logo

izigame.me

Görüntülemeye çalıştığınız sayfa ilk kez yüklendiğinde biraz zaman alabilir...

izigame.me

cover-Crymachina

23 Aralık 2024 Pazartesi 01:02:50

Crymachina İnceleme (Culltaine)

This is a perfect example of an uncut diamond. One one hand, you have a cast of characters who all grow on you, are incredibly endearing, paired with a nicely done story and a world with sufficient lore that its genuinely interesting. On the other hand though, you have gameplay that is, in my opinion, shallow and insufficient for a game of this caliber.
Firstly, and this is very important, do not hesitate to make use of the Casual Mode option. You really don't suffer for making the game easier on yourself and it just lets you enjoy the story at a faster pace if that's what you want, which I did.
To be purposely vague and simple, the story is about a set of girls who are essentially brought back to life many thousands of years after the extinction of humanity except they are digitised and can also control mechanical dolls so they can interact with the world around them called Eden, a ship floating around in space acting as the last bastion of humanity.
You are managed by a very cute AI called Enoa, who is of one of eight AI that are all super sophisticated, self aware machines that help manage and look after different parts of Eden, each with different roles. But overall, their purpose to help preserve humanity.
Your goal as Leben, one of the three girls that got revived, is to basically try and become a "real human" by travelling around Eden and collecting literal ExP so that you gain humanity and authority over Eden.
The story and goals changes with twists and turns throughout, so to explain any more without spoiling future events is almost impossible. But believe me, it sinks its fangs into you once you get going. I've seen people liking it to Yoko Taro's works and I agree as I felt like I was getting Drakengard vibes despite having never played them. Sounds stupid, I know.
Aside from the story, the soundtrack is also a massive selling point. It has possibly one of the most well made soundtracks I've heard for a game and its what initially attracted me as I thought surely something with songs like these must be good right? (Its usually not wrong (until it is)). All the tracks are beautiful and sync up with the story beats very well. The lyrics especially on select tracks invoked so many emotions in me when I considered their significance that it literally made me cry. I hope we see Sakuzyo work on more VGM because their previous work, Crystar, and this especially, show that they've got a good knack for it.
Combat wise, like I said, is not that appealing. It has a simple combo string where you just mash the basic attack but can also launch enemies briefly, perform a short string of attacks, and then dive down for a finisher. You also get a prompt for a super strong attack when they're down and that's about it. You get a dodge and a counter but you'll be dodging way more often most likely. You also have what are essentially two shoulder mounted weapons akin to something you'd find in Armored Core which have their own attacks depending on what's slotted into them, but they are mostly negligible as I just left them with the default and despite spamming them, switching them up, didn't notice too much impact. (I know, I was playing on Casual Mode). Oh, you also have a hold-to-charge attack but I never really used it.
Outside of combat, you can level your girls up by allocating the ExP you collected to boost whoever you want. You also have other points called EGO that you can use to boost other stats but honestly I didn't understand what I reading as it wasn't very straightforward for what did what. I just pumped up everything and watched the numbers go up.
The reason I say that combat isn't that interesting despite all the above is that because you're just mashing X and dodging every now and then, it doesn't feel like you're putting in much effort. You don't have a list of different combos like in Devil May Cry or Bayonetta that let you spice things up. The different shoulder mounted weapons you do get aren't that numerous and feel like they're more for flash than they are for practicality. And a lot of the bosses you do encounter don't exactly have complex patterns to avoid despite hitting you like trucks (I switched to Casual pretty early on when I was getting cheap hits during the second boss). This does change closer towards the end you get but by then I feel like it's too late.
Mind you, even with Casual Mode, the game still scales up and makes it difficult, especially towards the end. All Casual really does is reduce their health bars so they aren't as spongy. They say that it makes combat simpler but I believe that just means there's a more noticeable delay between attacks but their pool of attacks is still fairly diverse. All of this may indicate that I'm just a big fat idiot who can't handle the difficulty but whatever, I'm just here sharing my thoughts because I actually loved the game.
I loved the game because of the story and world, but mainly because of the characters. Their relationships with each other and watching them become closer made me realise I'm a sucker for nakige-style stories but also how much I wanted them all to be tying knots by the end of it. The main duo, Enoa and Leben, are especially adorable and had me in tears during their impactful moments. The true ending, and the post-credits cutscene especially, was a nice little reward after everything was over, which I cherish because its the only real moment you get to see them not worrying about things around them or going through some sort of existential crisis
Really, if you just take the gameplay for what it is and just eat up the story as it gets given to you, you're in for a treat. It would've been great if it was done as a visual novel instead, but it is what it is.
Despite all its imperfections, a real diamond is lying beneath it all. Its such a shame thought that we will never get to see it refined for what it truly could have been as while better combat and level exploration would've been nice, I would've loved it if the the story & writing was improved even further both in quality and in terms of delivery. You get a few very short pre-rendered cutscenes early on which look fantastic but you never see anything like them again in the latter half.
TL;DR, game's great. Story & characters are fantastic, Combat is not. switch to Casual and just chow down.