Crystalline Review (adroam gpmza;ez)
tl;dr - Crystalline's about as much as you could hope for from an isekai, and the price makes it an absolute steal. I don't think it's *life-changing* like some of the other reviews make it out to be, but there's not anything more you could ask from a $5-on-sale game.
I feel like I owe Crystalline an apology, somehow. That is, for constantly underestimating it until I'm 23 hours in and grinning like an idiot at the true ending. Crystalline is an isekai, and it follows a lot of the broad trappings of any other story in the genre: bland MC finds himself in a swords and sorcery world, meets a cute but strong girl, gradually forms a party with character archetypes A, B, C, and D, and gets wrapped up in a conflict for the sake of the world of which he's conveniently the key. If you've read/watched like 3 isekai VNs/LNs/manga/anime it won't be anything new to you, but within that plot, Crystalline does things as well as you reasonably could.
While some of the more horny dialogue options would make me eyeroll sometimes, Crystalline does everything I'd ask of a story - commits to a romance option, treats its side characters with respect, has an interesting world and magic system, a plot with at least one twist I wasn't expecting, and a choice system where you definitely have some impact on the story, even if the overall arc is fairly fixed. Not to say all of these are perfect - a world map would've been nice, some of the side character arcs feel more like checking a box than something fully fleshed out, and the majority of the story is fairly predictable. But legitimately trying to knock a $5-20 (fully voiced) game with 20 hours of gameplay for not having absolutely masterful writing just isn't fair. The mere fact that there was at least an attempt to improve upon the standard isekai storyline makes Crystalline a unicorn of sorts, and the passion that went into the game (even if it can be a /little/ rough around the edges at times) is more than evident.
In isekai terms, Crystalline falls short of hallowed names like Re;Zero and Mushoku Tensei, but it blows shit like In Another World with my Smartphone and its ilk out of the water. I can only tip my hat to a good game from PixelFade and look forward to what they'll put out in the future.