An evil purple haired vixen has stolen four crystals, and now a goddess guardian must set off to get them back in this 2-D platformer.  Use the crystals’ powers to progress in this side scroller for Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

As the goddess, you can run and jump and use a special skill depending on what crystal you have equipped.  After each boss you’ll get a new crystal and a new skill you can switch to with the L and R buttons.  The skills include a powerful magic blast, being able to levitate for a while after a jump, creating your own platforms, and more.  You can also shoot a projectile to defeat enemies, and that also changes depending on what crystal you have equipped.  There’s a straight shot, a bouncing shot, three way shot, etc.  When you change crystals, you also change color.  I’m not sure if you are switching characters or just your color, though, the game doesn’t say.

Hidden in the levels are different items you can collect.  Heart pieces will give you an extra heart for your health meter if you find enough of them.  There are also stars you can use to upgrade your crystal powers, giving you more powerful shots or longer levitation times, etc.  You can also unlock pictures in the gallery.  About halfway through the platforming challenges get way too hard, in a cheap, not very fun annoying way.  And the checkpoints are placed a little too far apart for my liking, but at least you get unlimited tries.  But I still lost interest as the game isn’t very original gameplay-wise.

Kid Factor:

Crystal Goddess is rated M for Mature with an ESRB descriptor of Nudity.  Yeah the pictures you unlock in the gallery are topless, but you can change a setting in the options menu so that they are wearing bikini tops instead.  But your characters still have bouncing breast animations in the game no matter what setting you have it on, which looks weird since they are so pixelated and small.  Because of that and the high challenge level, this game is best for older players only.

Tags: Game Reviews