Crystalis was my first brush with the aRPG genre as a kid; in fact, when I first played Diablo II, I thought "Wow, this game is like Crystalis, but with better graphics and more choices! In college, when I would tell people about the "hidden gem" that was Crystalis, I always thought it was one of those "peak platform" games where people had finally really gotten comfortable with a platform and managed to crank out games that took advantage of everything possible.

The art looked great AND the movement/animations were smooth, too. A lot of the third-tier sword effects blew me away.

Incidentally, I knew the author in college. He's a tremendous fan of NES/SNES-era games (especially platformers) and was most recently a judge on the Make a Good Mega Man Level 3 (http://magmmlcontest.com/wiki/index.php/Make_a_Good_Mega_Man...). I've always admired his self-taught game design/user experience sense because I've seen it grow over the years and was a part of playtesting some of his level designs! He's a tremendously kind and thoughtful guy.

I believe a level he designed actually made it into an official Mega Man collection from Capcom, but I can't remember which one...