Welcome to our review of Crystal Crisis, a contender for the throne of puzzle games?
An all-star cast of heroes has gathered to test their mettle in Crystal Crisis, a cute and chaotic new color-matching combat game! Crystal Crisis is presented like a one-on-one fighting game, but instead of kicking and punching, players attack by arranging colorful falling crystals and clearing them from the screen. It’s the ultimate puzzle battle throwdown!
With 20 unique playable characters, including Quote and Curly Brace from Cave Story, Isaac from The Binding of Isaac, Astro Boy and Black Jack from Tezuka Productions, and many more!
Crystal Crisis presents itself as a smart variant to the Puyo Puyo games. A franchise I simply adore and Crystal Crisis was no exception. But in true Nicalis style, it is not just a clone but an incredibly smart approach to a time-tested game mechanic and it might at times even trump the original play style.
As your blocks drop, you are instantly familiar as to what you need to do, link colors and then use the crystals in the game to make the linked color blocks disappear. This is similar to Puyo games but at the same time uses a sneaky game mechanic to often lock you down into making more and better color links. Once you hit the same colored crystal to a set of blocks (or even a single one), they disappear and start filling up your gauge meter.
So the premise is easy but the execution is highly classical in the approach of the more you play, the better you get at it. As you slowly but surely stack your blocks, you will often see the chance to hit combination crystals like stacking a blue crystal on top of a red one. Once the red one pops the red links, the blue drops down and can hit its own blue colored block(s) in order to destroy those.
In itself, this is a way to quickly empty out your playing field but it does not end there! The aforementioned gauges are to be used in either attack or defense. What style purely depends on what character you are playing as. Some are able to rotate blocks to make busted chains whole again or you force the playing field of your opponent to change. Obviously and hopefully resulting negatively for your opponent!
And it still does not end here. No Sir! The best feature of all is still left unmentioned.
You are not limited to the borders of the playing field.
When you move a block to the right and keep moving right, it will appear on the left and you can thus “split” up blocks strategically to affect both sides of the playing field. By far the most ingenious twist to the genre I have seen in a very long time and I tip my hat to the person or team that invented this little feature. I love it and hate it so much! It can both be very beneficial and confusing at times so use this feature wisely!
Crystal Crisis has a ton of playing options, you will not be bored any time soon! I ran through story mode and freed up several new characters and am now still trying to free up the remaining few. This gem is keeping me entertained and aside from the slightly tilted playing field, I have absolutely no qualms at all. It was great fun and it brings great bang for the buck.
In conclusion, despite my great praise, I also need to look at the longevity of a title when rating a game and this is where its clear 9 out of 10 rating receives a chip and becomes an 8,5. I simply adore this game but I wonder how it will fare after a while in my Switch inventory and if I will still be going back to it daily after a month. This game is amazing but this is just a gut feeling I have.
