CRYMACHINA Review (Switch)

FuRyu has made a name for itself in recent years of being a publisher that does a great job of churning out RPGs that you’ll certainly like, but probably not love. Games like Monark, Caligula Effect, and Crystar have all offered players some decent yet flawed experiences, and now the company has brought us yet another entry in this long line called Crymachina. Though it seems to take some cues from Crystar, Crymachina is a brand-new IP set in the far future that sees you fighting a seemingly endless horde of creepy robots with a bunch of depressed girls. It’s ridiculous, it’s fun, and it’s not great, but it may still be worth your time.

The narrative places you in the role of Leben, a girl who promptly dies of a mysterious illness in the first 10 seconds after cursing at the world and all the people who live in it. She is then resuscitated 2000 years in the future by a mysterious AI named Enoa, who has brought back a couple of other high school girls, too. Enoa explains that humans went extinct due to a world war over dwindling resources, but a team of scientists launched a spaceship called Eden just before the end in the hopes that one day humanity might rise again.

Eden is governed by eight godlike AI (Enoa being one of them) who each have a role to play in reviving humanity, but things have come apart in the millennia since the ship’s launch, and some of the AI have gone rogue. Leben and the other girls are sort of ‘partial humans’ brought back by Enoa from the encoded memories of people from before the war, and if they can kill enough robots, they’ll gain enough “ExP” to finally be recognized as real humans, which would allow them to quell the unrest and bring back humanity in full.

It's a somewhat complicated narrative, and this isn’t helped by the enormous amount of exposition and dialogue sequences in the first few hours, most of which is written in a rather stiff and awkward fashion. That’s to say nothing of the comically angsty tone—most character interactions feel like they were devised by a moody teenager who usually slams their door when they storm off to their room to sulk. One of the first things Leben says to her peers when she meets them is “I’m a moody loner, so don’t expect to get along with me right off the bat,” and we’re constantly reminded that there is no God, humanity is dead, Leben hates other people, and everything sucks. And all this brooding is played completely straight, which can lead to many unintentionally humorous moments where you can’t help but chuckle and roll your eyes at the absurdity.

Gameplay oscillates between action combat segments bookended with visual novel sequences for furthering the plot. Back at the base, you can level up characters, change loadouts, upgrade abilities, and participate in mandatory or optional dialogues with your team members. Then, once you’re ready to fight, you pick a level to drop into and set out on a mission, usually taking no more than 10 minutes each. Dungeon designs in each level are pretty basic, featuring mostly linear environments to explore with a few side paths containing treasures or stronger foes. Once you get into the rhythm of it, this gameplay loop feels pretty satisfying, though it can get repetitive in longer sessions—especially given how samey many dungeons are.

Combat is handled via a live-action system that feels a bit like a rougher take on Nier Automata’s combat. The main thrust of it is that you mash the ‘Y’ button to get in a flurry of light attacks on an enemy and build up their launch bar. Once that’s full, you can then double tap ‘X’ to launch them into the air and spike them back down, which tees them up so you can hit with your powerful finisher move. To supplement your melee fighting, you also have two ranged weapons over your left and right shoulders that can be triggered independently of each other, along with a dodge and a counter that can be used to get you out of trouble.

Combat is enjoyable, though it can be a little inconsistent. When you’re fighting with a small group of enemies, it mostly feels great to be deftly dodging attacks, managing ranged cooldowns, and juggling launch gauges. Yet when you’re fighting boss enemies, it becomes a tiresome exercise of slowly whittling down a huge HP bar by just wailing away at them while button-mashing. The problem here is that characters lack combos—this isn’t like Bayonetta where creatively mixing up light and heavy attacks can create all sorts of cool combo strings—and the lack of them means that combat eventually starts to get very repetitive.

Another important issue is the general lack of meaningful hitstun animations for attacks. It can often feel like your slashes are going through your enemies rather than connecting with them, and we encountered a few instances where bosses dealt us thousands of HP damage because it took a few seconds to recognize that an attack was even taking place due to our character not visibly reacting. This may sound like a minor issue, but it has the effect of making combat feel very weightless, like you and your foes are battling each other with pool noodles and squirt guns.

Even given these drawbacks, it can be nice to just mindlessly grind in a relatively shallow combat system like this. And character growth and equipment quality increase at a thrilling rate that really feeds into the power fantasy. Plus, resources for upgrades are just scarce enough that you always feel like you have to make some tough choices between what you want to shore up next, encouraging you to plan out your builds a little more than just snapping up whatever’s available next.

In terms of presentation, Crymachina sticks with a dark, sci-fi aesthetic that feels well-realized, though a little basic in some aspects. Character and enemy designs are quite memorable and all the girls fall neatly into an eerie, uncanny valley territory that feels fitting for the often creepy tone. Environments also do a great job of giving off oppressive and hostile vibes as you rush across dimly lit metallic surfaces under the cold gaze of giant red robotic eyes. The only issue here is that level variety ranges from 'generic dark blue cyberland' to 'generic dark green cyberland'. We would have liked to have seen more careful environment design here, as it doesn’t take long before the novelty wears off and all the high-tech set dressing blends together in a big super-advanced blob of edgy sadness.

In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, Crymachina struggles an awful lot with repetition. It’s got a great combat system, until you realize it relies an awful lot on button mashing. The visuals are striking and unsettling, until you run through yet another dark dungeon that looks exactly like the last six you finished. This is the kind of game that tries its hardest to get more from less, and while it still feels like an overall worthwhile experience, it doesn’t execute on its 'moody futuristic action RPG' aspirations as well as something like Astral Chain.