As much as SNK has made a name for itself with the Neo Geo as well as series such as King of Fighters and Metal Slug, it can be a lot of fun to sift through their various early efforts. There was a time when the company was perfectly happy to make games for other systems, with the Famicom / NES getting a number of SNK titles.
One such game was Crystalis (1990). At face value, it may be tempting to simply look at the game as a Zelda clone. However, while it shares a number of core gameplay elements, its developers brought a number of their own ideas to the table. This resulted in a combination of execution and originality that helped the game become a cult classic among action RPG fans.
When it first came out in Japan, the game was actually called God Slayer: Sonata of the Far Away Skies. So, in order to avoid offending religious groups in the US, the game got a new name for Western markets, being christened Crystalis instead.
Given the story in the game, God Slayer actually seems appropriate. Everything takes place after much of the world was destroyed during a massive conflict. After the dust settled, survivors rebuilt. Many made simple settlements, but one group who retained much of the knowledge before everything was destroyed built a large, floating tower. In time, this group were all but forgotten, remembered only in legend and thought of as gods. The player takes control of someone who has been in stasis since before the world was destroyed, and who must eventually fight a newly formed empire that is searching for the tower to use themselves. The whole thing almost has a sense of Gnosticism to it.
As was mentioned earlier, the Crystalis does have a similar feel to The Legend of Zelda. Your character runs around the map, swinging his sword, exploring dungeons, finding special items, and slaying legions of monsters. However, there are a number of little touches that help the game to stand out from other such games of this sort.
First off, your character can charge his sword to launch a projectile energy attack. Players did this by holding down the attack button, allowing the charge to build, then releasing after to launch the energy attack. As one progressed through, they would slowly unlock items that allow for up to three power levels when using the attack. This would result in a little more strategy when fighting, especially taking into account that while the third tier of the attack was it’s most powerful, it also consumed mana, a very precious resource in the game. As such, it made more sense to usually only let a charge his level two, then firing so to get off a reasonably powerful attack without running out of mana.
While similar mechanics are often associated with the Zelda series, it’s interesting to note that Crystalis was the first game to experiment with it. Similar abilities wouldn’t make their way to Nintendo’s legendary series until later.
There were some other neat features in the game as well, such as magic. Over the course of the game, players would discover all sorts of spells. Some would be pretty straightforward, like the ability to heal, but then the game would throw some curve balls like one spell that allowed your character to disguise himself in order to get past certain obstacles, and another that allowed psychic communication with the world’s four sages, who would give nuggets of advice. This spell could prove surprisingly helpful when one gets stuck and doesn’t know what to do next.
On top of this, there is the usual adventuring: clobbering enemies, gathering gold, exploring dungeons, and fighting bosses. While doing this, one is quickly reminded that Crystalis is still a product of the NES era, as it can be quite challenging. Expect to die fairly often in this game, but also expect it to be a fair death. There’s a method to the various monsters’ madness. If you learn the baddies’ patterns, everything in the game is beatable. There is one difficulty spike later in the game when fighting a particular boss in the mountains (and I’m sure most who have played the game can relate to this), but on the whole the game is tough but fair.
When the tough gets going, grinding generally isn’t the answer. Players can get away with it early on, but your character can’t go higher than level 16. It’s a mechanic similar to what one will find in Ys. So, later in the game if someone is having trouble with a particular boss or group of enemies, there’s little choice but to hunker down and figure out a strategy to defeat them. Wandering off to grind on relatively easy baddies just isn’t an option. The only time players will find themselves grinding is when they need gold for new gear, and even then this isn’t really necessary often since the stuff is pretty easy to get in the game.
Navigating the dungeons takes some doing as well. These things were long, winding affairs with all manner of forks in the road, dead ends, and blocked paths that would need to be revisited later. The further one gets into the game, the more grandiose, not to mention daunting, these places becomes. Item inventory is very limited in Crystalis, to it’s important not to get hit by monsters very often in order to conserve healing herbs for later.
Ultimately, Crystalis is an interesting evolution of the action RPG. The genre was still in its infancy circa 1990 with games like Ys, Xanadu, and, of course, Zelda helping to shape it. Here we have SNK contributing to it, albeit it briefly. The company may have gone in a very different direction since then, but Crystalis will remain one of the more interesting action RPGs to release for the NES.
Note: Crystalis actually got a port to the Gameboy Color. Gameplay is actually quite similar to its NES counterpart, but the story has been heavily retooled for the worse. It’s still a fun game, but don’t pay too much attention to the story.
[I also do the Twitter thing, so follow me there too if you like!]
Natsukashii 