Crimson Gem Saga would have been a good game if it weren't for the irritating dungeons and tedious grinding.
CGS lets you play as Killian, an apprentice chevalier who have just graduated and is looking for a job. While on his way to the local militia, he encounters Spinel, a thief. From that point, his life changes completely. As the story progresses, more and more characters join your team, helping you on your quest. Despite having a somehow interesting story, the characters in CGS are rather dull and flat, which worsen the story.
While progressing the story, you have to move between towns and traverse fields full of monsters. Field exploring is neat, you can see monsters on the field in the shape of a goblin. This is a good idea since it allows you to either avoid or fight the monster, and if you successfully ambushed a monster, your party will have the upper hand. And should you ever get lost, there's always a handy map for you to see where you are.
Although field exploring is nice, you'll probably spend most time on dungeons. It would have been not much of a problem if the dungeons were good, but in CGS, dungeon exploring is a pain. Dungeons are unnecessarily complicated due to areas looking almost identical and the lack of doorways, or rather, something to warn you that "stepping on this tile will make you move to the next area". Every time you reenter an area, monster respawns. And to make the game even more frustrating, the handy map from before will be gone as soon as you enter the dungeon. Well this isn't a problem if you have a pencil and a paper with you, but sketching and scribbling dungeon maps isn't how we play a portable game! Imagine doing that on a car, train or a plane. That isn't comfortable, is it?
It's odd how dungeons are very complicated and the battle system are too simple. As you encounter monsters, you have the option to guard, use skills, attack physically, use items, or try to escape. The turn system is based purely on speed, which hampers the opportunity to use strategic movements. The strategic element in the game is based purely on ambushing and how you use skills. Skills, in CGS, drains a great amount of your character's MP (Mana Points) and are simple just like the battle system. Skills are learned by spending SP (Skill Points) on a skill tree. The bad thing is, SP are shared amongst party members, and every good skill requires a ridiculous amount of SP. While skills do look nice, it's utterly useless in terms of strategy, with most skills do nothing but either cure health or attack enemies. To help the poor battle system, every time you score a critical hit, you can press X in a timely way to execute another attack up to 2 or 3 times. It's quite hard to do that, but once you get the hang of it, it'll be very easy to score multiple hits.
And to further enhance the game's difficulty, every time you move to a new area, monsters gain a great boost in level and strength. This forces you to grind mindlessly in the previous area just to be able to survive in the new area. And even if you're in a good level, without good equipments your attacks will not do much damage. It could be fine if only the equipments are affordable, but for some weird reasons, upgrading equipments will always spend almost, if not all of your hard-earned cash.
With all those downsides, Crimson Gem Saga won't be able to keep you for a long time, unless you really like grinding and exploring dungeons, without a map. That doesn't sound like a problem for hardcore RPG fans, but people who are new to RPGs and doesn't like too much grinding, better stay away and find a better game.
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The good:
[] Cute presentation, with colorful, detailed environments and cute sprites.
[] Music is relaxing and charming.
[] Voice acting is good, if not great.
The bad:
[]Irritating dungeons and tedious grinding shove the fun out of the game.
[]Characters are uninteresting.
[]Battle system is too simple and boring, though it's forgivable.
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Presentation: 9
Graphics: 8
Sound: 8
Gameplay: 5
Value: 5
OVERALL: 6.5