2020-08-01_PC_Gamer_(US_Edition

There’s a lovely fluidity to
combat animations.

Cris Tales

PREVIEW

RELEASE

TBC 2020

DEVELOPER

Dreams Uncorporated, SYCK

PUBLISHER

Modus Games

LINK

cristalesgame.com

NEED TO KNOW

Hero Crisbell can see the past, present,

and future all at once, both in battle and

while exploring the game’s beautiful,

delicately hand-animated world. Inspired

by Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Persona,

and the Paper Mario series, the game

mixes tactical turn-based combat with

side-scrolling, semi-3D exploration.

Crisbell’s time manipulation

powers are useful in a scrap. Poison

an enemy and you don’t have to wait

for it to sap their health: Just jump

forward in time and they’ll take all the

damage at once. Or you can throw an

enemy into the future and watch as they

grow old, making them easier to defeat.

Although Cris Tales is turn-based, the

combat has some timing-based elements.

Press a button at just the right time,

during an attack or special ability, and

you’ll pull off a critical hit. Time it perfectly,

and you’ll inflict additional damage or even

a debuff. You can also parry and block,

which the developer says will be tricky.

CRIS CROSSED

The combat looks great, but it’s when

she’s not fighting that Crisbell’s time

powers become really interesting. Cris

Tales has a Final Fantasy-style overworld

map, which is something I miss from the

role-playing genre. And as she journeys

across this beautiful, papery-looking map,

she and her party visit an interesting city

called Saint Clarity.

This is the classic JRPG divided town,

with the rich and privileged living in the

gleaming city above, and the poor living

below. Although this idea is taken to an

extreme, with the poorer citizens

periodically being drenched by waves of

sewage from up top.

Not exactly subtle, and Cris Tales’ art is

so lovely that even the so-called slums

look quite nice, but it’s what you’d expect

from a self-described love letter to JRPGs.

As Crisbell wanders the streets of the city,

the screen is divided into three, showing

three different versions of it in the past,

the present, and the future.

This means you can see what the city

once was, and what it’ll become if it

continues along its current path. Like,

what happens if you keep dumping sewer

water on a place where people live? If you

gaze into the future you’ll see the slums

are by then fully submerged, abandoned,

and in ruins. Thankfully, it’s a future you

still have time to prevent.

There are smaller stories to find

too. On a street you see a young child

in the past, a teenage boy in the

present, and... nothing in the future.

Because he won’t survive. It’s a quietly

upsetting thing to discover, but through a

side quest you can alter the future and

save him. It’s lovely to see him alive and

well in the future afterwards.

And there are dungeons, of course.

Crisbell and her crew descend into Saint

Clarity’s sewers, as part of a quest to deal

with that sewage problem, and find

themselves in a maze of grimy waterways

filled with sentient slimes, dodging waves

of water. There’s a boss too, a massive

sludge monster, that will test your

time-bending skills.

Cris Tales is a beautiful looking thing,

and it sounds great too, with the kind of

evocative, high-energy soundtrack you’d

expect from a good JRPG. The voice

acting is a little too peppy and anime-

esque for my tastes, but I’m still really

excited to discover more ways I’ll get to

meddle with events in the past, the

present, and the future.

Andy Kelly

T

he big gimmick in the JRPG-inspired

Cris Tales is being able to control time.

Say you’re fighting an enemy clad in

metal armor. Cast a water spell on him,

fast forward time, and the armor will be rusty and

useless. It’s a neat idea in a game full of them.

A hand-animated RPG that pays

tribute to Japanese classics

POISON AN ENEMY AND YOU

DON’T HAVE TO WAIT FOR IT

TO SAP THEIR HEALTH

FIRST

LOOK

CRIS TALES

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