One of the biggest surprises from the indie scene during E3 2019 was Cris Tales from SYCK, Dreams Uncorperated, and Modus Games. It not only includes some great elements from classic RPGs like Paper Mario and Persona 5, but it still stands out on its own thanks to the clever time manipulation mechanics. The demo released during E3 also proved to be extremely popular, so today the developers put out a video discussing a lot of feedback they received from the Cris Tales demo, revealing some new battle mechanics in the process.

After Dream Uncorperated's CEO Carlos Rocha Silva addresses fans at the start of the video, Executive Producer Derek Neal delves into the demo feedback. A lot of the video is spent highlighting things fans liked such as the hand-drawn visuals, music, and time manipulation mechanics. That being said, he also pointed out the few things people were disappointed by in the Cris Tales demo, like some poor line delivery and bad sound mixing, and pledged to fix them.

One area where some fans were let down was the simplicity of combat in the demo, and Neal tried to quell those fears by revealing some more intricate aspects of combat that will be in the final game. Players were able to mess with time in the demo in order to increase the effectiveness of status effects, but it was also outright confirmed in this video that players can manipulate the turn order to their advantage. Uses for this given in the video include bringing a party member back to a previous turn to heal them as well as sending an enemy back a few turns to prolong a status effect. Team attacks based on party members like those in Chrono Trigger were also confirmed, though we have yet to see them in action.

Modus Games is promising to show off more of the story soon and revealed that they will be holding a AMA for the game on Reddit and Discord tomorrow. If you have a question for the Cris Tales developers, you can ask them on r/pcgaming at 11am PT on July 30; meanwhile, Discord users will have an AMA of their own on the same day at 12pm PT. Below, you can check out the full developer response video below. Cris Tales is currently set to release for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2020. If you want to see my more in-depth thoughts on the game, you can check out my preview as well.