- Ambushes and chained critical hits add additional layers of complexity to what gamers will immediately find to be a solid, tried-and-true combat engine
- Featuring artwork and a beautiful presentation designed to take full advantage of the PSP’s high-resolution screen
- Delivers the crisp character designs, sweeping background art, and stunning special effects gamers have come to expect from elite JRPGs
- 30+ hours of gameplay
- Stunning 2-D art design
Product Description
OLD MEETS NEW IN THIS PURE JRPG EXPERIENCE FOR PSP! With beautiful, high-resolution 2-D artwork, novel battle mechanics, and a classic tale of fantasy, adventure, and heroism, Crimson Gem Saga delivers the pure, classic Japanese RPG play experience PSP owners have been clamoring for since the hardware’s launch. Taking full advantage of the crisp, clear PSP screen and boasting a colorful, catchy musical score, Crimson Gem Saga is a blast from the past presented just… More >>
I will admit, this game caught me off guard. Crimson Gem Saga is a sequel to Astonishia Story, a game that came out a few years ago for the PSP. However, there are so many differences that they chose to release it under a new name, or from what I understand anyways. When I originally heard that it was from the same team, I grew rather worried because Astonishia Story was a very lackluster title, or at least I thought it was. However, any doubts were immediately washed away when I first started playing this game.
Crimson Gem Saga was brought over to the US by Atlus, which means that we’ll be getting a high quality translation along with great care to the product. One can immediately tell by the beautiful anime introduction that they didn’t skimp on this title. The story is about a young man, Killian, who strives to be the best, but always ends up coming in second. The game starts you off, waking up late and almost missing your graduation. I won’t go into any more of the story, for this is something that needs to be played to really enjoy it. Granted, the story isn’t grand by all means and some might consider the beginning to be slow, but Killian soon discovers that he has a much greater adventure than just simply trying to figure out what to do after he graduates. Killian is met by a very well rounded cast. Spinel, who is your elf treasure hunter and is probably by far one of the best voiced characters in this game. There is also Henson, the arrogant-ish mage. Gelts, who is a former holy man, though he looks more like a warrior. Lahduk, who is the silent and very powerful monk and Acelora, whom I haven’t encountered so far in my 8 hours of playing the game.
While I haven’t played the Japanese version, I can say that Atlus did a superb job translating this title. I don’t think I’ve played an RPG in the past few years that had me smiling as much as Crimson Gem Saga has, nor enjoying it as much. They even go so far as to break the fourth wall rather early in the game. However, none of this ruins the mood of the game and only adds to the enjoyment of what otherwise would be a rather typical plot line. What also caught me off guard was the voice work. This is by far the best voiced title from Atlus and one of the best for the PSP. They chose a very well rounded cast that perfectly fit each respected character. I personally consider the principle of the school Killian graduates from to be one of my favorites. There are dips in performances here and there, but overall it’s a very well done game. There is not a Japanese VA option, so for those who prefer the original voice work, you might be disappointed. However, I don’t think it would of synced up very well with the English translated scrip anyways.
Crimson Gem Saga is also a rather gorgeous title. It uses sprites and strives for a more traditional feel, which works very nicely. The backgrounds for all the areas I’ve visited so far are all quite lovely and there is a variety in monsters, skin swapping included though. Sprites have a nice look to them and each character has a death animation as well. They even provided Spinel with some ‘bounce’ to her character, but it depends on if you look at that as being unnecessary or generous. Either or, you still have to admit they put a lot of work into the characters for this title. Characters interact in a traditional manner via one still portrait and text below, sometimes accompanied by voice work with the text. As previously mentioned, this is a very well translated title, with some rather unusual NPCs. The sound is another aspect of this title that caught me off-guard. I wasn’t expecting such a different style of soundtrack for this RPG, or at least I felt it differed from the norm. I found that CGS offers a rather enjoyable score on the overall.
Battle is also rather traditional, being turn based. Monsters are visible on screen and you run into them to initiate battle. CGS also has a pre-emptive system, which is highly recommended. If you initiate a battle with the enemy from behind before it can spot you (it’ll have a ! over it’s head if you’ve been spotted), your entire party will attack however many enemies you may be fighting once before going into turn based. This can be reversed, however, if the enemy spots you and runs into you after the exclamation point goes away. This makes fighting much more than the standard formula. What also breaks it up is if you get a critical, you have a chance of continuing your attack. Near the bottom of the screen, just above your team’s health and mana status, an ‘X’ will appear. Pressing it allows your character to attack once more and if their lucky again, they’ll get another ‘X’ in which they’ll preform yet another powerful attack, more so than the first two. This can really turn the tide in a battle and, in some cases, kill an enemy in one turn or severely damage it.
I’m close to 8 hours into the title and I’ve got quite a bit of gameplay left to go. I have to say that I highly recommend this game. The only downside is CGS likes to do quests within quests. Being that you might be assigned one quest by someone, but the individual you need to go talk to might want you to do something for them before they give you what you need, etc. This can become rather tedious and unfortunately there are a decent amount of fetch quests in CGS, but the quests within a quest scenarios don’t happen often. That’s probably the only downfall I can really think of this title, but I don’t personally consider it a problem or find it hampering to my experience. Even then, I’m absolutely enjoying this game and considering it runs at $29.99 I can’t see a reason as to not picking this title up.
Rating: 4 / 5
I have been a bit skeptical when picking this game up. There are a lot of bad RPGs out there on the PSP and Nintendo DS.
This game though is just amazing. It is a very simple old school turn based RPG done right. It has amazing graphics. The whole game just looks beautiful from villages, towns, castles to characters. You will never see a boring looking location or character and the battle animations are top notch as well.
The dialogue and story is VERY well written even between regular villagers or people you meet. It also has a bit of humor thrown in. When I entered one INN in a village and talked to the girl behind the counter she said “I am running the inn because my mother is sick, and NO this is not a start of a medicine fetching quest. You adventurers are all alike.” Or I found a bomb in a treasure chest next to a bed in an INN and the main character stopped and said “A bomb, at an INN next to the guest bed?”
This sort of writing and interaction makes you actually WANT to talk to all the villagers instead of just running through the game doing the main quest.
Anyways, pick this one up. It is really a great game. I am very surprised that it received so very little hype and marketing. It could have really made the headlines.
Rating: 5 / 5
Crimson Gem Saga is great for what it is: traditional JRPG. It does not set it self up to be the most innovative new game so the expectation from the beginning is that this is an excellent solid turn based role play game. Does it deliver on the expectation? Yes.
The graphics are quite nice with clear sprites and lush backgrounds. You can see some of the expressions on the sprites which is very neat. In some of the dungeons it can be hard to tell the difference between what you are supposed to interact with and just regular dungeon as the color scheme is so neutral but you do get used to it.
The characters are as standard as it gets–and you can read about them in the booklet. You’ve got recent graduate boy out to make a difference in the world, your mage, your thief, etc etc etc.
Localization: In a word–AMAZING. This title will have you smiling and laughing at what some of the characters say–early on Killian (lead) opens a “treasure” box in an inn (standard for RPG…the ones in this game are green) and there isa comment from him “A BOMB! Next to a guest bed?”. Moments like this are why I developed a hearty apprecation for the localization crew for this Atlus title–and Atlus can be hit or miss on this. I find it fairly unique that when Atlus gets it they literally knock it out of the park–this game and Luminous Arc (first and second) just have wonderful dialogue between characters and they’ve retained all the humor, sarcasm, and uniqueness even with a tranlsation which is not easy to do. THANK YOU ATLUS!
I was very shocked to hear the voice acting which I found *really* superb—and I rarely say that about a RPG for a handheld. Wherever they got these guys I hope they go back for any future games–the emotions are spot on and the voice acting (it is only partially voice acted) really conveys the characters emotions and personalities very well.
The music is another area where I was very pleasantly suprised. There are some great tunes for battles and the bosses and overall I found it well crafted. The energy of the music is used very well as it fits within the story.
The gameplay is standard. Dungeon’s, quests, towns. I did like that it was not really random encounter based–you can see the enemies and it becomes a game of who can catch who first—proper benefits (ambush) to the victor. Neat! The menu works fine although I wish when you went to shop you knew how many of something you had–but that’s a minor issue and the information is accessible just not on the same screen.
I like the use of skill tree’s. I find this greatly enhances gameplay and I appreciate being able to choose how I will allocate those points. Revealing all the levels on the skill tree is kind of a waste–because you may not want to have all those skills or you may choose to allocate your skill points across characters–but, as always, this is an RPG so you will be grinding anyway so SP isn’t that hard to come by if you know where to look.
Difficulty: Medium. I had heard this was too easy—I don’t think generically this is easy—but I do think that you can “over” skill or level your characters thereby making combat a breeze. This would be up to you though as a player. If you choose to get Ultimate Skills with tons of power early on you really can’t expect that this choice isn’t going to affect the gameplay. And you as a player have a choice with whether to use any of these special skills in each round–so really it is all about the player.
Overall–Excellent game. Doesn’t push any boundary’s (although it does break the fourth wall) but is a solid enjoyable experience. It is not really long so if you are looking for a 60 hour complicated masterpiece with a New Game+ at the end this is not your game. For anyone else this title should simply not be missed. The price point is standard. I was kind of bummed there were no spoils for this title but that has nothing to do with the game itself.
Rating: 5 / 5
As a Korean-American, I like to try out a lot of games from Korea. There hasn’t been a lot of games from Korea that make to U.S., and there are a lot of flat-out unpopular Korean games, like.. Magna Carta or the first Astonishia Story for that matter. Nevertheless I was pretty excited to see CGS come here in English. I’ll now present my reaction in details.
I guess a little backstory is in order. This game is called Crimson Gem Saga in North America, but in other places it is named Astonishia Story 2. It follows up on the first Astonishia Story, which wasn’t very successful. The first Astonishia Story, first published in mid 1994, was pretty standard game of its time; considering games like Final Fantasy 5/Dragon Quest 4 and such came out in those time frame. However, most folks in U.S. didn’t know about that and when it was released for the first time in Western consumers on Playstation Portable, they probably thought Astonishia Story was made for PSP instead of old port of an 16 bit RPG, hence the harsh reviews the first game has been getting by NA reviewers. Now, nearly a decade and a half later, the old Sonnori team of the AS got together, changed their development team name into Iron Nos(sonnori spelled backwards), and tried a gamble of reviving their biggest game series as they face hard financial challenge and bankrupcy.
Ironnos/sonnori team are not an exceptional team. Historically, they have been making OK games. It isn’t surprising that Crimson Gem Saga too is a pretty standard game for its time. However, what they have been good at is little details of their games, and it shines here too. Let’s talk about the game’s features to clearify. The game is a standard “j”RPG(although clearly it was from Korea), where you have a very linear, set-in-stone storyline to follow. Some hints of “w”RPGs are present, such as being able to build up a skill tree, recording quests, and customizing equipments. Unfortunately most characters’ equipments don’t change in actual appearance, though. Visually it can be compared to PS1 era 2-D RPGs; at times I had a flashback to Tales of Eternia while playing CGS. Lush colors cloak the 32 bit color palettes and they are not bad on the eyes. Some battle attack sequesnces are rather crudely animated with few unique frames, and it is a dissappointment considering the first Astonishia Story had very good animated sprites. A lot of same melodies from the first AS return in CGS, but in a much better quality. Imagine the jump from, say, Lufia 1 to Lufia 2, then it’d be pretty close. Now that we’re in 2009, the musicians were able to present their scores the way they were meant, it is much better sounding in CGS than in AS, though they are of the same composition. Not one single voice acting is terrible, Herbert sounds homosexual at times, but even his lines are done badly, just with a lot of colour, and he is a very minor character anyway. There are parts of story where you face very tough opponent, and it’s OK to die in those battles but if you manage to beat them you can skip an entire section of the game. In combat, Ironnos team took a lot of clues of current RPGs, and I’d say it works for the most part. Characters are laid out not unlike the way in Valkyrie Profile 1, although the farthest characters still can get hit; enemies are seen on screen before combat like Grandia games; there are multiple character combination techinques like the ones seen from SaGa Frontier and Chrono series; character orders are visible much like a lot of PS2 turn-based games. There is a slight twist in the battle mechanics that keeps things dry-such as very powerful block that only blocks once, and the way they set up each battle is very brutal(ambush or be ambushed). This game is mash of good things from a lot of different games and I applaud the project team for successfully managing to make game such way.
So the game played pretty decently, basically. The remaining issue is the translation – while it is not nearly as crappy as the first AS one done by UBI soft, I feel I need to warn other Korean Americans. It is clear that Atlus USA, which handled NA localizations, translated from the Japanese version. They did the same thing with Magna Carta too, by the way. The result is while Atlus’ know-how of quality localizations show, there are a lot of hiccups in the game. A lot of lines are flat out rewrites, and they added jokes here and there in the North American Crimson Gem Saga that weren’t present in the original Korean language Astonishia Story 2. Also, there is a lot of Japanese reference that weren’t translated that I felt was unnecessary; most people-either Korean or American-wouldn’t know what “kitsune udon”, “kunoichi” etc are supposed to be. When I see a gang of spiders and their names say “Guh Mi” which means ‘spiders’ in Korean language, “Hwal”(bow in Korean), “Cal”(knife in Korean) – you know, completely left alone untranslated – it’s just not a good feeling. Localization hiccups like that makes me wonder if Atlus tried to present the game as a Japanese game, which I find offensive to be honest. With that said, the game still feels natural, though.
I like the game. The game has so-called “new game plus” where players start the game again from the beginning with all the techniques they earned from the last playthrough. If you didn’t unlock them all, in the next playthrough the game lets players KEEP the points from last playthrough to help unlock them. It’s a really nice gesture considering that the game is probably about 15~20 hours long for most people. This game was meant to be a second part of multiple chapters, thus naturally the game may seem like unfinished story. For me thought, I am really looking forward to Astonishia Story 3. I also hope that since this game is solid, they’ll be able to call it Astonishia Story 3 because I’ve became a big fan of the series thanks to Crimson Gem Saga.
Rating: 4 / 5
Love this spritet based rpgs the best. There’s beautiful graphics, great voice-work, interesting and quirky characters, fun combat (everything you’d expect out of a classic rpg). This may be an RPG for hardcore gamers though. Even if you level up a lot, monsters are still a challenge. Some people say it’s a flaw, but I think it was made this way to be hardcore. The only thing I don’t like about this game is that you can learn the characters skills to fast. Other than that, it’s a great RPG.
Rating: 5 / 5