to find super interesting. With that I was intriqued.

When I started up, there was only a few classes to choose from so I made a fairly bog standard fantasy RPG party of a warrior for tanking, a monk for physical DPS, a cleric for healing, and a wizard for magic DPS. From there I was plunged into a world where I was basically just told to go on an adventure, explore, and be curious. There was an NPC waiting for me named Nan who was kind enough to show my party the ropes regarding some basics of the game, not that anyone who has played an RPG in their life will have trouble figuring this stuff out. What was weird was that there were a lot of NPCs named Nan in the starting zone. I just leaned a bit harder into my suspension of disbelief, politely went along with various Nans' kindly advice, and made an effort to move on to greener pastures as soon as possible. Eventually I got there but they were brown, and more of a valley, but at least there were a variety of NPCs to meet now, not just an army of Nans.

Traversing the world, which appears to be named Sequoia, actually involves quite a bit of platforming. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by this given the voxel-y nature of the environment, but I was and pleasantly so. It actually gets to the point where there are quite a few platforming puzzles throughout the world. I’m constantly getting tempted by tall, sticking out bits that make me think, “I can totally reach that!” or seeing treasure chests in weird out of the way places that imply there is definitely a way to get there but it will take some doing to make it happen. It’s not just the puzzles either, there are paths and caves and what have you that all invite people to have a wander and explore.

The game isn’t hugely linear so players have a lot of freedom to poke their noses around as they see fit. One thing that I really like about this is that it opens the door to walking into areas with very powerful enemies unprepared. I loved that about some old school RPGs of the 80s where it was possible to go way off into the wilderness only to get thumped by baddies many levels higher than you. Monsters are visible as little flames that will start chasing if you get too close while exploring Sequoia, but it is possible to out run them. That being said there are some that will make a beeline for you if you’re spotted, which can be a bit harrowing. If you’re getting close to a boss, often there are environmental hints that you’re getting close to something strong and you may want to reconsider venturing any further, so that’s nice. In the end, Crystal Project encourages players to explore quite a bit. There are some occasional hard boundaries where guards will block a path and tell your party what it needs to do in order to get past them, but even then there’s a lot to check out in each section of the world as players get to adventuring.

There isn’t a whole lot of explanation of why you’re adventuring at the start. Your just told to adventure and get a feeling of, “Well, I guess I’m adventuring now...” as you get on with things. Eventually you’re informed that there are a bunch of crystals hidden throughout the world and you need to find them. A big motivator to hurry up and figure out where they are is each of them will unlock a new class for your characters to use, and there are a ton of classes in the game to discover (18 unlockable classes total). Some of them are pretty fun choices for classes that I would never have expected. They have skill trees that can slowly be unlocked by spending points in them, and since there’s the sub class system it opens the door for interesting combinations of abilities for each character. Also, there are passive abilities that can be unlocked with a certain amount that can be used at any time by a character. The combination of these makes for some really neat builds and one can slowly see how overpowered broken builds can become a thing as they figure out how to put everything together and eventually start one-shotting very powerful baddies.

I did come across one weird choice with classes, though: the Chemist. Generally, you cannot use items in battle. Outside of battle, fine, have at it. When the rubber hits the road, though, you better have someone in your party who can cast healing spells or things are going to get rough in a hurry. The Chemist, however, can use items in battle. So, you either need to have the class as your main or sub class if you want access to items in battle or it just isn’t happening. This means that in the very least players are forced to waste their sub class slot on Chemist if they want to go this route which flies in the face of trying to come up with broken builds. Granted, this becomes less of a problem later on when you do start being able to make broken builds as it’s not like you’re going to get hit often anyway by that point. During the levelling process, though, having the use of items in battle cordoned off behind an entire class that you won’t even be able to unlock until about a third of the way through the game could will be frustrating for some.

Battles on the whole tend to be quite satisfying. They're turn-based with a "whose turn is next" slider at the bottom of the screen. If the baddies are around your level or higher, you can’t really phone it in. You need to actually put some thought into things. Make sure you have a tank in your party, start getting an idea what the different monsters are weak against, make smart use of the buffs and debuffs at your disposal, and pay attention to the debuffs your party members get hit with. The last one can be a doozey sometimes as suddenly you’ll notice your wizard has a bleed and poison on her and the next time they tick over she’s probably dead, so hurry up and mend her. Boss fights can be even more intense as sometimes you may barely scrape by with only one or two characters still standing when the dust settles.

While the world is vast, there are ways to teleport to certain areas which helps with fast travel but early on you need to be pretty strategic with them as you may have to do a lot of backtracking depending what ones you’re attuned to. It isn’t hugely awful if you mess this part up, but the game will teach players very quickly to be thoughtful about how they set up their ability to teleport around Sequoia.

One more quick thing before I go. Take time to talk to the NPCs you come across. Early on they're innocent enough, but as you get further some of their comments can be rather silly. It's worth taking the time to chat and see what they have to say.

People who like exploration and old school RPGs should definitely consider taking a look at Crystal Project. There’s a lot of wandering to do here and the game is constantly inviting players to poke around and see what’s out there. The platforming puzzles make it all the more enjoyable as there are a lot of outcrops and the like that will make players think, “There’s definitely a way to get there.” All the while, the battles are great fun rather than filler. Having to actually put some thought into them is very nice, and once you get further and want to try making silly over the top builds it gets interesting for an entirely different reason. So, yeah, give the game a look. It’s pretty neat.

Pennywhether

March 17, 2025