Video Game / Crystar

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Crystar is a Hack and Slash Action RPG developed by Gemdrops and published by FuRyu in 2018. The overseas version was published by Spike Chunsoft for the PlayStation 4 and Steam in 2019. A Nintendo Switch version (which includes all the DLC) was released in 2022, with NIS America handling the international release.

The game tells the story of a young girl named Rei Hatada, who ended up in Purgatory alongside her younger sister, Mirai, for some reason. While trying to escape from the abominations that resides there, Mirai is accidentally killed by Rei, who is forced to make a Deal with the Devil to revive her, in exchange for hunting down the lost souls wandering Purgatory.

A spiritual sequel called Crymachina was released in 2023.

Unrelated to the 1980s Marvel comic book The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior or its associated action figure line from Remco.

Crystar provides examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Alcea, the knowledge of the events that happened in the other timelines, is what allows the heroines to make the right choices and reach the Golden Ending.
• Accidental Murder: Rei accidentally kills Mirai during the Final Boss Preview against Anamnesis.
• Animal Motifs: Each crest represents one, and it's displayed in the character's dialogue boxes: Unicorn (Rei), Dog (Kokoro), Lion (Sen), Bird (Nanana), Bat (Anamnesis) etc.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • After beating the game and starting again for a new unlocked story, the game only forces you to play a shortened version of the prologue before skipping ahead to Chapter 6.
  • On the fourth go-around, you can access all the previous stages including ones that had multiple forms, allowing you to gain the last few memoirs.
• Back for the Finale: Arashi, Kyosuke, and the dragon from Chapter 4 return as bosses in the last storyline.
• Bedsheet Ghost: The most basic of Revenants have this look.
• Bilingual Bonus: In Japanese, 'Mephis and Pheles' would be pronounced 'Mephis to Pheles'.
• Bittersweet Ending: The first ending. Rei manages to obtain Revival and bring Mirai back to life, at cost of Nanana's Heroic Sacrifice and the memories of her friends. Also, Kokoro and Sen are last seen fighting each other , and their fates are left ambiguous.
• Bolivian Army Ending: This happens on the first two endings:
  • On the first ending Kokoro and Sen are last seen fighting each other as Kororo wants to get her revenge on Anamnesis but Sen, after being told that Anamnesis is her mother, wants to save her with the outcome being left ambiguous.
  • On the second ending Kokoro and Sen proceed to fight an out-of-control Nanana while Rei chases after Mirai but like before, the result of the battle is left unseen.
• Bonus Dungeon: Optional trials become available as you advance thought the game.
• Boss Bonanza: The final optional mission is a run against the game's bosses which includes all of the final bosses from each route. It also has the gimmick that every time you defeat all of them, you are given the option to restart with the bosses having higher stats. This can be done indefinitely with the reward being EXP equivalent to the number of bosses defeated and the game keeping track of the highest number you reached in a single run, but after the fifth round, the stats of the bosses will remain unchanged.
• Bowdlerise: The PS4 version removed a frame of the opening movie that show Rei's butt.
• But Thou Must!: You have to sign the contract. Rei even lampshaded this:
  Mephis/Pheles: "Sign the contract!"
  Rei: "I guess I don't have much of a choice."
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: The lost souls wandering Purgatory are represented by blue butterflies.
• Deadly Game: The Revenant Princess once dragged a Bus Full of Innocents to the Purgatory and forced the passengers to kill each other, promising to return the survivor to the real world. In the third story, she traps the party members in a prison and forces then to fight each other to the death.
• Degraded Boss: Unknown α and Unknown β appear as mini-bosses in the next to last mission in the fourth playthrough.
• Devil, but No God: We have Demons running around, but no Angels, let alone a God. Dialogue suggests a creator of some sort exists, but the details aren't gone into.
• Don't Split Us Up: The inciting incident when Mirai was being taken back to the orphanage by her adopted parents. Her desire to stay with Rei lead her to try and force her way back, causing the car accident that killed them all and set Mirai on the path to achieve Revival, setting the rest of the game in motion.
• Downer Ending:
  • The second ending. Rei has to fight Mirai, the Revenant Princess, and they both die after a lengthy battle. Kokoro and Sen are last seen confronting Nanana, who went berserk due to the side-effects of the Cogs of Renewal on Revenants.
  • The Bad Guy Wins in the third story, as the heroines were manipulated by the Demon Twins into killing each other and before killing Rei, proceed to show her how they were behind a lot of the awful stuff that happened in the game, in particular being the ones that caused Thelema's death, all because they enjoy causing humans to suffer.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Pretty much every female character is dressed in goth-lolita fashion.
• Equipment Upgrade: Sentiments can be fused together to make more powerful versions as well as customized with bonus stats.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The witch that sells items to you is simply called "Peddler".
• Evil Versus Evil: Anamnesis, the Revenant Princess (Mirai), and the Demon Twins are in conflict with each other.
• Experience Meter: There's a tiny one inbetween the character's level and their HP. It's more visible on the status screen.
• Fighting Your Friend:
  • Multiple times, depending on the playthrough. Kokoro's quest for revenge against Anamnesis pits her against Sen, who wants to protect her mother. The Cogs of Renewal cause Revenants to lose their memories, so Nanana goes berserk and turns on the party.
  • In the third story, the Demon Twins successfully manipulate the party members into killing each other for their own amusement.
• Final Boss: A different one for each playthrough. The first final boss is Plato (Anamnesis' Revenant form), second is Aristotle (Mirai's Revenant form), third is Sen Megumiba, and the last (and True Final Boss) is Mephistopheles (the Demon Twins' true form).
• Flunky Boss: Some bosses summon respawnable mooks to aid them in battle. Killing the boss causes the mooks to die instantly.
• Fusion Dance: Between Unknown α, Unknown β, and Thelema's soul during Chapter 5's climax. Also, Mephis and Pheles during the (true) final battle.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: During Chapter 4 there is a stage where Nanana splits Rei's group and proceeds to use her powers to transform them into copies of her, during the travel through the stage to find her Rei first regroups with Kororo and then Sen only to discover at the very end that the "Kororo" she has been traveling with was Nanana all along, having tricked them by changing her voice, despite this reveal "Kokoro" has the same equipment and EXP that the real one had before this, with any change to equiped Sentiments and EXP gained during the stage being kept when they reunite at the end.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: The Executors have blue halos, while the Revenants have red halos.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: Rei has white wings, the Demon Twins have black wings, and Anamnesis have bat-like wings. Subverted by Kuon, who has black wings like the Demon Twins while also being the closest the game has to a Big Good.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Rei is tasked with finding seven Ideas for the Demon Twins to bring Mirai back to life.
• Heel Realization: Mirai and Anamnesis catch on that they're the bad guys in the true ending and reincarnate in order to atone.
• Horned Humanoid: Epicurean, the first boss, is a gorilla-like Revenant with bull horns.
• Humanoid Abomination: Most of the Specters and Revenants inhabiting Purgatory.
• Improbably Female Cast: Every non-Guardian major character is female.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: Downplayed. In the second loop, Rei fights Mirai by herself because Kokoro and Sen are busy dealing with an amnesiac Nanana.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Each character-specific ordeal boss will drop either a weapon or armor for them with higher stats than the next best gear. The catch is, like the other equipment, you need multiple copies of it fused together to get it as good as you can.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Losing soul fragments causes characters to forget specific memories. Towards the end of the game it is also revealed that just being close to the Cogs of Renewal will begin to cause this to any Revenant in the area, which is what ends up happening to the Bourbaki and Nanana.
• Leaked Experience: Characters not fighting get 80% of the experience points.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: The party splits up when climbing the two Towers of Grief.
• Level-Up Fill-Up: Leveling up restores HP and MP even if that character isn't the one currently being used.
• Load-Bearing Boss: After defeating Mephistopheles, the building begins to collapse and the heroines have to warp away to escape.
• Mephistopheles: The primary demons you negotiate with are a pair of sisters named Mephis and Pheles. They offer up contracts with provide the heroes with power in exchange for having to do dirty work managing lost souls for them. When they fuse into the Final Boss, they get the full name of Mephistopheles.
• Multiple Endings: Four endings. You get a different one for each time you beat the game.
• Named After Somebody Famous: The Guardians and some Revenants are named after real-life philosophers, such as Heraclitus of Ephesus, Diogenes, Socrates and Epicurus.
• New Game Plus: Subverted. After beating the game, you will restart at the prologue, but then the game will jump straight to Chapter 6 and the story will change each time, leading to different endings.
• One-Winged Angel: Revenants can turn into giant monsters for boss fights.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Two in the first ending. One from Rei to Nanana and the other from Kokoro to Sen.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Rei starts getting snappy at everyone at Chapter 5 as the pressure gets to her before culminating in ditching them in the last area. Naturally, they come back and she's Easily Forgiven after a Jerkass Realization when it's time for the boss.
  • On the third story the Demon Twins successfully enforce this by separating the girls and then transform into them to sow discord in the group so that after they all get in a situation where they need to kill each other to escape, they would do it without much resistance.
• Product Placement: Rei owns a Sony smartphone.
• Purgatory and Limbo: The game's main setting. Rei has to traverse it while dealing with lost souls like Specters and Revenants.
• Redemption Earns Life/Redemption Equals Death: A little of both. Anamnesis and Mirai both agree to end their current lives - Anamnesis to atone and Mirai to avoid keeping up her yandere behavior - and enter the Cogs of Renewal to be reborn.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Mephis and Pheles are named after the demon Mephistopheles, from German folklore.
• Reset Button: Subverted. Each time you beat the game, Kuon gathers another Idea and restarts the game, but things will be different each time. Only the Demon Twins are aware of the changes.
• Scratch Damage: You always take at least one HP of damage regards of your defense stat. This means attacks can still knock you over and possibly interrupt your combo chain.
• Shadow Archetype: The Guardians are mirrors that reflect their masters' wills.
• Sheathe Your Sword: In the true ending path, Rei has to overcome her trauma of killing Mirai by refusing to attack her so she can free herself from the Demon Twins Crest. Same happens with Kokoro, Sen, and Nanana off-screen.
• Take Your Time: Rei is told she's got forty-nine days to recover Mirai's soul, but that doesn't factor into gameplay in any way.
• Together in Death: Mirai and Rei in ending B.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Rei only likes eating potatoes, and Mirai often scolds her for it. Sen's favorite food is ramen. There's a tinge of deconstruction in this as one conversation with Sen points out that Rei's potato-heavy diet is leaving her with poor nutrition and contributing to her lack of constitution.
• Underground Monkey: A number of enemies are recolored into stronger forms the further you go.
• Villain Teleportation: Both Anamnesis and the Demon Twins can teleport to evade attacks or to pull a Villain: Exit, Stage Left.
• Voice of the Legion: The followers of the Revenant Princess, collectively known as Bourkabi, speaks with a deep reverbal voice and screams "SOULS" while attacking.
• We Sell Everything: The Peddler that appears in every floor of Purgatory and sells uncommon items. One may wonder where she stores them.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 5. Rei's impatience to revive Mirai causes her to distance herself from her friends, resulting in her losing her Emotional Powers and the ability to summon Heraclitus in the process. In the same chapter, Thelema dies, and Rei remembers having a twin sister, Kuon, who died at birth.
• World of Action Girls: Nearly every character is an Action Girl, including the four playable characters and most of the antagonists.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The Revenants inhabiting Purgatory devour wandering souls to gain enough power to return to the world of the living.