Transis and hyper-sensitive lovers know this only too well: sometimes it only takes a change of look to understand the depth of an emerging union, and destines a great future, and change your habits. Your servant may not be in the morning, far from it, yet he still remembers with a smile on his lips that day started under the California sun by the presentation of a certain Cris Tales, a Colombian RPG which explains without blushing to draw its inspiration from the greatest in history, Chrono Trigger in mind.
See also: Cris Tales: The splendid Colombian RPG takes stock after a first demo
A few weeks after this discovery, the Modus editor put online a first playable demo, like a letter of intent, to which curious realists had received a very good reception. It is therefore full of hope that we have crossed the road of Crisbell, the time-manipulating hero, for a second trial run with Derek Neal, producer at Modus, and Carlos Rocha Silva, the boss of Dreams Uncorporated studio.
There’s Carthagne, there’s fun
It is therefore always in its pr-alpha version that Cris Tales has come back, pushing us beyond the demo of 2019, four hours after the start of the adventure, while our little team of adventurers discovers the duality of Saint Clarity, a socially divided city which therefore takes up a theme that seems more fashionable than ever, thank you Final Fantasy VII Remake. The simple discovery of these alleys, armed with the almost namesake Cristal, allows you to admire the fairly phenomenal work carried out by the Dreams Uncorporated teams, since the screen divided into three displays in all circumstances the past, the present, and the future of the city, taking into account your actions in real time.
Saint Clarity has nothing to do with the slums, victims of regular floods as soon as it rains more than it should. The upper part, reserved for the rich and noble titles, has nothing to do with these problems, and continues to wallow in a form of self-satisfaction that we know only too well. By cutting the fat with the locals, you also discover that the future as envisaged at the present time unveils a completely flooded low city, deserted by its inhabitants. Full of additional quests in view of what has so far been revealed to us by the Colombian team, it is up to you to ward off fate, and measure in real time your impacts on the famous space-time continuum.
It's by the sea, you can't go wrong
Our trio therefore launches into a vast tangle of requests to satisfy, which sometimes require going to retrieve another time when the object necessary for your advance, since some will, for example, have completely disappeared during your lifetime. Crisbell is fortunately accompanied by a small orange batrachian who can move between the three proposed times, and if Neal played with pleasure all the rods possessed on his way, we still wonder if the complexity of the adventure will not force players to abandon along the way a good part of the side quests that we have observed. And given their impact, both visual and scriptural, it would still be a shame.
After having obtained the equivalent of the A38 pass, we are indeed changing the fate of a little boy, destined to become a renowned plumber, who will one day tackle this evacuation problem inspired by the city of Cartagena, all that is most real. The Colombian influence is also found in the numerous architectures, notably religious, since the presence of majestic churches and cathedrals seems implicitly linked to the main framework, which we will keep for the moment voluntarily mysterious.
Intelligent System
While exploring the surroundings of Saint Clarity, our heroes reveal a world map fairly simple, which allows you to move from one environment to another, not without delighting the random battles, J-RPG requires. These are always as exciting and technical as when we first contacted them, and you will have to make the most of your time control: in addition to rejuvenating or accelerating the aging of your enemies, the use of crystal allows you to accelerate the effects of the poison, and thus to skillfully empty whole life bars. The scan function will prove very useful for adopting the right strategy, as there are so many options. Very many. Too much ? Maybe …
Some boss fights require you to understand at a glance the complexity of certain operations, which require a sense of timing and planning such as only very bad sessions of trial and error seem to be able to solve. Fortunately, borrowing the gameplay proper to the Paper Mario series is still effective, both to maximize the damage inflicted and to reduce that received. Group attacks and moves the most advanced also promise a complexity that the series of Intelligent Systems has always been careful to offer. We salivate in advance. The business gets worse when some more tough enemies manage elsewhere to thwart your time control, for example by moving the screen, which necessarily means finding a new strategy right away. Nec plus ultra, the result of loans from King Chrono Trigger, Cris Tales wants to be open and free enough for some seemingly impossible confrontations to settle the scenario to prove ultimately doable with a good leveling session. The replay value So how many seems to go.
Non-binary Domain
And to stay consistent from start to finish, Cris Tales strives to let you have your hands on certain relatively heavy choices of consequences, such as that of the transfer of power to Saint Clarity, between a former "senior" turned political activist, and a blue blood remains true to its class: in the first case, the lowlands will benefit from a fairer social policy, to the detriment of the wealthy districts which will lose their splendor, and vice versa. As in life, nothing is so manichen, and we hope that this concern for detail will be found throughout the adventure.
WE'RE WAITING FOR IT … ALWAYS SO MUCH!
Despite its share of technical shortcomings which only need to be corrected during the transition to beta, Cris Tales still looks as ambitious as when we first contacted. Supported by a rather singular artistic direction and drawing its inspiration from a culture that is too little represented in the video game, this Japanese-inspired RPG continues to borrow a good number of mechanics from the great names of the genre, to forge its own identity . If we must be careful not to force the dose on the difficulty, we already want to cross the road to Crisbell to manipulate time with as much ingenuity.
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