Video Game / Crystal Story

Crystal Story is a series of Freeware Adobe Flash games, with commercial Updated ReReleases, created by Emmanuel Salva Cruz.

The gameplay is of an old-school Eastern RPG — you control a party of four and fight monsters in a turn-based style. The story follows the members of Mercenary Inc. and their adventures.

In the first Crystal Story, the group is approached by a man named Hiro with a rather self-centered task — find and capture the witch Rita, and allow him to take all the credit for it. Excited that they merely got a job, the party heads out to Evil Cave to carry it out. In 2020, it received a Video Game Remake under the name, Crystal Story: The Hero and the Evil Witch.

In Crystal Story II, a dragon falls from the sky like a meteor. A girl spots him, and when they meet, she learns that he has a task to carry out — find the Oracle to avert an impending disaster. They set off, and soon uncover a more sinister plot at hand. It's set to get a remake.

Crystal Story can be played here. Crystal Story II can be played here. Both games are collected in a HD Updated Re Release purchasable on Steam, under the name, Crystal Story II.

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The Crystal Story games provide examples of:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: In the first game, you can keep going into 40s at the very least, when it's possible to beat final boss in early 20s (for reference, with all the extra AP from quests, this should be around the levels you learn class' final skills if you haven't been multi classing). Averted in the Remake, however, as the level cap there is 30 (and it's built around the true endgame content.)
• Accidental Misnaming: If you talk to Mari at Dustop in the second game, she calls D "Mr. Meteor" after the latter's entry into the game world. D then proceeds to say his actual name, whatever you set it to, upsetting Mari in the process.
• Always Accurate Attack: Basically any magic skill, especially in the second game. In other words, you can leave Blind Status uncured on your magic casters as long as you don't have them use physical skills.
• An Ice Person: Reuben uses ice-based attacks. This carries over to the sequel when he joins D's party.
• Antidote Effect: The first game has cure potions for each status ailment, and rarer potions to cure status ailments and (de)buffs. The sequel averts this, as the antidote (and the area-of-effect version, Panacea) cure any negative effects.
• Asleep for Days: In the sequel, D ends up falling asleep for 3 days after the team returns to Port Breeze. He says that his energy was drained after closing the Dargons' portal with the elemental crystals.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Some of the crafted weapons in the sequel can be random and may not give you what you need when (random buff/nerf weapons), or very situational. Unlike the more basic weapons, the stat increases from these are generally not as high.
  • Among the situational weapons may include Last Stand weapons, which triple the user's dealt damage but makes them a Glass Cannon to the extreme!
  • Subverted with quite a few weapon effects, as they can be used practically by some. These include: "Buff plus", if you have a dedicated buff caster; "Nerf Plus" the same but with any bad effects, as stat debuffs prove useful agaist bosses despite their resistance to it; possibly "Guard Plus" (Guard skill now reflects some damage with improved defense), and Vampiric, which causes the user to drain a small percentage of HP everytime they deal damage.
• Apologetic Attacker: Mari in the second game.
• Auto-Save: In the first game, it happens whenever the party returns to town.

• Blood Knight: Phoebe in the first game. Nearly everything she says involves smashing something or wanting to smash something.
• Blow You Away: As well as lightning skills, Kaeli can learn a few tornado-related attacks. On top of that, wind is the element for lightning attacks anyway.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: The second game has a type of chestplate that simply adds to the wearer's max HP, and can be upgraded with scrap metal for an increased effect, like most equipment.
• Boom, Headshot!: One of Mari's dialogue lines reserved for using her Limit Break.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Most items are rather plentiful and quite useful. These include HP and MP healing potions, cure potions to clear negative effects, and feathers to revive fallen allies, with the upshot that they lose ALL buffs (and spend time recovering in the sequel).
  • Each character in the sequel has access to weapons that specialize in increasing one stat, out of physical strength (ATK), magical ability (MAG), or post-action recovery speed (SPD). As well, there are Jack of All Stats weapons that increase the above three at the same rate, but not as much as the specialized ones.
• Boss Corridor:
  • In the Flash version of the first game, every 5th floor of the Evil Cave is this, with a portal back to Smalltown to heal up, upgrade equips, etc. Sidequest dungeons and random dungeons have 2 floors, the second of which is this; however, Level Scaling foes (including the bosses) infest these dungeons and you lack the luxury of said portal.
  • In the sequel, it appears as floor 2 of the abyss, the entire Rift dungeon, and floor 3 of Doom Lair.
• Boss Rush: The second game has a "Battle Arena" mode accessible from any of the five towns. In this, you can choose to fight multiple sidequest bosses at once, or multiple waves of specific types of normal enemies. When you unlock Hard Mode, you can challenge the more difficult versions of these rushes as well!
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Lina in the second game sometimes says "This game needs a harder difficulty!" as a Victory Quote.
• Casanova Wannabe: Reuben will hit on just about any woman he crosses, such as Belle, the woman who lost their cat in the first game.
• Catching Some Z's: Multiple, different in each game:
  • In the Flash version of the first game, it relates to the Inn:
    • The icon for the inn, where the party sleeps, is white Zs, descending from left to right.
    • Sleeping in the inn has the animation of white Zs being written out from left to right, twice.
  • The second game has it as the icon for the "Sleep" condition.
• Character Customization: You have a great amount of control as to what roles you want each character to play. There are some restrictions, like some characters only have access to some of the trees or their first class is pre-selected, but otherwise you have multiple choices as to who you want to be the physical attacker, magic user, and so on.
• Character Name Limits: The Hello, [Insert Name Here] feature applies to all main party members in the second game, but names are limited to 8 characters in length.
• Class and Level System: Each tree is named after an archetypal character class, like Fighter, Rogue, and Mage. Multiclassing is possible in the first game, and required in the second game.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: In the first game, weapons that are geared towards magic have a blue aura, while those geared towards physical have a red one.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: In the first game, text color indicates equipment tier. White is average, green is Greater, purple is Epic, and orange is Legendary. However, Legendary equipment, excluding rings and pendants, look way different from even Epic equips of the same type.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Downplayed:
  • Most bosses in both games are at least 50% resistant to debuffs (Stat X Break/Down) and 75%+ resistant to all status ailments (stun, silence, etc.) except poison. However, it is rare for them to be immune to non-stat-related ailments and impossible for regular stat debuffs.
  • That being said, against tougher bosses, stat debuffs tend to be necessary for survival.
  • The newer superbosses in Crystal Story II's Updated Re Release, and Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch, however, plays this straight (at least in regards to Stun, simply because they can be inflicted often by the Barrage skill), which would otherwise prevent them from being a legitimately difficult challenge
• Critical Status Buff: Played in two ways in the sequel:
  • One of the equip types that plays this is any weapon with the "Last Stand" effect on it. If the user's health is 25% or less (yet obviously still above 0), his/her ATK and MAG stats are tripled for as long as the low-health condition lasts.
  • The other such equip type is any of 10 ball-and-chain-shaped "Last X" armors. These have the same low-health trigger as above, but they provide standard stat buffs (and/or Regen) whose duration is independent of how long the wearer has low health.
  • There's one "Last X" armor each for attack (ATK), magic (MAG), Physical defense (DEF), (elemental) Magic defense (MAG), post-action recovery, well, speed (SPD), and Regen (restores health over time). Then there's "Last Strength", which combines the ATK and DEF buffs, "Last Wisdom", which combines the MAG and MDEF buffs, and "Last Agility" which combines the SPD buff and Regen status. Finally, "Last All", which gives the wearer all six of the aforementioned buffs, but is very rare!
  • Inverted with the feather-shaped "Start" armors, which give the wearer specific buffs at the start of every battle. There's a "Start X" counterpart for the aforementioned "Last X" armors, including a "Start All", which is also very rare. However, this is easily better than a "Last All" because you don't need to worry about buffs in most battles if all four party members have one!
• Defeat Means Friendship: Two examples, both in Crystal Story II:
  • After fighting the party at Orange Pass, Kaz joins them at Dustop after the Bandit Leader is defeated.
  • Once Reuben is defeated, one-on-one style, he temporarily joins the party until Lina is rescued.
• Defend Command: The second game introduces the "Guard" skill for the Guardian class. At a cost of 2 MP (0 in the Updated Re Release), it redirects the next (single-target) attack to the user and halves their received damage. A weapon effect allows this to double as a partial Attack Reflector, too!
• Degraded Boss: The Gargantuan that is fought as the boss of the first area later reappears as a regular enemy, and this isn't even getting to it's different, more powerful variants.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Phoebe uses earth attacks. Like Reuben's example above, she has earth spells available when she joins D's party in the sequel.
• Dual Boss: Multiple examples in the second game's Updated Re Release:
  • Once you beat the boss sidequests in any town, you get to fight those three bosses all at once. After chapter 5, you can beat the Hard mode versions of these battles.
  • In the main story, Z and Witch Rita fight you alongside each other. Z isn't at full power yet, either!
• Dual Wielding: In the second game, Lina dual wields daggers. Also, Mari has dual pistols.
• Duel Boss: Two examples in the second game:
  • The boss version of the Gargantuan appears at the end of the Small Forest, and is weak to fire; convenient as your only skill yet is Fire Attack.
  • Reuben appears as a boss at the end of D's Solo Sequence, and shortly joins the party afterward.
• Embedded Precursor: The Steam version of the sequel comes with a copy of the original, accessed by clicking "Crystal Story" in the main menu.
• Escape Battle Technique:
  • In the Flash version of the first game, the Thief class allows any character to learn "Flee" to escape combat. However, it has a chance of failure in normal battles, and never works against bosses!
  • In Crystal Story: The Hero and the Evil Witch, Flee is a spell on a Disc.
• Equipment Spoiler: In the second game, when you reach Smalltown for the first time, the Alchemy shop displays pistols and scythes, when neither D nor Lina use such weapons.
• Expy: Kaz is a purple-skinned demon armed with a scythe, initially presented as a bad guy, much like Chrono Trigger's Magus.
• Flavor Text:
  • First game's Flash Version:
    • Metal Helm:
      A helmet made of unknown metal.
    • Leather Helm:
      A very light headgear
  • Crystal Story: The Hero and the Evil Witch:
    • Fishing Rod:
      A wooden fishing rod.
    • Mega Shark:
      Provides a health dose of... DAMAGE!
    • Venom:
      A bottled poisonous venom.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The three out of four of party members in Crystal Story II starts with one pre-selected class of these, with D as the fighter (Slayer), Lina as the thief (Thief), and Mari as the mage (Elementalist). Later on, Kaz fills the fighter role more due to his overall stat gain favoring ATK moreso than D, while the latter's stat gains tend to be a Jack of All Stats.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: The party travels to the Abyss to defeat the Dargon King. Doom Lair has a portal back to this dimension at the end, and The Updated Re Release has the party return to the Abyss to defeat Z.
• Fishing Minigame:
  • Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch: The appropriate rod is needed for each dock, casting the line is automatic, but a button press is needed to start reeling a catch in, and tapping the button is needed to keep a marker inside a range inside a bar where the marker's position slowly moves out of the range.
  • Crystal Story II has a similar minigame, but unlilke the remake of the first game above, casting requires pressing the button or clicking, with a double chance for rare catch if the line is casted with the maximum possible distance. The areas where you can fish only needs to be reached after certain parts of the game, one for each chapter.
• Flunky Boss: Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch: has bosses occasionally summon an enemy in mid-battle. And that's not getting to the part where the True Final Boss summons previous bosses that can in turn summon regular enemies! (Though the summoned bosses at least don't have to be killed more than once due to only having one life each.)
• Game Over: In Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch, losing a battle gives a game over screen and then the Start Screen.
• Giant Enemy Crab: In the first game, the boss of the quest to rescue a missing cat, fully formed from Memetic Mutation, being referenced after Tristam notifies the party about it:
  Phoebe: Attack its weakpoint for massive damage!!!!!!
  Reuben: OK! That is really lame.
• Girlish Pigtails: Mari in Crystal Story II has these, and she appears to be the youngest-looking member of the party.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: Rock and Bop, the minions of Witch Rita, are each fought twice in both games. And yet, they are rather incompetent and don't prove very difficult in battle.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: While the job in Crystal Story didn't go entirely as planned, Hiro still takes all the credit as everyone agreed to, and the involvement of Tristam's party seems to never have been mentioned. This is carried over to the sequel.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Phoebe and Reuben will join for a bit during the second game.
• The Gunslinger: Mari in the second game uses pistols as her weapons.
• Harder Than Hard: In the Flash version, the Zombie Defense Mini-Game has an Expert mode, and it is FAST! Fortunately, beating it nets you one of the rarest equips in the game!
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: In the second game, you can change the four main party members' names, and rename them later when you reach Port Breeze. However, a bug exists in a few of the additional cutscenes in the Updated Re Release that causes a party member's default name to be used instead of their player-assigned name.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Tristam and D both use swords as their weapons and are the main characters of the first and second games respectively.
• Ice Magic Is Water: The second game's ice spells are categorized under the "water" element, while they're correctly referred to as ice in the first.
  • However, the second game AoE ice attacks are referred to as "Blizzard", which is at least closer.
• Informed Equipment: Each party member can be equipped with a helmet, a body armor, and a ring or pendant. In the sequel, you can give each of your party members any arrangement of equips as long as they don't conflict with each other. And yet, neither game shows the equipment on anyone in battle, be it armor or anyone's upgraded weapons.
• Item Crafting: Every town in the sequel has an alchemy shop that serves to provide this. Specifically, you can create status-inducing bombs, weapons that aren't found anywhere else in the game, and area-of-effect healing items. The latter aren't flashy, yet they're useful throughout the game.
  • The sequel's Updated Re Release adds in the ability to craft armors, though many of them are lategame/postgame as they require lategame materials like sapphires.
• Joke Item: The "Number One Card in the Card Battle Mini-Game. It has only 1 each of offense and defense,the lowest in the game!
• King Mook: A lot of sidequest bosses are pretty much larger (and sometimes altered in appearance or colors) versions of regular enemies. Such as King Slime and Queen Slime to the slimes, Skeleton King to the various skeleton enemies, etc...
• Lampshade Hanging: Kaz may rarely responds to D's "Not this again!" by saying that he should stop to bump into enemies, which is how battles are initiated in first place.
• Leaked Experience: The second game gives skill points to all party members after each battle, even if they haven't yet joined, and in one of Lina's cases, rejoined.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: Happens in the second game when the party is at Crystalia. Mari and Kaz go shopping, D is hired in a side quest, and Lina gets kidnapped by Rita.
• Level-Map Display: Both games have mini maps at corners of the screen, when in dungeons.
• Level-Up Fill-Up:
  • Averted in the original first game with the extra HP and MP fills in automatically, but played straight in The Hero and the Evil Witch, as a level up will automatically restore HP and MP.
  • Crystal Story II zig-zags this, with the fill-ups only applying to increased HP and MP from class skill trees, but not when equipping equipment and/or using stat up items.
• Limit Break: In the second game, your characters get up to three super-strong "weapon skills" each. These are accessed by upgrading a character's weapon to tier II or higher (example: Evoblade II) and pressing the "Charge" button in battle. These can be charged up to three times if the caster's weapon is upgraded enough, and replace the standard attack when available. However, these can only be used once per battle, no matter what tier of weapon skill is used.
• Man Behind the Man: Z, guy who appears in a cutscene after finishing Doom Lair, seems to be behind Rita trying to summon Dargons. He's the new final boss in the Updated Re-release.
• Marathon Level: Multiple:
  • The desert stage between Dustop and the Great Tomb in the sequel can get pretty long, especially in the middle of Chapter 2 when you still don't have a lot of MP yet and barely have access to area-of-effect skills.
  • The Abandoned Sewer, one of the bonus dungeons in the same game, has two huge floors, and thanks to Randomly Generated Levels, you're likely to completely navigate both floors before reaching the Spider King boss, who is luckily not too bad. This stage deserves special mention because the Updated Re Release Nerfs it down to one floor.
• Mini-Game: The first game had Zombie Defense, a Bejeweled-style game. The sequel retains that and adds a Fishing Minigame, Mercenary Defense, and snowboarding as well. The Updated Re-release adds a Card Battle minigame as well.
• Multi Shot: One of Kaeli's advanced skills. At higher levels it can one-shot a whole encounter of four enemies.
• Nerf: Crystal Story II and it's Updated Re Release did this a few times:
  • A patch did this to Crystal Story II's armors. To prevent Min-Maxing, characters can't equip multiple items that add to the same stat. This has obvious effects (no equipping multiple Boots, for example) and not-so-obvious effects (Circlets can't be equipped with Gauntlets , Amulets, or Boots, as Circlets boost all the stats the other three do). The full armors, which defend against physical and magic attacks, are exempt from this on all or most versions of Crystal Story II on the web (making it possible to absorb most damage with three of these at max level on any character), but the Updated Re Release fixes this, too.
  • As outlined above, the Updated Re Release does this to one of the optional dungeons, cutting it down to one floor.
• No Indoor Voice: Phoebe in the second game.
• Nostalgia Level: In the sequel, you visit Evil Cave and Water Ruins from the first game briefly.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • At the start of Crystal Story II, D can kill slimes in the Small Forest, in one hit. They're just that weak.
  • Some of the strong enemy attacks can feel like this when you're underleveled or don't have enough max HP, particularly the Wake-Up Call Boss in the end of the first chapter in Crystal Story II.
• One-Letter Name: The default name of the main character in the second game is "D". Also "Z", who pops up in a cutscene at postgame, or is the Final Boss of the Updated Re Release's new chapter.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Speed in the second game. Unlike in the first game, where it just determines turn order, in the sequel it determines how often you attack. It can reach a point where your characters can attack two or three times before your enemies can act.
• Percussive Maintenance: Phoebe suggests doing this to Hiro after Rita knocks him out.
• Percent Damage Attack: Certain strong bosses in the second game have a skill called Judgement in their secondary forms. This attack hits your entire party, damaging everyone by 95% of their health, and it removes all stat buffs. This can turn into an Attack Backfire for said bosses if you have Last (Buff) equips, since the low HP triggers said buffs. This skill also returns in Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch, but without the buff dispelling effect.
• Playing with Fire: Both Tristam in the first game and D in the second game can use fire-based attacks.
• Post-End Game Content:
  • Both games have new quests and areas that open up when you beat the final boss, and in the second game you also gain access to Hard Mode versions of the areas and harder Wanted quests, while keeping progress.
  • The second game's Steam version reupload also has Chapter 6, added as an expansion of the story.
  • Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch doesn't have the additional 25 floors on the Evil Cave unlike the original, but adds a dungeon called the "Evil Tower".
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: The trope image, in fact, showing Tristam as a player character in the first game and as a NPC in the second.
• Randomly Generated Levels: Most floors of the Evil Cave (excluding bosses every 5th floor) are generated randomly each time you load the game! The same applies for the sequel's dungeons, except only a very few important bosses have preset corridors leading up to them!
• Rebellious Princess: It's implied that Lina is the missing younger daughter of the king of Crystalia, having run away from home with her older sister's somewhat reluctant blessing to go on adventures.
• Redemption Demotion: When you fight Kaz, he has over 1000 HP and can unleash all sorts of skills like poisoning you. When he joins your party later on, he has much less HP, and might not have all his skills he had as a boss, since you can choose which classes he takes. (On the plus side, that means he can and will also gain new ones.)
• Ring of Power: Rings increase various stats and come in four colour-coded levels.
• Running Gag: Tristam and Reuben can't seem to remember the inn keeper is Kaeli's sister in the first game, despite Kaeli telling them every day. Also in quests: most of them were about finding a cat who escaped in random dungeons, or stopping Koohii, a thief who disappeared at each encounter.
• Save-Game Limits: The first game and second game's original version has two save slots and an Auto-Save slot. The Updated Re Release of the second game and the remake of the first game expands this to five save slots along with the Auto-Save slot.
• Shock and Awe: Kaeli uses lightning-related skills... which use Wind as elemental.
  • Also, Kaz's Hurricane calls down a barrage of thunderbolts. Several classes, particularly Elementalists, also get access to lightning attacks.
• Shout-Out: Multiple:
  • Also in the first game, the most powerful ring (which increases pretty much every stat) is named the One Ring.
  • Another example in the first game is that the playable party is named after the party members from Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.
  • RS items which are one-time use discs that allow to use attacks.
  • During one Limit Break Kaz will say "Just according to plan!".
  • The description of the mission where you have to defeat the Bat King boss is: "It's simple: we kill the Bat-King", and it's signed Mr. J.
  • A trio of bosses you can fight in the Arena is named "Earth, Wind & Fire" after the elements they are based on.
  • During the 4th chapter when Rita kidnapped Lina, when Rita confronted and told that she kidnapped the wrong person she said she didn't make mistake, "just a happy little accident".
  • One of Phoebe's possible in-combat / Victory Quotes in the second game is "Hammer Time!"
  • In the sequel's Tunnel dungeon, and later dungeons with the same theme, there is an Easter Egg in which "Tunnel Snakes Rule" will appear on the wall as graffiti written in red paint or blood.
• Skill Scores and Perks: Learning new abilities works this way. In the first game, each character has access to three skill trees, and you invest ability points in them. After certain amounts of points spent, you gain new abilities. In the second game, this expands to increasing stats as well.
• Solo Sequence: D gets a short one after splitting from the party in Crystalia, before running into Phoebe again.
  • The very first town allows for one near the beginning, as Lina leaves briefly and rejoins when you enter the Evil Cave. However, you can perform a bit more exploration and combat before doing so.
• Status Effects: Affects a unit's "perfornamce" in battle:
  • Poison: The "Poison" status effect. Damages the unit on their turn (first game) or over time (second game).
  • Stun: The "Paralyzed" status effect. Unit cannot move or act until status wears off or is cured.
  • Silence: The "Silence" status effect. Unit cannot use skills except Attack or a Limit Break.
  • Confuse: The "Confuse" status effect. Unit attacks any target on the field, but only with Attack (second game only).
  • Sleep: The "Sleeping" status effect. Unit cannot move or act, but can be awoken via curing, time, or getting hit with a physical attack (in the first game), or any attack in the second.
  • Darkness/Blind: The "Blindness" status effect. Accuracy of unit's physical attacks is greatly reduced.
  • Stone: The "Petrified" status effect. Unit cannot move or act; status can be cured but does not wear off over time (second game only).
• Status Buff: Aside from the self-explanatory Attack Up, Defense Up, Magic Up, Magic Defense Up, and Speed Up, which raises the stat it is named after, there's...
  • Evade Up: Increases evasion against physical attacks.
  • Regen: The "Gradual Regeneration" status buff. Heals the unit on their turn (first game) or over time (second game).
  • Auto Life: The "Auto Revive" status buff. Unit will revive immediately upon death, though buffs are still lost.

• Status-Buff Dispel:
  • A variant in the first game: One of the skills dispels all effects, positive and negative, and can be used on players or enemies. A stronger version exists that removes all effects from everyone on the field!
  • The sequel has a two boss-only skills that do this, although they only affect stat buffs and not other positive effects such as Regen. One is called Debuff, which inflicts a not-inconsiderable amount of damage to one hero while removing said buffs. the second is Judgement, which is wielded only by particularly strong/important bosses in their secondary forms. It hits for around 95 percent of the entire party's health as well as removing their buffs. Fortunately, this low health can trigger a Critical Status Buff on all heroes that have "Last X" armor and/or "Last Resort" weaponry.
• Super Move Portrait Attack: Each main party member in the second game has one when performing a Limit Break, complete with a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner!
• Theme Naming: Amusing themes for some area names in the sequel abound, like "Small Forest" and "Medium Forest", and "Great Tomb" and "Okay Tomb". Also, despite its name, the Light Tower is a pretty dark place.
• Time Skip: Two years have passed between the two games, as pointed out in the cutscene before Aurora Island.
• Too Awesome to Use: Several items in the second game are this, none of which can be purchased at the shops (and would be super expensive if you could).
  • The Heal Potion V is found in the Sunken Ruins bonus dungeon and restores 100% of the target ally's HP.
    • Note that it can become even more so if crafted into a Tonic V.
  • Full revives revive any fallen ally and restore 100% of their HP, but are only found in a few late-game dungeon chests.
  • The rare fish from the Fishing Minigame can be this. The Mega Shark (buffs ATK, MAG, and SPD), and Angel Fish (gives auto revive status) are the item forms of buff skills. This means that they are all but outclassed once you get said skills unless you need to recover as fast as possible after buffing. As for the other rare fish...
    • The Carp Dime buffs DEF, MDEF, and gives Regen.
    • The Super Fish restores 100% of HP and MP like the Elixir II.
    • The Princess Jelly, an offensive item, casts the status ailments Blind, Poison, and Stun.
  • The top example of this trope in Crystal Story II has to be the Elixir Brew II. It restores all of the HP and MP of your entire party! The downside is, it's only received by completing a late monster defense Mini-Game, which can't be played again.
    • The Updated Re Release adds at least one more of these in a dungeon chest.
    • The Elixir Brew I also qualifies because, even though it's only half as powerful, it's still very rare!
• Turns Red: For many of the bosses, emptying their HP the first time will replace their picture with an angrier one and make them more ferocious. For example:
  • The Giant Enemy Crab in the first game, flips upside-down and gains the Crab Claw attack that hits the whole party at once. Though in the second game, this is also zig-zagged with Clipped-Wing Angel, as the boss loses status resistances and has lower max HP in the second form.
  • The King Slime in the first game's Flash version, gets bigger, and immediately casts "Earth" spell on it's next turn.
  • Rock's sprite changes to him having his mouth wide open as if he's roaring, and Bop's helmet falls down.
  • The Final Boss of Crystal Story II and Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch have three lives instead of the usual two, so they get to turn red twice. Both of them also casts Judgement in the final phase.
  • In Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch, Rita 'literally turns red' and also bigger with each life depleted.
• Victory Quote: Several in the second game, such as:
  • D yells "Victory!" when he wins a battle.
  • Two of Lina's victory quotes are Badass Boasts: "I'll become the best thief in the world!" and "This game needs a harder difficulty!"
  • Mari exclaims "Good job, everyone!" occasionally, or sometimes says instead "I'm sorry.."
  • Kaz has "Huh? That's all you had?", "I was just getting started.", and "Didn't really put much of a fight."
• Video Game Stealing: Lina gets the ability to steal items and equips as one of her first skills, as her starting class is Thief I. The other main characters can learn this skill as well if you choose the Thief class for them, and Reuben has it as well. There's also a skill that does this while damaging the target. On top of it all, there's a rare equip that increases the success rate of steals, alongside receiving rare items from foes and fleeing combat.
• Visible Silence: D has "..." when Lina challenges him on not knowing what an Oracle looks like, at the cutscene that starts the Medium Forest.
• "Wanted!" Poster: In both games:
  • Rita the evil witch, gets one in the first game, advertising the 100,000 G reward, with a picture of her, as seen in the Flash version's Start Screen, and in The Hero and the Evil Witch when Hiro brings it to Mercenary Inc.'s attention.
  • In the second game, Lina has pierced one with her dagger in the opening.
• Weapon Twirling: Mari's victory animation has her twirl her two pistols.
• You Can't Go Home Again: In Crystal Story II, D mentions that the portal he took was a one-way trip; once he went through it, he could never return to his world.

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