Crystal Project

• Even if you don't want any cheats, do consider turning on the assist option to save up to 3 home stones at a time, it's a massive time-saver and even the game says most players will want it on.

• There are multiple temples and you'll want to keep a few teleport shards (or a stone) for each on hand for convenient fast travel.

• Learn to favorite, you'll get another shortcut menu just for those. You want the mobility tools and the "Auto Top-Up" option in there.

• Yes, the game's very aggressively 3D, platforming is a big part of getting where you want and if it bothers you, it's only gonna get worse. Also, learn to peek around terrain with L1/R1, some things are deliberately hidden by the static perspective.

• Most objects in the world (like chests, save crystals, lanterns, NPCs etc.) have volume and can be jumped on/used as stepping stones.

• Don't try to 100% all the secrets immediately, you will get some mobility tools later on and the game's super lenient about not making stuff permanently missable.

• You're not expected to get all maps going into the relevant regions, you'll get some only at the end of the region and some are even gated behind collection quests (there are always extra pieces though, so you won't need to scour the entire location for every single scrap)

• The mechanics are not super explicit, but discovery is part of the fun and once you reach the big city you'll find a bunch of trainers that can explain the minutiae. Two things you want to grasp early on is: 1. the action queue (especially when casting bigger (slower) spells), 2. the threat mechanic (important for some things like rogue skills and tanking).

• Character building: main class affects both your current stats and your stat gains at level up; each class has an innate passive that may or may not overlap with its learned passives, you're supposed to mix & match classes and choose a secondary skill and passives that synergize with your main class.

• Many skills require specific types of weapons, sometimes mutually-exclusive on the same class. If you can't use your skills, check if you have the right weapon equipped.

• If progress seems explicitly gated in a blatantly arbitrary and unfun way, you don't have to follow the rules as long as you can pull it off.

• DOT statuses like poison/bleeding are super useful, even on bosses (their massive HP-damage resistance is there specifically to curb the "% of max HP/turn" damage, but it still works).

• During combat press left to see monsters' stats and especially strong/weak points. There's another sub-option in there that shows you current status of each combatant if you're not sure what an icon does or a boss hits you with some obscure debuff. Also, pips below the icons mean how many turns the status will last.

• Do take notes and mark stuff; the game will happily omit stuff you'll forget and stumble on 10 hours later. The map is super useful but makes it way too easy to hide details you'd want to remember, so mark stuff like tunnel entrances and exploration directions (as opposed to plain cliffs).