Despite the similar names and aesthetics, Crymachina feels like its own beast, instead of a direct successor to FuRyu’s Crystar. At Anime Expo 2023, I had the chance to check this game out and it turned out to be one of the most surprisingly fun games I enjoyed at the event.
Crymachina features an intriguing post-apocalyptic storyline about a girl who wakes up as a machine in a dark world. She must fight to become a “real human.” The premise is odd and the brief story elements I saw in the preview were interesting, but I won’t dare spoil them here.
Image via NIS America
The bulk of my PS5 preview involved basically an entire tutorial. I had the chance to run around the linear map, learning how to jump, dash, attack, and the like. Though it was more of a tutorial-style preview, I appreciated the overall cyberpunk-like style and frenetic action gameplay.
In many ways, Crymachina feels like it is diving into the Nier: Automata side of action RPGs. The movement is incredibly fast, with the game responding well to the player’s dashes and guards. I liked how I was able to zip around the battlefield with ease, while laying on my own swift attacks on foes.
The combat itself is fairly straightforward, too, letting the player use a mix of normal attacks, heavy ones, some skills, and ranged attacks. But with the impressive speed and rate at which you can string up these attacks, it helped the game to feel fun and just deep enough to play in a thrilling way that I didn’t experience at all with its similarly named predecessor.
Image via NIS America
It helps, too, that the game has some unique quirks to it, such as an awakening mode that the player is able to activate at a certain point in combat. This mode lets the robot girls go essentially Super Saiyan and they are much more powerful in this state, while also automatically dodging enemy attacks.
Speaking of dodging attacks, the boss battle that capped off the preview felt very Nier-like in its own right. There were familiar red glowing ranged attacks that the boss launched at me that I would have to jump over or dodge through before going all out with my attacks. It was a decently long enough fight that didn’t drag on too long or be too short, either.
It was a bit unfortunate that the preview only featured a tutorial segment of the game, even during the boss section, but I at least got a nice feel of how the combat works across the board. I see a lot of potential in its gameplay, much more than a couple of the other action-packed titles I previewed at Anime Expo.
Image via NIS America
And then there is the story side. This seems to be a heavily character-driven game with uniquely-written and well-designed machine girls that it follows. If Crymachina puts its story at the forefront in an interesting way, unlike Crystar, it could end up complementing the epic action gameplay well. If this ends up being the case, I would go so far as to say that it could very well be a sleeper hit release this year. I know that it is on my radar now after playing it.
Crymachina will release on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, and PC on October 24, 2023.
