29th June 2016, 6:29 PM
The GBC version of Crystalis was a port made by the same team that brought us Excitebike 64. Between the two, Excitebike ended up a far superior game.
GBC Crystalis has some good going for it. The gameplay is pretty much the same, though they've taken away the need to constantly switch sword elements (done via a menu). In that respect, it's actually an improvement. Further, the character animations have far more frames so they move much more smoothly. Plus, the main character now has a default name (Semia, an anagram of another important NPC, Mesia).
That's all I can say in the game's favor. This game is hurt pretty bad by the smaller viewing area of the Gameboy Color, and it'll lead to annoying deaths a bit too often in an already hard game. That's unavoidable, but many other changes seem to have been done simply for the sake of doing them.
First off, and most notably, they completely rewrote the story and script for the entire game. While the locations are all pretty much the same, the whole game's story is so alien that it's basically a completely different world. I get the impression the people doing the port were more interested in showing off their own artistic talents than in making a faithful port. The problem is, they weren't as good as they thought they were. The new story feels like one of the worse 80's Saturday morning cartoons. I'm not claiming the original was Shakespeare, but it did a competent job of making the world feel alive and like you had a part in it. The new version reads terribly, motivations are either missing or badly written, and dialog is just painful. Considering my high tolerance for typical video game melodrama, that's saying a lot. There were very few cut scenes in the NES version, but they've been stripped away to make way for a lot of new cut scenes. Unfortunately, the artwork is very badly drawn. Again, some of the worse Saturday morning cartoons come to mind. To finish off this list, they've gone and replaced all the music in the game with their own compositions. Once again, the new music is grating, repetitive, and lacks any of the charm and scope of the original. I must again ask why they felt the need to make all these changes.
They did improve the quality of a number of sound effects though, and there is an additional boss fight. So, it's not all bad. In all though, I'd treat it more like a spinoff game in the vein of Kid Icarus Myths and Monsters rather than a true port or remake.
You found a good deal with that copy of Silent Hill 3, but it comes down to one thing. Are you actually going to play that game? If not, sell it. If so, open it.
GBC Crystalis has some good going for it. The gameplay is pretty much the same, though they've taken away the need to constantly switch sword elements (done via a menu). In that respect, it's actually an improvement. Further, the character animations have far more frames so they move much more smoothly. Plus, the main character now has a default name (Semia, an anagram of another important NPC, Mesia).
That's all I can say in the game's favor. This game is hurt pretty bad by the smaller viewing area of the Gameboy Color, and it'll lead to annoying deaths a bit too often in an already hard game. That's unavoidable, but many other changes seem to have been done simply for the sake of doing them.
First off, and most notably, they completely rewrote the story and script for the entire game. While the locations are all pretty much the same, the whole game's story is so alien that it's basically a completely different world. I get the impression the people doing the port were more interested in showing off their own artistic talents than in making a faithful port. The problem is, they weren't as good as they thought they were. The new story feels like one of the worse 80's Saturday morning cartoons. I'm not claiming the original was Shakespeare, but it did a competent job of making the world feel alive and like you had a part in it. The new version reads terribly, motivations are either missing or badly written, and dialog is just painful. Considering my high tolerance for typical video game melodrama, that's saying a lot. There were very few cut scenes in the NES version, but they've been stripped away to make way for a lot of new cut scenes. Unfortunately, the artwork is very badly drawn. Again, some of the worse Saturday morning cartoons come to mind. To finish off this list, they've gone and replaced all the music in the game with their own compositions. Once again, the new music is grating, repetitive, and lacks any of the charm and scope of the original. I must again ask why they felt the need to make all these changes.
They did improve the quality of a number of sound effects though, and there is an additional boss fight. So, it's not all bad. In all though, I'd treat it more like a spinoff game in the vein of Kid Icarus Myths and Monsters rather than a true port or remake.
You found a good deal with that copy of Silent Hill 3, but it comes down to one thing. Are you actually going to play that game? If not, sell it. If so, open it.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)