Playtime:6-8 hours
CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Crystal Story is not an h-game, it is an RPG with h-elements.
What do I mean by this? Simple matter of it is that Crystal Story does not have heavy h-content, offering a mere 7 scenes with a few that are partially animated. Getting to these scenes requires a large investment of time and then choosing to lose and the earliest CG you can view will easily be 2-3 hours away from game start.
As an RPG it has an interesting mix of design choices. It rewards players quite heavily for exploring any and all available nooks and corners as well as occasionally talking to NPCs. The active items are generally useful and the combat system has an interesting attribute element to it.
Light and Darkness, Fire and Ice, just to name a few of the attributes enemies and weapons can have. Enemies are weak to the opposite of their own attribute with every attack using that opposite dealing roughly double damage.
As interesting as all this is the game has an awful encounter system. It sucks ass and not in a good way.
Monsters are generally encountered on the world map and in dungeons and you can get 10-15 steps or so before you get dragged into an encounter. You can of course - depending on how high your agility is - escape and simply run off, avoiding the battle completely. Yet do this too often and you'll find your limit steadily decreasing, you'll start managing only 7 steps, then 5, until you either get to safe area or defeat some monsters to reset the limit.
Some area's have encounters every 5 steps as a default and getting through them can be a slog even with the best weapons. Speaking of the weapons let's talk difficulty.
While the standard mooks you encounter aren't all that imposing until far later, the bosses will be much stronger with the idea that you have been level grinding all game to beat them. The end boss is particularly difficult even with a lvl 40-50 party and some of the best items in the game. This wouldn't be too concerning if my main goal was to play a hardcore RPG but my objective here is quite different.
In terms of h-content, Crystal Story is almost barren. It offers 7 CG's, a few pandering shots of the main heroine in her swimsuit or underwear, and a few shots of the protagonists sister. All of the content is locked behind either game-over scenarios, event sequence chains, or text choices. This too, would not be a problem, if the events or text choices were easy to understand. To get the h-scenes you need to have completed a very specific set of events and answering with the correct text choices. This is nearly impossible on your first playthrough as the in-game guide you are given is the "incomplete" version which only gives you the standard ending.
This is also made worse by the fact your choices rarely matter. Tell a character to stay somewhere safe? They go with you anyway, almost as if you never said anything at all. Near the end a single text choice decides whether or not you will view the ending CG or not or if you save the girl or not and it's NOT apparent at all what choice it is.
A new game+ is required to actually get the "Completed Adventurers Guide" that details exactly what you have to do to view all the h-scenes as the guide is locked in a chest in the starting area. You do get a carry over of all items and levels which makes getting through it a second time much easier but it's still an inconvenience.
If you are still determined to play this game I suggest you do 3 things:
1. Cheat, download Cheat Engine and search up the XP values for your party members and pump them up to 900,000 to get roughly around lvl 50.
2. Grab the present sitting on the night stand in the starting house. It will give you the "Helping Device" that will allow you to set your default move speed, avoid enemy encounters for 30s, and show the "back route" option which I never got to work.
3. Use the code 33102 on the golden locked chest to get the "Complete Adventures Guide" so you will know what to do and where to go to get the h-scenes.
E-TLDR: With scarce h-content,awful encounters, and terrible grinding Crystal Story gets a 3/10.
