Early AccessAttract Mode
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A love letter to JRPGs, Cris Tales has time for a few ideas of its own
ust playing through the opening turn-
based battle of Cris Tales, it’s evident
that it borrows elements from many a
great JRPG. There’s the battle timeline
at the top displaying character turns,
like Octopath Traveler; the turn-based combat
takes a leaf from Paper Mario, where a well-
timed button tap will increase your attack or
defence; even the stylish battle menu is straight
out of Persona 5.
But as much as developer Dreams
Uncorporated are happy to wear their influences
on their sleeves, Cris Tales isn’t just a JRPG
homage, but one that hopes to add new ideas to
the genre’s established structure.
Its big party trick is time, a popular theme and
mechanic in games such as Chrono Trigger and
The Legend of Zelda series (for my money, the
Timeshift Stones in Skyward Sword were genius).
But rather than simply rewinding or warping
between different periods, Cris Tales splits the
screen in three, allowing you to see the past,present, and future simultaneously, with each
era denoted by its own distinct palette.
This was, in fact, the starting point for the
game, as Dreams Uncorporated CEO Carlos
Rocha Silva explains. “We thought it would be
really interesting to see different ‘times’ on the
same screen,” he says. “So we started thinking
about what type of game would it work on,
eventually settling on RPGs. Ultimately, it was a
lot of experimenting with the combat system,
but that made us fall in love with it.”
It takes extra ingenuity to make turn-based
combat dynamic, whether it’s being able to
interrupt enemy attacks on the timeline, as
in Octopath Traveler, or the Active Time Battle
gauge used in many classic Final Fantasy games,
but Cris Tales gets even cleverer, turning its
battles into puzzles. By invoking time crystals,
you can send your enemies to the past or
future, which affects their abilities. For instance,
sending a goblin into the past turns it into an
infant that’s too weak to put a scratch on you.
More fascinating is a boss duo who combine
their shields, making them impenetrable.
But apply some water magic and send them to
the future, and voilà: the shield goes rusty.
These powers also come into effect outside
of combat. Plant a seed in the present, and if
you forward in time, you’ll see that, in the future,
it’s grown into a tree bearing a rare fruit, or you
might see a townsperson’s decaying house that
you can fix by preventing its rot in the present.
Such a presentation isn’t without its limitations,
namely, that the past and future visions are
always presented to the left and right of the
screen, respectively. This may also be a blessing,
though, because if you can only view somethingCrismas Time
J
GENRE
RPG
FORMAT
PC / Switch / PS
/ XBO
DEVELOPER
Dreams
Uncorporated /
SYCK
PUBLISHER
Modus Games
RELEASE
2020Info
Cris Tales establishes its lore
early on. The people worship
a goddess referred to as
The Lady, and the mayor is
kitted out in fancy armour.