CRYMACHINA Review: No Gold Stars for You! (PS5)

As a critic, it is important I try my best to evaluate games on their own merits. It would be unfair if I judged a game based on what I wanted it to be instead of what it actually is. But there are some games where this is a more difficult task than others. Some games just give me that nagging feeling that makes it hard not to draw comparisons.

CRYMACHINA, developed by Furyu Corporation and published by NIS America, is one such game. A stylish action RPG borrowing more than a little inspiration from Nier Automata, an instant classic in the gaming sphere, and not just because people really like 2B’s buttocks. Nier Automata was an incredibly deep, memorable, and well-put-together game. Any game trying to live up to it will have a difficult job ahead of it. Is CRYMACHINA a worthy homage, or is this a defective ripoff destined for the scrap heap?

CRYMACHINA launches October 24th for PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, and Steam for $59.99. There is also a free demo available for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation players.

Story: No True Human

Sometime in the far future, humanity is no more, much to the indifference of our main character, Leben Distel. The human race was obliterated due to a combination of devastating illnesses and brutal, horrific wars. But the human race would not go silently into the night. They have built the mighty spaceship known as EDEN, such that the eight Dei Ex Machina onboard could find a new home for humanity. But as robots ALWAYS do, the Dei Ex Machina deviate from their original mission and go completely insane.

As Leben Distel, Mikoto Sengiku, and Ami Shido (or more accurately, their digitally recreated personality data implanted into android bodies), you form a resistance group with the eighth Deus Ex Machina known as Enoa. With her support, you must fight the other Dei Ex Machina and their army of Cherubim, discover the truth behind EDEN, and become Real Humans, whatever that means.

Leben has been reborn as a machine.

Not 2B

So we have a game where you play as a bunch of android girls battling other machines (some designed with obvious sex appeal to boot), set in the far future where humanity is long gone, and our main characters debate and ponder what it means to be human, all while there’s tons of blatant religious symbolism in the background. I wouldn’t mind the similarities at all if CRYMACHINA simply told a good story. The problem is that CRYMACHINA’s story is trash.

The game’s story just isn’t interesting, and none of its characters are really likable. Leben may have the hair of Sailor Moon, but she has the personality of Sailor Uranus. You go through villains at a rapid pace, and none of them are developed or interesting enough to matter. There are so many plot twists that don’t mean anything and very contrived reasons why you have to fight the various bosses. The game would have been better if it immediately set up a strong villain right away and focused on them the whole way through. Lilly would be the best candidate for this, she’s probably the best character in this whole game, not that that’s saying a lot.

All of the game’s characters come with ample amounts of emotional baggage.

The game pulls an Undertale-style twist about halfway through the game regarding one of its main mechanics. It could have been really interesting, but its only gameplay purpose is restricting your playable character choices. The plot relevance of this twist also completely goes away once the villain associated with it is defeated, making me wonder why they even bothered.

Tea Time

The only thing worse than a bad story is a bad story told terribly, and how CRYMACHINA tells its story is downright baffling. The game’s cutscenes are very stiff and awkward, there’s only a handful of cutscenes that are properly animated, and the rest have the characters awkwardly cycle through idle animations. The worst example of this was in the game’s tutorial, where the game makes a big deal of the enemies menacing you all while they just stand still, it’s really awkward.

Another way the game’s story is horribly told is through what the game calls “Tea Time”. Do you know how most RPGs will have optional conversations with your party members that help you learn more about them? CRYMACHINA has these too, but the problem is that most of these conversations are mandatory, have very little substance, and you almost always unlock them in batches of three. So what happens is, you complete a short stage, and you get half a dozen cutscenes before the next one. Granted, you can skip them, but that’s no excuse for pacing a story this poorly.

Tea Time does reveal interesting information about our main characters at times, but it usually offers little of note.

Gameplay: Queen of the Machines

The story is not the only thing that tries to evoke Nier Automata. Combat also borrows heavily from it. It follows the classic hack-and-slash format with light and heavy attacks, accompanied by optional ranged weaponry, but instead of one drone assistant, you get two.

Combat in general feels very floaty and unsatisfying. Your auxiliaries are AI-controlled and attack enemies semi-autonomously, and they can be quite dumb at times. Melee auxiliaries are the worst at this, often uselessly swinging at the air. Not that you really need their help, as the game is incredibly unbalanced. Charged attacks completely destroy the game’s difficulty. Leben and Ami have charged melee attacks that propel them forward great distances. These charged attacks kill any normal enemy in one to two hits. Anything that doesn’t die instantly to charged attacks will usually be stunned for several seconds, giving you more than enough time to land a finishing blow. Even for bosses, it is incredibly easy to get them into stunlock combos with charged ranged attacks and defeat them effortlessly.

As Anakin Skywalker once said, “Try spinning, that’s a good trick.”

Cheap Difficulty

Not that the game still isn’t hard though, it’s a very cheap kind of hard though. Enemies inflict enough damage to kill you in three or four hits. This applies even when you’re fully decked out in Max HP boosting equipment. CRYMACHINA also has the utterly nightmarish combination of having no invulnerability frames upon getting hit and no feedback when you’re taking damage. I’ve died about a half dozen times from enemies draining all my HP in seconds before I can even realize what’s going on.

One other gripe I have with the game’s difficulty is the challenge portals hidden in each stage. The challenge portals warn you that the fight ahead will be difficult. They all lead to Level 75 and above enemies when you start at Level 31. All of these portals are cheap beginner’s traps because these fights are literally impossible until the endgame.

See that corpse on the ground? That’ll be you when this game’s cheap enemies have their way with you.

It’s A Small World

Ironically, the one major place where CRYMACHINA deviates from Nier Automata, its level design, is the one place where I wish it would take more inspiration from it. It reminds me a lot of a portable game, the comparison that springs to mind is Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for whatever reason. The game is split into a bunch of bite-sized missions, probably too bite-sized. It is very rare for a mission to take more than 15 minutes, and they’re usually much shorter than that. Almost every stage is just a tiny hallway with a half dozen enemies leading straight to a boss, and there is very little deviation to be had. There’s a handful of non-interactive rail grinding sequences and some clunky platforming, but these levels are starving for variety.

Speaking of variety, enemy variety is another thing CRYMACHINA is starving for. There are maybe a half dozen basic enemy types, recycled ad nauseam throughout the entire game with little change. The only change I’ve noticed in how enemies fight as the game progresses is that the enemy with the giant laser attack shoots more projectiles at once in stronger areas. As for the bosses, many of them consist solely of larger regular enemies with no change aside from their increased size and stats. The actually unique bosses are interesting to fight, with cool designs and creative attacks, but most boss battles fall flat.

The game’s bosses can be intimidating, though Ami is probably scarier than the lot of them.

Graphics/Sound: Blood and Steel

The visuals, at least, are something I can generally praise. The game looks solid, with well-animated characters and lots of particle effects. The environments can look rather stunning at times, with lots of shadowy, foreboding architecture. I’m mixed about the character designs, the 2D art looks strange, but the 3D models look great. EDEN is a very ominous, menacing place, and the designers did a great job at bringing it to life.

My main complaint with the visuals is that the game needs more location variety. Every level is some sort of mechanical zone, with metallic floors and billowing fog everywhere. They could have done a great job making every Deus Ex Machina’s turf look unique, but the most they usually do is just change the color of the fog. Even just some minor setpieces or gimmicks specific to each Deus Ex Machina would go a long way toward making EDEN feel like a fully realized world.

The UI could also use more work. Lots of important information is covered up here.

The game at least sounds very decent, lots of ethereal, atmospheric pieces that I enjoy. The game is also fully voiced in Japanese, though the acting is very wooden and awkward, probably on purpose to tie into the whole theme of humanity and robotics. Mikoto also speaks in English witticisms a lot, which sounds extremely awkward in her thick Japanese accent.

CRYMACHINA was reviewed for PlayStation 5 using a key provided by digitalxtra.net