Cris Tales Reviews
Cris Tales is the type of game you really want to love. You see the gorgeousness on the screen and hear the lovely score… but then you remember you have to play it. The visual and auditory elements are so stand-out in quality that they cause the more simplistic gameplay and unexciting narrative to feel stunted in comparison.
Cris Tales turned out to be a pleasant surprise, managing to impress us for originality and artistic style, as well as interesting gameplay mechanics. Even if it shows a certain inexperience in the general balance of pace and powers, with some of them too overpowered making it almost useless to look for different combinations, it still remains a great homage to classic turn-based JRPGs, so we can only recommend everyone to give it a look.
Review in Italian | Read full review
GREAT - Cris Tales is a fun game that has a great concept reminiscent of Chrono Trigger or Radiant Historia. Technical issues hold it back from truly spectacular status.
Cris Tales impresses for a number of aspects, such as its amazing hand-drawn look, its colorful scenes rich in small details, its expressive characters and the ambition of its mechanics. The final result, however, is far from ideal thanks to some problems — the result would be mostly positive if it weren't for performance issues and long loading times.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Beautiful and charming, but not worth everything it appeared to be. Adapting the lyrics of the popular song, this is how I see 'Cris Tales' after my unpleasant experience with a title in one of the genres I like the most. Merits for the beautiful art and care in giving voice to all the characters, as well as interesting uses of time and a script that is shaped by the player. The same Time that makes the heroine shine is very poorly used outside the game, with excessive loading screens, slow pace of combat and the infamous grinding, which make us lose even more of this valuable resource that rules our lives.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
CrisTales is a game with a lot to do and say, all while looking gorgeous, but it isn't without its flaws.
A treat for the senses. With its unique art style and characters, Crys Tales breaks the common repetition of its genre by presenting us time bending journey with great ideas that could be better explored in a future sequel.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Honestly, despite its flaws, I still enjoyed my time with Cris Tales. There are seeds of a fantastic game in here, but sadly none of them were able to fully blossom. I would really love to see a sequel where they expand upon what they’ve built already, because the idea of defeating your enemies using time magic along with other spells is wonderful. It lends itself to a lot of creative battles if explored in more depth.
Overall, Cris Tales is a game that I can’t really recommend outright. For whatever reason it’s decently cheaper on the Switch, but with the amount of technical issues and gameplay mechanics that need refining, it would still be best to wait for a sale, or part of a package deal, before I could advise playing. I liked Cris Tales, I really did. It’s charming characters, great visuals, outstanding soundtrack, and engaging battle mechanics are all aspects I enjoyed. The poor implementations, long loading times, horrid timing windows, and occasional technical issues however really can’t be overlooked. I truly hope the developers take this as a learning opportunity to produce something more refined in the future, as I’ll be looking forward to it if the kinks can be ironed out.
Cris Tales is a worthwhile RPG to experience but you'll have to endure a lot of redundancy.
Cris Tales falls short of its lofty aims, but the zeal and indelible spirit of the game make it more than the sum of its parts.
Overall, this is a simplistic game that touches on issues that could go a long way, but choose to ignore many of the possibilities that could access in order to offer a more solid plot, without going into too many complications. It is greatly enjoyed if you have it in mind. It is not essential, but it will cheer you up for more than one afternoon.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A clever RPG that combines traditional turn-based gameplay with time manipulation to present an interesting story through many different locations. The story features some time-based puzzling and side-quests that make subtle (or less subtle) changes to the world around you. The random encounters and save points don't add to the fun of the game but in all, a quality, fun RPG.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
A good game that combines three times and good dynamics
Review in Spanish | Read full review
In sum, we have a creative, solid and flawed game. The kind of game that makes a service like Xbox Game Pass sing.
Cris Tales has its fair share of problems, but if you don’t mind a little bit of jank and a full dose of nostalgia, this non-Japanese developed JRPG is definitely for you. It’s a simple game that follows many of its tropes to the letter, sometimes to a fault, but it does just enough to become a charming ride without it overstaying its welcome.
Cris Tales is a game with a lot of charm and good ideas that doesn’t quite deliver on its ambition. Some mechanics seem a little undercooked and the nostalgia for older RPGs will likely be lost on the younger players who seem, from the story and presentation, to be the game’s target audience.
Cris Tales is a lot of fun, and a really solid title overall. It’s great to see that smaller indie studios are able to pick up the slack when it comes to delivering more classically inspired RPGs, and that they even have the creativity to go above and beyond what’s expected of them. While Cris Tales might be lacking a little bit here and there, anything bad is absolutely outshined by all of the good—you’ve got nothing to lose by checking this one out.
Cris Tales is a beautiful JRPG with some phenomenal innovations commonly associated with the genre. Unfortunately, it so rigidly sticks to its inspirations that it fails to elevate itself beyond just another bland JRPG.
I had my issues and frustrations with Cris Tales, but once I dusted myself off from the finale, I emerged with a big smile. It reminded me why I loved JRPGs. Though it featured the usual JRPG tropes, they were executed so well that I feel Cris Tales is an easy recommendation to anyone eager to find an escape, as it was a fun ride despite some hit-and-miss time travel elements.