CRYMACHINA

CRYMACHINA was provided by NIS America for review. Thank you!

Just like how I love vibrant colors, I have always loved flashy games. Games with over-the-top, flashy combat, especially anime JRPGs, have had a special place in my heart. CRYMACHINA has this in spades and is easily one of the more aesthetically pleasing games I have enjoyed in the last few months. Unfortunately, while it is fun, it can feel quite repetitive as time goes on, but even still, it had enough positives for me to recommend.

CRYMACHINA begins with the resurrection of a woman who died two thousand years ago. She is the chosen one and has to work with her team to fight and earn her status as a human. Once she does, she can take control of the ship and bring humanity back after extinction. The storytelling is a bit ridiculous at times, as it takes our moody protagonist and what she says with a straight face. I didn't take the story seriously, and because of that, I enjoyed it more. I also really like the moody, sci-fi visuals that the game incorporates.

The combat is fast-paced and feels very fluid. You can use two buttons to attack with your melee weapon, the shoulder buttons to use auxiliary attacks, and the left trigger to shoot with a gun. I almost never used the gun, but swapping between the button-mashing attacks to launch and use finishing moves, all while wrapped around a flashy aesthetic, was quite nice to play around with. It can feel quite repetitive later in the game as you are constantly fighting the same enemies, and there aren't really any combos to play around with, but it can be fun if you enjoy the core mechanics.

Luckily, regardless of how I feel about it, it runs really well on the Steam Deck.

CRYMACHINA - Steam Deck Performance

CRYMACHINA might be a flashy game, but it is definitely not an intensive one! Playing this on the Steam Deck is relatively easy and can be played without changing any of the settings, though I believe there are ways to push the game without going overboard.

Recommended Settings

Choosing recommended settings for CRYMACHINA was tough. Both of the builds perform admirably and don't drain too much battery. But, since it is better quality and less battery drain overall, I would recommend capping at 40hz/fps. With this, we can have high settings and a TDP limit of 7.

Framerate Build

Then, I wanted to push the framerate. While it could hit 60 FPS in most areas, there were enough that fell below and it didn't feel great. Due to this, and battery drain staying under 20W at all times, I set the refresh rate/framerate to 50 while keeping the settings at the default medium and TDP limit at 11.

Accessibility

CRYMACHINA has a decent amount of settings to change. You can change different sound bars, change camera rotation and distance, choose how fast messages and auto-scroll delays are, toggle vibration and cursor position, and change keybindings and brightness.

The game does support 16:10 resolutions, so no black bars and it has full controller and cloud save support.

Conclusion

CRYMACHINA is an entertaining romp through a sci-fi world with humanity long gone. The story is serviceable, though it does feel too much at times if you take it seriously. Even though it can feel repetitive, the combat is flashy and fluid, which I really liked. And with how great it runs on the Steam Deck, this is easily one of the better JRPGs to play on the go. It can be played without changing any settings, which makes it a Best on Deck game, but I would recommend a couple of tweaks to make the most out of it!

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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