Crystal Warriors is a strategy video game developed and published by Sega for the Sega Game Gear in Japan in 1991 and in Europe and North America in 1992. It was also released for Virtual Console in 2013. A Japan-only sequel Royal Stone was published in 1995.
The game follows the adventures of the sorceress Princess Iris of Arliel. The evil Jyn have overrun her father’s lands and stolen three of the four elemental crystals used to keep the peace. Her quest takes her through the lands of Arliel to fight the Jyn’s elemental governors and reclaim the crystals before defeating Emperor Grym and his mysterious overlord. Aside from the introduction (and closing), there is no plot development in the game.
The gameplay of Crystal Warriors is similar to both the Fire Emblem and Shining Force series. The player forms a party of up to nine units to fight in each level. The player starts on one side of the map and an enemy force of up to nine units occupies a castle on the opposite side. The player must defeat the enemy force or move a unit on to the enemy castle entrance to complete each level.
Each level has terrain features which form bottlenecks or change the speed of units. The player controls specialized units belonging to a particular elemental group and most of the strategy revolves around the element of a given unit, its speciality and positioning. Each element is weak to one and strong versus another in a rock-paper-scissors system. Fire elemental units are strong against wind elemental units, while wind units are strong against water, and in turn water units are strong against fire. Earth-based units have no particular strengths or weaknesses to other elements. However, with the exception of the Princess(s) and Emperor Jyn the Earth-based units are all mages or healers and have a low base defence, making them vulnerable to combat units, unless they reach level 9 in which case they become the strongest unit in the game.
Whenever a player unit attacks an enemy unit or vice versa, a battle occurs. A battle consists of two rounds where the units can fight with melee weapons, spells or monsters. The attacking unit strikes first in each round. Each unit acquires four experience points for defeating an enemy. Each time the unit gains 10 experience points it increases in level, acquiring higher stats, with a maximum level of 9. Units can also defeat and 'tame' monsters (which are also assigned an element) on each level, and use them in battle. Monsters, though very weak, are useful to avoid elemental weakness (a Fire Lord, for example, can tame a Wind monster, and use it in combat against a Water Fighter, thus flipping the elemental advantage). New units, weapons, armour, and spells can be bought in towns along with information on the nature of the next level, which may affect the player’s choice of units.
The game includes a two player mode available by connecting to another Game Gear via a Gear-to-Gear cable. One player starts with Princess Iris and selects eight other team members from the recruitable characters found during the single player game. The other player starts with Princess Cham, an evil counterpart to Iris, and can select eight other team members from the standard Jyn forces (not the warlords, Grym or Emperor Jyn). Any map can be selected as an arena; teams start on a fortress and the opponent's team members are revealed in the same way as the single player version (by combat or spell). To win, the player has to defeat the entire opposing force or take the enemy fortress.
More details about this game can be found on
Wikipedia.org.
Find digital download of this game on
GOG
or
Steam.
Videogame Console:
This version of Crystal Warriors was designed for the Sega Game Gear, which was an 8-bit handheld game console manufactured
by Sega in the years 1990 - 2001. It was a direct competitor to the black and white console Game Boy and historically the third oldest color handheld console.
The unit price of Game Gear was approximately $ 150 and worldwide around 11 million units of this console were sold. More information about Sega Game
Gear can be found here.
Recommended Game Controllers:
You can control this game easily by using the keyboard of your PC (see the table next to the game). However, for maximum gaming enjoyment, we strongly recommend using a USB gamepad that you simply plug into the USB port of your computer. If you do not have a gamepad, buy a suitable USB controller on Amazon or AliExpress or in some in some of your favorite online stores.
Available online emulators:
3 different online emulators are available for Crystal Warriors. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in support of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For
maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic
features of each emulator available for this game Crystal Warriors are summarized in the following table:
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This version of Crystal Warriors was designed for the Sega Game Gear, which was an 8-bit handheld game console manufactured
by Sega in the years 1990 - 2001. It was a direct competitor to the black and white console Game Boy and historically the third oldest color handheld console.
The unit price of Game Gear was approximately $ 150 and worldwide around 11 million units of this console were sold. More information about Sega Game
Gear can be found 
