When I watched the trailer for Cris Tales, I was enthralled by its delightful art style and interesting premise. I love a good rpg, and the time travel aspect fascinated me. I loved the idea that you could navigate between the past, present, and future in order to change things. When I saw that it was coming to Xbox Game Pass I was delighted, as that meant I’d be able to play it on day one without having to fork out money to purchase it. Unfortunately, the Xbox version has a game-breaking bug that makes it unplayable past a certain point. So, here are my first impressions of Cris Tales for Xbox One!
Jump to...
Story
As the game breaks relatively early (about forty minutes in), it means that we don’t get much of the story revealed to us. There’s a really cool opening cutscene with lots of action, but there’s no narration or subtitles, so I didn’t really understand what was happening in it. It seemed very fire-y though.

As we start playing the game, we meet a mysterious young man called Cristopher. Our character’s name is Crisbell, so I liked that we’re both called Cris. It works with the title of the game. However, right at the start of the game, we come up against an unwinnable boss fight, and that’s when something really cool happens… We have a flashback! But we’re able to actually play and move around in the flashback, so we learn the events leading up to that boss fight.
It turns out that Crisbell lives in an orphanage, under the watchful eye of Mother Superior. She’s a strict lady, but it’s also clear that she cares a great deal about the girls she looks after. After a rose is stolen from the garden by a frog in a top hat, Crisbell goes on a quest to find him, and that’s when she learns about her destiny. It turns out the frog can talk! He reveals that his name is Matias, and he teaches her about the power of the crystals. Crisbell learns that she can see the past, present, and future, and that her actions in the present can change the future.

We slowly start to learn more about the town of Narim and the surrounding area, but unfortunately the game breaks just as we’re about to face the first boss, so we don’t get to find out who the enemies really are, or what they want.
Gameplay
In typical rpg fashion, much of this game involves exploring the world around you. Movement is very simple, you move on a 2d plane in all 4 compass directions, and you can’t jump. You move at a pretty decent speed, and you’re able to look at signs in order to know which way to go. The navigation is therefore pretty easy because of all the signs, so it’s good if you’re prone to getting lost in rpgs. The only issue is that the signs list out the directions, and say ‘East and West’ on the wrong side. So if you don’t know your compass directions, and follow based on which side they are on the screen, you could end up going the wrong way.

When you encounter something that you can interact with, whether it’s an item or a person, a red exclamation mark pops up above your head. This is a really useful feature, as it saves you from mindlessly pressing A on everything. There are plenty of characters and items to interact with, so the world feels pretty involved.
There’s also an overworld, where you can move between areas of the game. The overworld is the only place you can save, and that’s not made very clear. I lost my game progress the first time I played, as I had to take a break 20 minutes in. You’d assume there’d be an autosave feature, or that it would save when you click ‘Exit’. I hadn’t noticed that there was a greyed out ‘save’ button on the menu. That button is only accessible in the overworld, which feels like an unhelpful feature as you don’t go to the overworld all that frequently.

The Past, Present, and Future
By far the coolest thing about this game is the way that it conceptualises time. Our character, Crisbell, is revealed to have the power of the crystals. We unlock this ability after meeting Matias the frog, and it’s really fascinating. A large triangle appears in the middle of the screen, and everything inside it shows the present. The triangle centres around Crisbell, so all our movement and actions take place in the present. However, on the left of the triangle we can see the same area but in the past, and on the right we can see the future. Being able to see all the tenses at once is really interesting, as we can move about to see different characters when they were young/ old, and what’s destined to happen to an area. It’s stressed that the future we see is just one possible future, if time goes on uninterrupted.

We also have the ability to time travel through Matias. He can hop to the past or future, and then move around in it, allowing us to see what’s caused an event to happen. He can also collect items to bring back to Crisbell in the present. This is really useful, as it means we can get access to items that wouldn’t normally be available until years had passed.
Having the time travel/ seeing ability is a really unique concept. I love how it manifests in the gameplay, and I’m looking forward to learning more tactics using it once the game has been patched and I can play more of it.
Battle
As with any good rpg, there’s also a battle system. Cris Tales uses turn based combat, which I’m happy to see, as it’s my preferred combat style. It allows you to take time to make decisions, and creates much more strategic fights. The battle system thus far seems quite simplistic, although I haven’t yet unlocked Skills, which might be more complicated. Basically, on your turn, you can choose to attack or defend. If you attack, you can get an extra hit in if you time it right and press A as your weapon is about to land. This means you can do twice the damage you would otherwise do. You can also block some of the damage from an enemy attack by pressing A when their weapon is about to hit you.

In the initial battle, those are your only options, but after completing the flashback, you have another choice. You can use some of your power to send an enemy forward in time, so that they’re no longer in the present. That means they’re a problem for the future version of you, as they can no longer cause harm to you now.
There is a Skill option during battle, but you don’t unlock any in the first part of the game. I’ll be curious to see what skills we unlock in the rest of the game.
Graphics and Audio
One thing that really stands out about this game is the gorgeous art style. Although the world itself is technically 3d, all the character and building assets appear to be 2d models, and they’re beautifully designed. The colours are vibrant and deliberate, and flow naturally into each other. I really love the artistic choices they made, and it’s a delight to play through the game and discover new places and characters. When you talk to another character, a full illustration of them pops up above the written dialogue. This is great as it makes everyone in the game feel so real.

I also really like that they committed to having spoken dialogue as well as it being written on screen. The voice actors are really talented, and give a lot of personality to the characters they play. The words really feel like they’re being acted rather than just read. The sound balancing is great, and there are no issues with inconsistent volume.
The music in the game is another strong point, and again it’s a great volume in comparison to the dialogue and sound effects. The music changes depending on the scene, with battle music being a lot more upbeat and intense. The standard exploration music, though, is so peaceful and magical. It feels like something you’d expect to hear during a calm scene in a Disney movie. It has a high production value, and makes the game feel so much more enjoyable to play.

Overall
Cris Tales has a lot of promise, and it’s a real shame that I won’t be able to rate it particularly highly at this current point in time, purely due to a glitch. When you reach the first boss, starting the dialogue causes your controller to disconnect from the Xbox, whilst still being on. You can’t press any buttons, not even the home button. I had to get up and manually turn off the Xbox, which usually turns off the controller too, but of course it didn’t this time as it had disconnected. I needed to take the batteries out of my controller to get it to turn off. There were also minor visual glitches throughout the game, where wavy lines would appear on screen.
I fully intend to review the full game once the developers create a patch for Xbox. That’s why this is only a First Impressions post, as I know that the full game will undoubtedly be better as there will be more content. However, for now, I have to rate based on what I’ve been able to play, hence the lower score.
Have you had the chance to play Cris Tales? What do you think of it so far? Join the discussion over in our Facebook community!