Crystal Monsters

The gameplay of Crystal Monsters involves the capture and training of a variety of creatures called monsters. Monsters can learn up to four moves called skills. Just like in most role-playing video games, monsters are able to gain experience points and level up after battles, making them stronger.

The game uses a turn-based system. Whenever the player encounters a wild monster or challenges a trainer, the screen changes to a battle scene with the opposing monsters and an option menu. The player may have up to three monsters on your team. You can attack, pass to the next monster on the team, use an item or flee the fight.

The player controls the protagonist from an overhead perspective and navigates him around a fictional world called Earth with the goal of becoming the greatest trainer. There are two kinds of people in this world: those who can see monsters (called Neo-Seeds) and those who cannot (Pure-Breeds).

This game features a total of 9 towns, along with different terrains, such as routes, dungeons, etc. The protagonist is a young boy who lives in Dicot. He has a dream of being given a choice of one of 3 different starter monsters by his friend Bishop: A Fire-type (Kiticon), Water-type (Tadpolaris) or Plant-type (Flowerpower). After waking up in school and realising it was all a dream, he goes outside and sees a bully named Rudiger steal Bishop's Essence Core.

Lucas M. Thomas of IGN criticized Crystal Monsters for being "unbalanced in monster selection, and boringly repetitive."

Marcel van Duyn of Nintendo Life said "Although it might be almost sickening to Pokémon fans to see how similar this is to their beloved franchise, we can't really be too critical of it. It's only 500 DSi Points (300 less than most Gameloft games), and for what it is, it's actually quite a decent, if simple, imitation."