Crystal Story II - review

Kongregate is a flash game website that has a lot of games, including the RPG ones with a whole lot of fun. In the olden days, Kongregate was up permanently and been having more games. Some may say the website was lazy or responsible. The kickstarter of Kongregate has all nice RPGs being outdated.

The website was no longer a standalone because all of the games with Mario are taken out because of the petition. Well, I guess we can check out the review now.

Crystal Story II is Kongregate's sequel to Newgrounds' Crystal Story I that has an "anime" stylization. The turn-based JRPG is a niche from other RPGs, like... let's say Bravely Default. The game serves as a rip-off version of Bravely Default because of the party's even gender, magic, etc..

The Story:

The story continues from Crystal Story I that has an evil witch named Rita. She was the ruler of the outside world who takes a finesse of heroes, turning them into the Witch's minions. Since ancient times, Rita and her minions use a final finesse of anything. Crystal Story II has new heroes, like a young boy named D lays down on the ground being a dragon before getting up. In other words, his name lies beyond a job as a dragon slayer. This plot of the story isn't the most important thing since it's a browser game.

The Gameplay:

The first and second game has the same gameplay, but this one has different graphics as well. Crystal Story II has a gameplay that is more engaging than the first one. You can play by clicking or using the keys. The mapping acts like a dungeon map from other games. The chests are opened when touched one. Some can be locked and can be unlocked by breaking the ice and using the code with Master Thief Lina's tool, the Lina-inator 2.0, or "Lina-bot 2.0" for short.

The combat system acts like a turn-based strategy RPG game. There's the turn gauge on the left part of the screen. When a character reaches to the top, his/her turn is up. When you win a battle, you'll earn SP instead of EXP. To spend SP, use the menu that allows you to strengthen your character using SP. It's similar to Mana Khemia's Grow Book system and Final Fantasy XIII's Crystarium system. When your first class reaches its limit, you move on to the new class.

To progress the game, be sure to look out for the yellow mark on the world map. The yellow mark means the main quests while the cyan mark means side quests. In order to look for a side quest, go to the town's tavern and click the title of the side quest. They aren't just side quests, they are main story arcs that can be worth for completing.

Sprites and Text:

Their sprites look alright, but the writing of the text looks awful. There's capitalization and punctuation issues. There's also some sentences that DO NOT flow. As for the spites, they look anime-ish. It's just nothing but a lazy work.

Can you play this?:

I'm tempted to say yes because I just realized that this might hold anyone off. But for some, it's not worth a try. For now, yes, it can be played and there's no need to make it even further. It's not like you can play it like Bravely Default.

The Best and the Worst:

Crystal Story II is a great game, but the text lacks some needed requirements. If you want to play it, you can find it over at Kongregate. It's even worth a try, though. The point is, this niche flash JRPG can be called "Bravely Default Lite" because of the point of view, magic, etc.. In a nutshell, I can say that this is quite an alright JRPG flash game.

Pros:

+Great music quality

Cons:

-Sprites look a bit awful
-The text lacks requirements
-Some of the events are frustrating

Although Crystal Story II was worth a try, but I'm not going to declare Best RPG game for 2014. I am giving it a solid 6.0 for Fair. Here's the link to the game:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/lan14n/crystal-story-ii