Geo Crystal

Geo Crystal starts out innocently enough, a casually dressed kid with a large sword walking alone killing things while credits scroll by in the clouds. It's actually a very neat idea and was put together well, if not a bit slowly paced. The entrance of the game made me interested, for it was a unique idea. Unfortunately, as these things go, it went downhill from there.

The graphics in the game are lackluster. I'll admit that they didn't reach out of the screen and rip my eyeballs out of my head, yet they were unrefined and boring enough for me to say that lots was left to be desired. The walkabouts were ok, you knew who was who and what was what, but they were for the large part uninteresting. The map tiles were ok, sometimes they were a little awkward (tree going under me, stairs not lining up with the people, stuff like that) and a bit redundant (the world map looked cookie cutter). The battle graphics, oh the poor poor battle graphics. Not only did the main character look like the deranged cousin of the Pillsbury Doughboy, but there were all but 2 enemies that I encountered, each sharing the same picture... *tsk* *tsk*

The music was oh-tay. Not the most remarkable, but I didn't remember how BAD it was! That's a good thing!

The game play is where the game really starts to take a nose dive. The dialogue is laughable, so I wouldn't even go into it. There are a number of plotscripting problems, such as textboxes advancing at a rapid pace as soon as you start the game causing inconsistencies, and a race between two boys (that happens for apparently no reason) can happen more than once, so you get some weird results. The shop people not only seem to change pictures when you talk to them (Turn to Player when Talked To run amuck) but they don't charge you anything! Everything is free! And not only that, you can sell the stuff back to them for moolah! I did this to get a ridiculous amount of money, but then I realized it was no good. NONE of the stores charged anything. I had all these shiney's for nothing. "I.P." seems to be... something. I have no idea. I get some for being nice to the mayor... but then nothing happens. Thank goodness there is a person in town that explains it to you! But when I try to ask her about it, she says nothing. It's very frustrating. I could keep going on, but I won't, like how your fire spell (which takes no MP to use...) does LESS damage than your normal attack. Ack.

And here is the kicker: (If you STILL want to play through this game for some strange reason, don't read this, just skip to the scores) you can't complete the game. Because of 7 Moon's incredibly thorough bug testing, you can't proceed. The first goal in the game you have is to make it to the Geo-Doctor for some reason. But, when you get there, the door leads to a house in town so you effectively don't get to see the Geo-Doctor. That wouldn't be too bad of a problem, but you need to see him before you can proceed over the bridge to the next area. Grr... It's very very VERY frustrating. Me repeating the phrase "actually play your games before you submit them" would not do any good, because obviously every other time it's been said hasn't made a dent in these people's minds.

NEWB GAMERZ R0XX0RZ!!!!11` 2 D MAX!!!!1


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