Crisol: Theater of Idols

The game is -so- close to being decent it's a shame. A gorgeous looking Bioshock-like game that seems to have learned all of the wrong lessons from older titles. The combat is abysmal, even with leveled up weapons, you're stuck mostly using a frankly awful pistol most of the time, which not only feels weak, but enemies don't really react to shots. It's either you break their head plate, or you kill them, otherwise, you might as well be painting dots on the enemies. You're slow, and there's really no getting around it, the majority of the time you're just going to be wandering around at a snail's pace, having missed a turn, then having to spend 20 minutes backtracking to where you might have missed a door. Then there's the story, the actual plot and themes and aesthetic? Fantastic, unfortunately you're stopped every 10 minutes with a radio call that prevents you from doing anything while your character argues over the phone with a girl that feels like she isn't even from this game, let alone the century the game takes place in.

I’m really sorry to give Crisol: Theater of Idols a (qualified) thumbs-down, especially since [b]it’s so evident from the game’s visuals in particular that the developers put a lot of love and effort into it[/b]. But I keep seeing people compare this game to [i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/7670]Bioshock[/url][/i], and I feel I need to warn you that [b]if that’s what you’re looking for (or if you expect something even more imsim-y), you’re in for a bit of a disappointment[/b]. The [i]Bioshock[/i] comparison is really only skin-deep, as Crisol features a similar visual style (albeit with a strong [i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/774361]Blasphemous[/url][/i] ‘Spanish Catholicism’ theme) as well as some of its storytelling conceits, such as ghostly apparitions staging scenes from the past for you to witness. [b]In gameplay terms, Crisol is much more limited[/b], though, the more apt comparison probably being first-person survival horror games such as [i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574260]My Friendly Neighborhood[/url][/i]—which, honestly, is probably the better choice if you’re specifically looking for imsim-adjacent survival horror games. Similar to [i]My Friendly Neighborhood[/i], Crisol deliberately limits your movement options (no scaling or jumping chest-high obstacles unless they're painted yellow), but Crisol also feels much more linear, with most of its levels being labyrinths of medium-width hallways. This, in turn, leads to [b]much of the combat feeling like you’re playing a light gun game[/b], as you take pot shots at enemies slowly shambling towards you. Movement or clever positioning is almost completely unnecessary in these combat scenarios. And besides, you usually don’t have enough space for fancy manoeuvring, anyway. The fact that [b]you use your own health as ammunition[/b] may sound like an interesting gameplay idea, as you’d need to balance your health against your ammo usage. But since most combat situations are so static, [b]it really just feels like a momentary war of attrition[/b], with the next convenient healing opportunity usually just around the corner. On the flipside, Crisol also features [b]segments where you need to hide from or outrun an invincible boss monster[/b]. I get that this is kind of a staple of the survival horror genre, but [b]it feels really out of place in this game[/b]. Some survival horror games, like [i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2101960]Cronos: [strike]The Hands of Fate[/strike]The New Dawn[/url][/i], build a very deliberate gameplay feel by teaching you that you can reliably damage all enemies AND bosses with proper timing and resource usage. Others, like the [i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/883710]Resident Evil 2[/url][/i] remake, entice you to avoid confrontations wherever possible by teaching you that your ability to damage even standard enemies is highly unreliable at best, which meshes well with the idea of an invincible boss monster. Meanwhile, [b]Crisol gives you lots of powerful weapons with plenty of ammo and teaches you that killing standard enemies is pretty much the way to go[/b] (as you can reliably damage them, they don’t respawn and the narrow level design makes avoiding them impractical at best); [b]but it also wants you to play hide and seek with a boss monster that’s arbitrarily invincible[/b] (despite being shown to take damage from ordinary weapons in its introductory cutscene), [b]which makes these segments feel completely forced[/b]. They’re also often frustrating, like when you’re trying to solve an environmental puzzle and you have to regularly take time-outs to kite the boss monster away from the puzzle area so you have enough time to finish the necessary animations. It’s the same sudden shift in dynamic that made me bounce off [i][url= https://store.steampowered.com/app/2208350]Total Chaos[/url][/i], despite invincible boss monsters featuring not nearly as prominently in that game as they do in Crisol. If you don’t mind Crisol being not much of an immersive sim (or an imsim-adjacent shooter like [i]Bioshock[/i]), and if you don’t mind its [b]odd mix of pretty trivial standard enemies and arbitrarily overpowered boss monsters[/b], you might still enjoy this game, though strictly as a survival horror experience.