Crisol: Theater of Idols Review

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Crisol: Theater of Idols is a first-person horror game developed by Madrid-based developer Vermilla Studios and published by Blumhouse Games. I honestly love to see games like this. Crisol takes ideas from the later Resident Evil games and Bioshock games and mixes them into something unique. Crisol is a very strong game for one with such a budget price. The value you get with this game is incredible. If you like the newer RE games (mainly RE7 and Village) or the Bioshock games, you should definitely give this one a try.

The game takes place in a twisted version of Spain known as Tormentosa, Hispania. The island is crawling with puppet-like statues. You play as the assassin Gabriel Escudero. Gabriel is given merged weapon from the sun god to combat the evil on the island. The game has quite a unique and very original setting and characters. The enemy designs in the game are good as well. All enemies have a creepy puppet-like appearance. The game has a good atmosphere to it.

The most unique part about Crisol’s gameplay is that you use your own blood to load your guns with ammo. Every time, you go to reload a weapon, the weapon drains the blood out of your character. Basically, your own health is your ammo. I really like the animation for reloading – the weapon literally latches onto your arm and drains the blood out of your character. This mechanic makes the game hard from the start (when you have little healing items), but as you upgrade your character and find more healing items, it all balances out. You also have a knife that loses durability rather fast. The knife is quite a strong weapon, but must be constantly sharpened in order to make it effective.

You can find corpses of humans and animals and absorb their blood to fuel your own blood supply. Just like a newer Resident Evil game, you’ll find money (Silver Bull) and be able to upgrade your weapons and attributes at a merchant. You also gain essence from enemies and find Crow Relics that will allow you to upgrade your skills. The game has its own collectibles to find – they give you a discount at the store based on how many you have collected. There are also a few minigames in the town to play.

The game takes place in the area surrounding a fair. It’s divided into chapters. It only has a few chapters, but they are very long! Just the introduction chapter took me a few hours to finish. The game breaks out into cinematics at key points to help highlight major events just like an RE game.

Your main enemy is a puppet creature. These enemies can be shot in all of their appendages to weaken them in different ways. You can blast off their heads, arms and legs and this will change the way they move. Blasting off the head will just make them a headless body that will still move toward you the same way. You can blast off their weapon arm to disarm them or destroy a leg to make their torso crawl along the ground. Even destroying their bodies will make their legs get up to try to kick you to death.

The enemies are unique, but they aren’t all that fun to fight. These enemies feel super tough from the very beginning. Just the first run-in with a puppet felt overwhelming for a first enemy. You only start out with around six bullets and enemies take around five (or more) to kill. Fail to shoot that enemy precisely and you’ll be killed and forced to watch a long unskippable cutscene again. The game has a lot of problems like this that could be easily ironed out. I also had problems with bullets going right through enemies at times.

Just like any other horror game, the game gets easier as you level up more. As you level up your health, you’ll have plenty of health to use to create bullets and you’ll also be able to carry more health items as you upgrade your character. Later in the game, you are chased by a stalker type of enemy, sort of like Nemesis from RE3 or Mr. X from Resident Evil 2 remake. This game’s stalker looks menacing, but is very weak when you notice how easily you can avoid it. You can literally step into a low space where it can’t follow and it will simply forget about you.

The game has its fair share of puzzles. Some of them are simple and some are more complicated. The puzzles aren’t always obvious, but the clue is often in plain sight for you. Deciphering the clue into a solution can be difficult at times though. There were a number of puzzles that I simply did not understand and had to consult online help for.

Despite its flaws, Crisol: Theater of Idols is a very solid game. It has more polish than your usual budget game, but it still just doesn’t feel as good as the games it takes inspiration from. It’s definitely a game that fans of RE and Bioshock should try though. If I were to rate this game based on value alone, it would get around a 9/10 since it definitely has the feel of a triple AAA game for such a great price!

The Good:
+ So much value in this game for the asking price!
+ It’s like a mix of RE and Bioshock
+ Really good presentation
+ Overall good atmosphere

The Bad:
- The overall combat isn’t all that fun
- The hit detection feels off at times when shooting
- Such a boring stalker enemy
- Balancing issues for early game