Also known by its full title Crown Trick: Requiem for Elements, Made by NExT Studios and published alongside Team17 (who you’d remember Blasphemous and Worms by.) and hoo-boy, this game feels like a grid-based and even more tactical Getsu Fuma Den: Undying Moon or Rogue Knight with the repetition of trying and failing to eke out progress bit by bit.
Crown Trick offers a fresh experience every time you delve into the Nightmare Dungeons. In this game, you play as Elle, a girl who traverses her nightmares to find and defeat the Duke waiting at the bottom of her nightmares, being guided by a living crown that helps her traverse the world inside her mind. Now with that starter out of the way, let’s roll with the review!
The gameplay’s solid and fun, with each movement counted as a turn except when you heal. The Break System is a welcome mechanic, giving you a hand up without making things too easy as the game provides you buffs for playing it smart and planning your attack well, combining the teleport mechanic with tactical and timed attacks to make the most of your romp through the stages this game offers, and with the roguelike mechanic giving you a new dungeon every time you jump into it, like how you never really see a nightmare the same way, there’s something new every time.
The break system is noticeable as a shield with numbers counting down with every attack, allowing you free hits on more notable enemies that have their own life bars as fights with them can get out of hand if not planned correctly. There’s also the Familiar mechanic, where you can have two skills of a defeated notable enemy and use it to your advantage, and having two different elements will save your hide more times than you think.
Sometimes, you’d wind up getting a blueprint which unlocks a weapon or item to use, but you’d have to spend gold to re-roll the selection, and even then, the chance you’d get what you just unlocked is left to chance to obtain. With quite a selection to unlock, the game’s replay value is underlined as some completionists would dive in again and again to unlock the really good stuff to unlock, while the regular players would probably take a bit longer to find them. Either way, it keeps the game fresh and every delve into the Nightmare Dungeons a fun run, win or lose.
Elle’s not alone in her journey, as she is joined by characters such as Barbara, who enhances the Elixir you pick up like number of uses and its efficacy, allowing you to heal more often and stronger. There’s also Stein who’s a banker, and investing on him allows you to earn more coins in the dungeons, and reap more rewards at the end should you fail and get booted back to the Hall of Reincarnation.
The music goes well the scenery like peanut butter and banana. The foreboding music just grows the deeper you delve into the Nightmare Dungeons as you jump from stage to stage, while the in-between areas provide a sense of relief as you recover and get your gears ready for the next step in your journey. If you like it and an official soundtrack comes out, go ahead and pick it up, for I know I will, and play it for the atmosphere and feel of it for maybe Halloween.
Overall, Crown Trick is a fun experience that you can enjoy playing through again and again once you get over the tricky learning curve and ingratiate yourself with the mechanics, you’ll have yourself a grand old time.
