Crescent Pale Mist

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Crescent Pale Mist is a 2.5D hack-and-slash, platforming game by Doujin developer ClassiC Shikoukairu that's noted for its fierce hack-and-slash gameplay, quality visuals, and for being really hard. Hopefully things won't become as brutal once the player learns to utilize Yunou's abilities she's got up her detached sleeves.

Players play the role of Yunou, a magician who is capable of using a deadly and forbidden form of magic known as Pale Mist, and sets out to seek the source of the Pale Mist that's seeping throughout the country of Gasyukal and put an end to it. Although it's a quest that's easier said than done considering the many dangerous monsters and her former comrades she will confront along the way.

Unlike most doujin action-platformers, the player is not limited to a single 2D plane as Yunou can jump from one plane to another and traverse to other areas (although there are times where you can't go back at all). Yunou dispatch foes with her "blade" for close-ranged attacks, cast powerful magic like Rowanveld, and she carries a bottomless supply of throwing knives for good measure. Along the way, Yunou can find items and artifacts scattered throughout Gasyukal to enhance her abilites, provide hints towards her treasure-hunting, and unlock extra difficulties and other features.

The game was first released in Japan for Windows PC on March 30th, 2006. Rockin' Android later obtained publishing rights to localize the game in English and it was released as a downloadable game for Play Station 3 via Playstation Network on November 9, 2010 with psuedo-High Definition visuals, redrawn character art, online leaderboards, PlayStation Network Trophies, and a few gameplay tweeks. As of late, there has been no announcements from Rockin' Android themselves to port the game onto other platforms, although during an interview with Neocrisis, Shikou has stated that he wishes to see the game released through Xbox Live.

The doujin circle's website can be viewed here (Japanese) and Rockin' Android's English PlayStation 3 homepage for Crescent Pale Mist can be viewed here.

Tropes used in Crescent Pale Mist include:

• One Hundred Percent Completion: With all those lost items and artifacts laying around scattered all over to help Yunou tackle some of the game's biggest adversaries, it'll be your sacred right to find them all.
• 2½D: Yunou can jump between different parallels to explore different areas. The reason for the developer making Crescent Pale Mist a 2.5D game oppose a 2D one felt that a straight 2D game would restrict the heroine's agility.
• And Your Reward Is Edible: Some of items and artifacts are food.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Narju in Chapter 2 and Chapter 6.
• An Ice Person: Narju uses ice-elemental magic.
• The Archmage: Kurow, as he's hellbent on unlock the secrets The Forbidden, even it means sacrificing the country's inhabitants to do so.
• Art Shift, Animesque: The character art was originally given a traditional hand-drawn artstyle in the original PC version. Keiko Sakurai, the art director and the artist who handled the character art of Rockin' Android's English Play Station 3 version, redrawn all the characters with an Anime/Manga makeover.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Three of the game's boss will make Yunou look like an ant in comparison.
• Ax Crazy: Narju. She harbors great jealousy and hatred against Yunou and her ability to control Pale Mist, and she would go through great lengths to personally see Yunou killed. She even sacrificed Elshiria and free Gasyukal from it's imprisonment in an attempt to kill her.
  • Her notions of being a hateful sociopath was expressed even further in Rockin' Android's version of the game thanks to the new character portraits. Bonus points to Keiko for giving Narju a Slasher Smile.

Narju: "Being dead tends to limit your travel options!" Yunou: "I'll tear that twisted smile from your face!"

• Background Boss: Gasyukal, the game's Big Bad and Final Boss. It also doubles as Sequential Boss considering you have face Elshiria and Narju prior to Gasyukal. There's also the matter of destroying the magic orbs surrounding it, its hands, horns, and the Power Crystal on its head before attacking Gasyukal itself.
• Beam Spam: Elshiria's attack patterns are basically this, especially during the late stages of the battle, although it is not limited to her.
• Boring but Practical: Unless Yunou has the Royal Jelly equipped (and possibly the Hermit's Nectar to enhance the item), farming pale mist wisp to gain stat bonuses from non-boss enemies that you haven't already defeated (and hopefully don't put too much of a fight) by using her blade attacks, which may increase the odds of survival on higher difficulties.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Oh lordy, does this game manages to hide away insanely powerful enemies waiting to destroy you when you least expect it or what?
• Boss Rush: An unlockable "Boss-Only" mode can be played after finding the Mysterious Button artifact, which let's you go through the entire game just by fighting the bosses alone.
• Bullet Hell: Many bosses and some enemies are capable of unleashing a danmaku of bullets at Yunou, especially on the harder difficulties.
• Chasing Your Tail: Aside from Dagneiv and Gasyukal, boss battles are generally a chase against your opponent.
• Check Point Starvation: The only checkpoints in each Chapter of the game are the ones before a boss battle.
• Combat Tentacles: Dagneiv, Chapter 3's boss. Thankfully Yunou can sheer them at a safe distance with her knives.
• Combos: Comes naturally for a hack-and-slash game.
• Continuing Is Painful: Die at any point of a Chapter and you lose any-and-all chances of enemy drops.
• Cool but Impractical: The Hand-made Rosary item upgrades Yunou's Rowanveld to Rowan Banish, although it costs 70 CP, making it difficult to use in early stages of the game, and it cannot be fired rapidly.
• Crystal Skull: Can be found as a useless item in the game.
• Cute Witch, Elegant Gothic Lolita: Vizet, especially in the PlayStation 3 version.
• Easy Mode Mockery: If the player plays the game Easy, enemies will not drop any obtainable items at all.
• Eldritch Abomination: Dagneiv (Chapter 3's boss) and Gasyukal (Chapter 6's final boss).
• Enhanced Remake: Not 100% though in Rockin' Android's PlayStation 3 version. The "High Definition" visuals are only 480p, with some texture and lighting adjustments, fancy new fonts and the manga-style character art. The in-game sprites are left unchanged and doesn't really match up with the manga-styled character art.
• Fan Translation: And a very rough one handled by MoogleWarrior, with mistranslations and misused terms no less (i.e. Royal Blade instead of Rowanveld) due to the lack of understanding the psuedo-German language used in the game. He originally had planned a revised English patch for the PC version of the game, but the updated patch was immediately scraped once Rockin' Android acquired publishing rights to localize the game.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: Averted in Chapter 6 due to Narju, being the Amazing Technicolor Battlefield attendant that she is, takes you to another dimension just before game's final boss.
• Flash Step: Yonou can use the Pale Mist in conjunction with her daggers to instantly warp to where ever the dagger hits.
• Fragile Speedster: Yunou, although equipping items can also make her into a Glass Cannon or maybe even a Lightning Bruiser.
• Go for the Eye: Dagneiv.
• Goomba Springboard: Yunou can jump off some non-boss enemies after launching them in the air to access higher areas.
• Guide Dang It: For starters, there's no map system, which immediately makes things frustrating once the player is lost during Chapters 3 and 4 considering they're most maze-like Chapters of the game. Thankfully the developer posted videos on his YouTube for shortcuts for Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 to make what really seems like a long level into a short one.
  • There's also the matter of getting One Hundred Percent Completion for finding all the items and artifacts scattered in the game. It's a good thing the fan translator who once made the English patch for the PC game still have a chart for finding them, which can be seen here. Although take note that there are mistranslated names for some of the items.
  • A guide for Rockin' Android's PlayStation 3 version for finding all the items in the game as well as getting the PSN Trophies for the game, which may also help with the original PC version, can be viewed here.
• Hard Mode Perks: On Hard mode or higher, Yunou can equip items found throughout the game. And you might need them.
• Homing Projectile: Some enemies and most bosses are capable of firing homing projectiles to ruin Yunou's day.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels, Harder Than Hard:
  • Pumpkin Knight (Easy)
  • Magic Knight (Normal)
  • Sacred Knight (Hard)
  • Terror Knight (Terror)
  • Knight of Nightmares (Nightmare)
• In-Series Nickname: Elshiria L. Gasyukal (Chapter 6's boss) can be referred to as "El".
• Knife Nut: Yunou can throw knives for ranged attacks, throw them in a fan-like spread, or use them warp to an enemy or certian objects.
  • Bottomless Knives: And where does Yunou's bottomless supply of throwing knives come from?
• Magic Knight: Yunou and Soray. However, in Yunou's case, she doesn't use a sword for melee attacks. Yunou is also a Badass Bookworm being a former researcher of Gasyukal Research Alliance.
  • It's also the name of the game's "Normal" difficulty.
• Multiple Endings
• Nice Hat: Yunou, Kurow, and Elshiria wear one.
• Nintendo Hard: Let's start with the fact that there's a chance of running into the Boss in Mook Clothing when going blind during your first run of the game. Next add getting sent back to the very beginning of a Chapter once you die if you don't make it to the checkpoint prior to fighting the end boss of the Chapter. Add some boss battles that can be downright brutal and you have this game's difficulty.
• The Magocracy: The Gasyukal Research Alliance.
• The Maze: Chapters 2, 3, 4, although the Chapters 3 and 4 proves to be a worse case of this.
• Out-of-Character Moment: The game's Tutorial Mode have Yunou and Vizet teaching the players how to play the game while being completely Out of Character.
  • Pixelation: In the original Japanese PC version, players are instructed by pixelated versions of Yunou and Vizet during the game's tutorial.
  • Super-Deformed: Keiko Sakurai made ultra-cute, chibi-fied versions of Yunou and Vizet for the game's tutorial in the English PlayStation 3 version.
• Palette Swap: Although some of the enemies Yunou encounters also have some minute appearance changes too.
• Petal Power: Just look at the pretty Cherry Blossoms as Elshiria tries to annihilate Yunou.
• Power Crystal: Yunou can find a Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Aquamarine, Garnet, Amethyst, Opal, Moonstone, and Diamond as equipable items, although the Philosopher's Stone is needed to unlock their abilities.
• Power Floats: Usually during a boss battle (excluding the boss battle with Kurow), Yunou and a few other humanoid characters do this. In Yunou's case, she can only fly while in an "Area Magic Saturation" location.
• Power Glows: When Yunou uses special moves that builds up her CP gauge like Rowanveld, Yunou will begin to glow in a blue aura once it hits close to her CP Limit, then changes to red when her CP is dangerously close to her CP Limit. While her Yunou's aura is blue, her attack doubles at the expense of 25% of her defense; when red, her attack triples but cuts her defense by 50%. She also glows green while guarding with Endurance and glows yellow while recoving from an attack with Emergency Evasion.
• Power-Up: And Color Coded for Your Convenience, too. Red power-ups boosts Attack, Green boosts Defense, Blue raises her Maxiumum HP, and White contains an a teasure. Yunou can only retain her HP bonuses after each Chapter; Attack and Defense bonuses resets after clearing the Chapter.
• Random Drops: When it comes to enemy drops, there's always a chance that you may or may not receive a prized item from defeating an enemy. That Thief's Dagger may come in handy...
• Razor Wind: Yunou uses this to attack enemies at close range albeit not using an actual sword.
• RPG Elements: Collecting the pale mist wisps expelled from striking an enemy with Yunou's "blade" attacks instead of using them to attack them can steadily level-up her stats. Killing certain enemies can also lead to stat bonuses for Yunou.
  • There's also items and artifacts in the game that enhance and/or penalize Yunou's abilities. Sadly you can only use them Hard mode or higher.
• Scoring Points: Part of the game since you earn points for your performance in each Chapter. Although it wasn't too practical until Rockin' Android added leaderboards to the game.
• Sequence Breaking: Encouraged to anybody looking to aim for high scores on each Chapter. See Guide Dang It above for shortcuts for Chapters 3 and 4.
• Shoot'Em Up: Boss battles in the game plays similarly to a shoot 'em up since they can unleash a barrage of bullets, and like a Bullet Hell shooter, each boss have multiple phases and attack patterns that become increasing more difficult to defend against.
• Smash Mook: The Gargoyles and some of the Pumpkin and Onion enemies will dive bomb into Yunou.
• Sword Lines
• Spread Shot: Yunou's Midnight Ripper technique lets her spam daggers in a fan-like spread.
• Turns Red: Guaranteed to happen during a boss fight.
• Warmup Boss: Vizet and her familiar.
  • "Wake-Up Call" Boss: Kurow in Chapter 4.
• Wizard Beard: Kurow.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Narju, even more so in the PlayStation 3 version after Keiko's anime treatment.
• Zettai Ryouiki: Yunou is a Grade-A.