1997, October 1, The END DAY
Savage war engulfs the world
. . .
Civilization is destroyed ...
An evolution had taken place.
The earth's axis shifted and all creatures became mutated.
Life would never be the same ...
Those surviving vowed not to repeat their mistakes of the past and erected a great tower in the sky ...
To oppress evil forever ...
Crystalis plays from a top down perspective, akin to The Legend of Zelda. However it has an inventory system and experience leveling up system more in line with traditional RPGs. And like in many RPGs you visit different towns and talk to their inhabitants, take on several quests, and solve numerous puzzles. You receive new weapons, each is particularly useful for different situations. While exploration is a very important part of this game, it efficiently used to push the narrative and keep the plot alive.
Crystalis takes place in the year 2097, in a post-apocalyptic world, 100 years after a global thermonuclear war has reverted civilization to a primitive, medieval state where science is forgotten in favour of magic and fierce mutant creatures populate the scorched earth. What little remains of humanity has built a weapon of mass destruction known as "The Tower". The construction of this was aimed to prevent any more future cataclysms as its occupants have the power to rule or destroy the world. To combat Draygon, good magicians have created four swords from each of the four elements, fire, water, wind and thunder. If the swords are combined, they create a sword made from a fifth element, crystal. The sword is known as "Crystalis". When Draygon learned of the four swords, he took them for himself. The swords were too powerful to be destroyed so Draygon scattered them across the land.
While offering a blend of fantasy, futuristic and steam punk elements at first glance it might not seem as a well defined and coherent offering. Yet nothing could be further from the truth maintaining a great attention to detail, these elements contribute to the vividness of its story. Offering diverse and interesting locations, whose inhabitants and characters react in accordance to the events currently transpiring. But most of all it's the overall attention to detail and balance that really makes playing this game such enjoyable experience. To be honest, this game is certainly one of the most elaborate and polished games that came out in the NES and has far more in common with Secret of Mana and Zelda 3 than most its contemporaries, with a select few being up to par (and oh yeah, this is certainly one of my favorite games period).
However as cherished as it may be by me (and all my friends who played adventure type games back then), its only as good as you think it is. And the only way of finding out how good (or bad) this game really is, is by playing it:
Play Crystalis online at virtualnes.com
Oh and one last thing, as far as I read the best version is the original NES version (which is what I played). The gameboy version offers some more backstory but at a cost (graphics and the omission of some characters).
Aditional links
These sites have further information about this game:
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