CRYSTAR

The middest of midware JRPG, but for a first project, its pretty good, the gameplay is somewhat interesting and the story is pretty sad. Would recommend on a sale for a crymachina fan who wants to know where the devs came from.
After finishing the game with all the endings, I think the game is still a recommend, but you will encounter a lot of repeated content, but the narrative is worth it to a degree.

This is just about the only game on Steam that made me wish the platform had a "mixed" button for reviews because I can neither recommend this game nor not recommend it.
I think this game fails on the front being enjoyable from a pure gameplay perspective. The combat is very stiff. Mainly due to the fact that there is no way to cancel a move into a dodge, so if you're doing a longer attack(which many of the late game moves are) you're locked into it and are likely to eat hits. Even beyond that, the combat itself is just very uninteresting. And to cap it all off the levels themselves are very samey and repetitive. The closest thing I can compare it to is Tartarus from Persona 3. Very boring samey levels that never do anything to mix it up, with not a single stage gimmick to keep things fresh. At least in Persona you had fun combat and good music to keep you interested so the stages were never much of a problem. I can't give Crystar that benefit. The sad part is that the music IS good, but I could barely hear it most of the time because the audio was very poorly mixed. Even with the music set to max in the setting it always sounded way too quiet. So the second any audio that wasn't the music played it would drown the music out. Even if there was no sfx or voices to drown the music out, the music was just much too low. It got to the point that once I was halfway through the game I noticed that you didn't need to fight enemies to progress the game so I just...kind of stopped fighting enemies entirely outside of the glowing ones that give you equipment and forced story encounters.
And if that's all there was I've just give the game a flat don't recommend, BUT im the kind of person that believes that a game's story and general writing is very important to a game, especially RPGs. I really enjoyed the writing of this game. From the characters to the story itself. I enjoyed most all of it the whole way through, even if the game's final twist was a bit easy to see from a thousand miles away. On top of that I just really enjoy the game's artstyle, from the visuals of the 3D models, to the drawn art of the character stills, and the absolutely gorgeous animated flashback sequences. And like I said earlier, the music is good and it's a shame its so poorly mixed. There IS stuff to enjoy here if you're looking for an interesting narrative. It just depends on how much you're willing to push through the game's mediocre combat to enjoy everything else there is to enjoy.
So once again, I don't really recommend playing the game nor do I recommend avoiding it. Just know that if decide to play the game you don't have fun and polished combat ahead of you, but you do have enjoyable writing, visuals, and music(the little you can hear of it). If that's the sort of thing you're fine with then go ahead, if not then avoid.

A very flawed game that should have been a visual novel. The gameplay is pretty boring and repetitive, and it has far too much recycled content for its runtime. The story is why you play this, and I found it very enjoyable; I just wish it wasn't tucked behind so much filler combat. I think this is the kind of game you can buy to support the devs, then just watch a compilation of the cutscenes on Youtube.
If you do play through it, set it to easy. You will be doing the same things in combat, you will just spend far less time in tedium.

Summary
Dark and interesting story
Incredible soundtrack
Great level and character design
Fun but slightly repetitive combat
Overall
I bought this one on sale with a few other Spike Chunsoft games. Originally, I just wanted to try it out one day and planned on playing it properly at a later point, but it started to strongly, that I didn't want to stop playing and ended up finishing it.
I didn't expect to like Crystar as much as I did. The story and soundtrack are what really surprised me the most, both of which reminded me a lot of the NieR games.
It's rare for me to be impressed by a soundtrack, but I really liked the music in this one a lot. And the English voice acting is surprisingly well done.
Other than that, the game generally has very good designs and is very atmospheric. Even the menu has animations for when you listen to music or level up your weapons.
Gameplay
It's not often that I praise a game for the story and not the gameplay. It's certainly not bad, but it doesn't do anything overly new nor different, which to be fair: it doesn't need to.
The fighting is similar to YS or Devil May Cry, with some skills to unlock and multiple playable characters. You get items and equipment, but it's all fairly simple.
Graphics
Crystar is definitely a gorgeous game. I like that it doesn't look too much like the typical anime-style and has a mature look to it, which is very fitting for the theme. Characters and areas have interesting designs, with a nice mix of dark and pastel colors. Areas unfortunately have some invisible walls around edges, but they're still fun to explore and see.
Story
There are very dark topics in the story, so it might not be for everyone. I personally didn't find it depressing nor upsetting, but I tend to handle that well, so others might see some things as triggers.
There was a point when I got burnt out, since to get to the true ending, you need to finish the game multiple times, although not all the way from the beginning. You can turn the difficulty down though, so that enemies aren't bullet sponges and you can get through areas quicker.
While the plot isn't consistently interesting, I do still highly recommend this game for the overall experience.

Game is absolutely flawed but story is so good that I had to finish it.
You have to play chapter 6-7-8 3 times to get the true ending
8 Chapters in total, either you finish the game at ending 1 and leave with loose ends or you suffer like me and go through ending 2 and 3 which is 100% bad endings. Ending 1 is also a bad end but debatable. True ending is absolute peak cinema with no loose ends and everything is tied though you might miss some details since all the routes matter.
Combat was mid but serviceable
Music is honestly top tier, so far Furyu games hasn't disappointed me with any of their music though I only played Monark and Crystar but both are peak.
Story for ending 1 is 6/10, ending 2 is 3/10, ending 3 is absolutely miserable and gets a 1/10 from me plus the road to play ending 3 was filled with peak sadness and annoyance. Ending 4 is Giga Cinema though you could say it is also sad and contradicts ending 1.
I finished ending 1 at 13 hours but clocked in at 21 hours for all 4 endings.
The one annoying thing that pissed me off was Rei Hataba (Our MC) going through an annoying phase around chapter 3-5 but then she got better, honestly each route is for each character where the true ending is Rei's chapter.
Nanana is also best girl honestly, girl made a depressing game into slightly less depressing game

this is absolutely a kusoge that is only good for its story. really wish they went ahead and did this more justice with a VN, but if you are willing to put up with hours of the most mindless combat (put the difficulty to easy for your own sanity) then you have something that might interest you here

Are you willing to experience 4 or 5 out of ten gameplay to witness a solid 7/10 story? Then absolutely play this game. But do not pay in excess of $30. Even if you are a true kusoge connoisseur there is not enough content to justify a $60 price tag. If you get this game remember that the 4th character is the absolute best.