Crystar

Crystar is an Action role-playing video game developed by Gemdrops and published by Spike Chunsoft for the PlayStation 4 and PC and by NIS America for the Nintendo Switch. It was released for the PlayStation 4 in 2018 for Japan and in 2019 worldwide with a PC version released the same year. It was also later released for the Nintendo Switch in 2022. The story follows Rei Hatada, who makes a contract with the twin demons of Purgatory in order to revive her deceased younger sister, the one she herself killed.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Fun Hack-n-slash type gameplay reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts or Nier: Automata.
 * 2) Awesome boss and mini-boss fights.
 * 3) Intriguing story that deals with themes of grief, redemption, and hatred to name a few.
 * 4) Likeable characters, particularly Rei and Kokoro (who has a crush on Rei)
 * 5) An excellent plot twist that happens at the BEGINNING of the game, and influences the rest of it.
 * 6) Four different endings on each playthrough, the last of which results in the true ending.
 * 7) Beautiful graphics.
 * 8) Great soundtrack.
 * 9) An awesome anime-styled intro.
 * 10) Some enemies, called Revenants, have interesting lore as to how they were created, being made by a deceased human with a particularly tragic backstory. They're tougher than normal enemies, have a halo, just like Rei, and defeating them gives Rei their memories, which must be purified with tears in her room to be understood.
 * 11) There's plenty to do in Rei's room, such as petting her dog, Thelema, looking at backstories of Revenants, listening to the soundtrack of the game, and so on.
 * 12) YOU CAN LITERALLY MAKE YOUR TEARS INTO WEAPONS! That's an awesome sentence in itself.
 * 13) The main gimmick of the game is using your grief to fight, quite literally. You can have Rei cry to build up her tear gauge and then use that to summon your guardian in battle.
 * 14) Great Japanese voice acting, and pretty good English voice acting as well.
 * 15) Plenty of different characters to play as, each with their own unique style.
 * 16) A steadily rising level of difficulty as you progress.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) While the English voice acting is pretty good, some characters lack emotion in some scenes, and there's mispronunciation of some words.
 * 2) Environments can feel pretty linear.
 * 3) The story has some anime clichés, even if it's nowhere near as egregious as Sword Art Online.
 * 4) Pretty repetitive mission structure with plenty of backtracking.