Cris Tales Demo

Tried the demo for Cris Tales. The game has an interesting anime-esque look and it's apparently fully voice acted. The introduction to combat made it seem like the standard turn based system. Then you get a flashback to demonstrate how the role play mechanics would work and how Crisbell can solve puzzles using her ability to see into the past and future - this part was really enjoyable. Then the time switching mechanic was introduced in combat and that made some of the flaws more obvious. The boss was a damage sponge and after eroding her shield it wasn't obvious if I was actually employing the correct strategy. There was no indication how much health it had left aside from a visual change when it was near death. Blocking is another issue - there's pretty much no point in doing it since you can't predict when the boss would unleash a more damaging attack and even if there's a verbal queue (or so it seemed), you can only protect 1 character and if they don't get attacked it's a wasted turn. After completing the demo the Coliseum further showed problems with the combat, like the guesswork you have to do to figure out what combination of time switching and spells would work the best (or work at all).

The setting seemed interesting enough, but something about it felt off. The entire game gave off girly vibes and I have the feeling that there might be some SJW themes in there. Nothing too obvious yet, but I have my suspicions.

I don't think I'll be purchasing the full game when it comes out. The demo failed to impress me and it had some questionable design choices in it.