Cryste: The Faith of Fire Vol. 1 Visual Novel Review

Cryste: The Faith of Fire Vol. 1 is about a young princess named Cryste who was previously a man. Let me clarify that. This visual novel is an Isekai, or in other words, apart from the “transported to another world” genre. I’m quite critical when it comes to Isekai so anything related to Isekai needs to do it properly or else I get triggered. Luckily, Cryste: The Faith of Fire Vol. 1 did quite well for itself.

Let’s talk about that!

Title: Cryste: The Faith of Fire Vol. 1
Platform: PC (Stream)
Developer: Salvation
Publisher: 净土制作室
Release Date: May 17, 2017
Price: $9.99

Cryste Rubiaire Maysfield

Imagine waking up one day in another person’s body. And this person just so happens to be a twelve-year-old princess. AND prior to waking up in this person’s body, you recall being an otaku male. That is essentially the beginning of this visual novel.

At first, this threw me off. Though the way it was actually written and displayed in the novel; as an otaku gamer myself, I sorta related in some way to how ‘he’ felt about his old life. After accepting that he is now a princess named, Cryste Rubiaire Maysfield, his new life as a princess begins.

I have to say that the story started off really rocky and I believed it was going to be a lazy cookie cutter isekai. After finishing the novel, I realized that I was wrong about the story. The story was exciting and made me want to continue reading more and more. The novel starts out slow, but pics up the further you get into the chapters.

Spooky Dragon

To add to the story, the world was developed wonderfully, and as you read, you feel the same confusion about the world as the main character does. We know nothing about this world, and neither does the main character. So as you read the novel and learn more about this strange world, the main character is also learning. I’m not sure if this was a planned idea, but it works out perfectly to help construct the world and setting.

The characters consist of Cryste Rubiaire Maysfield, the main character of the novel who I’ve already mentioned. Then we have Ratia, Cryste’s sister. Sophie, Cryste’s maid, and friend. Crowe Segolo, a junior official of the academy. Michiel, a court wizard, and Cryste’s teacher. Noel, the main love interest. And finally Sylvie, Noel’s sister!

So as you can tell, there’s a lot of characters! Overall, each major character in the novel is written well. Each has a specific personality, whether that be shy, stern, or obedient. Along with having distinct personalities, each character in some way gets their own character development. Yes, some of them lack development like Michiel, the court wizard. Though she does fill her role as a teacher well. So for a given set of characters, each of them do feel unique and important. Along with unique personalities, each character also has a solid backstory to help make them feel more human. The best backstory, in my opinion, has to be Sophie’s. Her story is that she is apart of a royal family that went into poverty resulting in her to as of now, work as a maid in the castle.

Now what I really loved about the light novel was the opening cinematic for when you first launch the game. The soundtrack is epic and gets you hyped for the novel. It really gets ya in the mood. Now other than that, this is where the soundtrack sort of falls flat. I was satisfied with the soundtrack music being played while reading, but there were so few tracks playing that you will end up hearing the same track over and over again driving you into madness. I’m not saying that the tracks were bad though! They set the mood well and created a solid atmosphere, but since the novel is so long, you’d hope to hear some more variety.

Normal Scene

Onto the artwork; it is done well. The art isn’t incredible to the point where it’d score the novel extra points, but it does its job. The artwork and background are visually pleasing to look at… for the most part. The only negative when it comes to artwork is that when a character is being focused on, the background gets quite blurry which actually sort of strained my eyes. It isn’t too big of a deal because it only happened a select few times, but it is definitely worth mentioning.

Character Focused Scene

Finally, I wanna actually talk about the pricing of the visual novel. For only ten dollars, this novel is a steal. The quality matches that of a 20+ dollar visual novel. To add onto that, the length of the novel easily makes the ten dollars worth the buy. Overall, this novel is definitely worth getting. I’m usually not one to get into a visual novel, but I’m excited for the second volume to be released.

Review Disclosure Statement:  Cryste: The Faith of Fire was provided to us by Sienna Plus for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.