Crisol: Theater Of Idols - Blood Shot (Review)
- James Stephanie Sterling
- 7 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Crisol: Theater of Idols
Released: February 10th, 2026
Developer: Vermila Studios
Publisher: Blumhouse Games
Systems: PC, PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series
Crisol: Theater of Idols came out of nowhere for me, but as soon as I heard Blumhouse published a Spanish blend of BioShock and Resident Evil, I jumped on it. The prospect of creepy statues coming at me with knives certainly didn’t hurt the sales pitch.
In a market saturated with animatronic horror mascots and spooky stone effigies of the Blink variety, you’ve got to work hard to make malevolent statues creepy again. The ones featured in Crisol are easily one of its biggest accomplishments - their impersonal hostility and lurching movements, not to mention their sheer relentlessness in the face of losing almost every limb, absolutely does the trick. While you inevitably get used to them, they leave a striking impression.
Sound is expertly used to enhance a sense of danger. While the statues make no intentional noise, their every movement creaks and clatters as animated wood… would. Thing is, almost everything in the city of Tormentosa is wooden and makes similar sounds in turn. Settling buildings, turning wheels, and other such sounds not only obscure the approach of a statue, it keeps a player in a sense of paranoia, waiting to bump into enemies that may not be there.
This kind of thing permeates the entire experience. Crisol is excellent at using what assets it has to create a specific mood. That mood is frequently threatened by the voice acting, which is often not appropriate for the setting, but otherwise this is a game that knows how to draw players into a fascinating world.
Gabriel is our protagonist, a devout member of a religion that worships the Sun. He’s investigating a town of “heretical” Sea devotees, armed only with his faith and a growing assortment of guns that drink his blood. Gorgeous guns with lovely ornate aesthetics and reloading animations that are both clever and vicious - this isn’t a game for those with needle phobias, as they draw blood in a manner of creatively spiky ways.
Crisol’s vampiric arsenal serves as its leading gameplay gimmick. Every bloody shot comes at a considerable cost as every bullet in the chamber is pulled from Gabriel’s hit points. Luckily, he’s something of a thirsty boy himself, able to absorb claret from the bodies of the recently dead and inject blood syringes for a quick heal.
This balancing act is handled as well as any game could do it. Combat feels suitably tense with shots that have to count, but blood is in plentiful enough supply that you won’t run empty unless you’re exceptionally reckless. The effect is mostly psychological, giving additional weight to combat by placing a premium on every trigger pull, though a few heavy combat sections offer a more delicate balance between healing and attacking. Overall, the system’s effective at making fights flavorful and tense.
Shooting isn’t fundamentally unique - Gabriel’s weapons are stock shooter guns such as pistols and sniper rifles, but their visual presentation and incredible reloading animations make them feel more special than they are. That’s something this game’s excellent at, serving familiar flavors in a very cool glass.
A non-bloodsucking knife’s on hand for quick attacks and parries, but I’m not too fond of it. It starts out with an almost useless level of durability, requiring constant sharpening at historically accurate motorbike grinders to stay useful, and parrying is too risky a prospect to often be worth it. Everything’s so jerky in motion that attacks are difficult to anticipate and there’s no safe spot to practice. While I parried more in the late game, I always preferred to spend a small bit of blood at a distance than risk losing a lot up close. The knife’s biggest use for me was finishing off the weakest enemy leftovers.
Leftovers are an apt way to describe the utter state in which a statue can still function. Individual limbs can be obliterated with well placed shots, but these things are like artisanally carved Necromorphs and will keep limping through heavy losses. Shooting their head off won’t stop them seeing you since their eyes are purely cosmetic. If you take out their weapon arm, they’ll pull out a knife with the other. If they lose one or both legs, they’ll crawl, and if you blast them down to just a pair of legs, they may still come after you if they’ve got a few hit points to spare.
This will inevitably get repetitive and I strongly advise you to upgrade each gun’s damage when you can. An upgrade system lets you buy improvements to various components, but damage is the thing to get. The quicker you can shear off a body part, the better, if only to make combat less sloggy.
Statues make up the vast majority of your opposition and they’re all best dispatched the same way - take out their legs and then pop off limbs until they die. Sometimes you’ll find ones that shoot or carry explosives, but the method of killing them doesn’t change. Your mileage will vary on how long this all takes to feel rote, but I found the enemies just freaky enough to stay interested for the most part.
Statues are unnerving things, staggering around with a logical and inhuman lack of internal equilibrium. Their slow pace advantages the player but some of their lurching attacks can suddenly close a surprising amount of distance. The main issue with them - and it’s a problem that arises in other aspects too - is a lack of variety.
Only a handful of character models exist for the statues. Their mass produced nature easily explains this, but it does not explain how each model features the exact same instances of wear and tear. One statue’s missing face portion is so distinctive it punctures the believability somewhat. I’m fine with there only being a few statue models, but cosmetic damage could really use a shakeup to help disperse the sense of repetition.
Some other enemy types do turn up. There are gloopy things that sneak n’ peek like Dead Space’s Stalkers and visually stunning feminine constructs fashioned from shards of stained glass. Some flying cherub babies arrive with a freaky introduction and a brilliantly conceptualized candle motif but ultimately behave like regular shooting statues that are harder to hit. There are also gargoyle-like turrets fixed to walls and they’re not all that memorable.
Atop the bestiary is one of the more overt Resident Evil inspirations, an indefatigable pursuer by the name of Dolores.
Dolores looks astounding. A presumably human woman converted into a hulk of mechanical rage, she regularly appears to hunt for Gabriel in certain areas. She’s this wonderful combination of intricately carved wood and cold clunking metal, her venomous voice punctuated by inhuman screams. A beautifully designed nod to the Nemesis, Jack, and Lady Dimutrescu, she suffers from just one problem - she is a fucking dumbass.
Enemy AI is capable of only the most basic aggro and suffers from fleeting object permanence. Regular statues follow you through most doors but there are some thresholds they seem unable to cope with, forgetting you as soon as you back out through them. While being able to cheese regular enemies isn’t a major issue, the sheer ineffectiveness of the thing you’re meant to be most frightened of is another matter altogether.
Dolores will lose sight of you as soon as you step into something she’s too tall to get through, she has no peripheral vision, and she displays next to no working memory. She can hear you sprint but you don’t have to crouch, so avoiding her feels like a casual stroll. A dumb pursuer is preferable to one so smart as to be annoying, but Crisol relies on Dolores to ramp up tension and spice up otherwise dull busywork sections, overexposing her in the process. It’s a shame she’s used too much and becomes a joke as a result, because she’s fantastic in every area except gameplay.
There are puzzles, also. They’re clever, beautifully designed, and I looked a number of their solutions up because my brain isn’t wired for these particular challenges and I wasn’t having fun with them. They can get very complex and won’t always easily volunteer what you’re meant to do.
When it comes to environmental storytelling, Crisol is top tier. Oceanic themes are incorporated into much of Tormentosa, revealing a lot about its inhabitants without saying a word. As a fan of sea-inspired aesthetics, I love how even something as mundane as a keycard is given indulgent amounts of thematic detail. This even extends to the animals Gabriel feeds on, with mundane mammals like horses and bulls given aquatic features such as gills, fishy tails, and flippers. It really sucks we only see their corpses because they’re so delightfully designed.
Crisol does a lot with slightly more than a little. You’ll become intimately familiar with many of the reused assets, but they’re so nice to look at and arranged so well it doesn’t feel egregious. Plus, the stuff that’s unique really makes an impression.
While BioShock is a clear inspiration with many environmental and narrative elements, the Resident Evil series from 4 onwards informs much of Crisol’s behavior. Its structure, presentation, maps, and atmosphere pulls heavily from Capcom’s series, particularly evoking Resident Evil Village. Special mention must be made of Hispana’s homegrown merchant, La Plañidera, who could easily give Village’s Duke a run for his money in terms of rampant campness.
As obvious as the comparisons are, this game still makes its own mark with a strong sense of personality and visual style. It’s well written save for a few moments of rushed characterization, with a story that hits familiar beats in compelling enough fashion. As mentioned earlier, voice acting is a mixed bag - I put this down more to the vocal direction than the actors themselves, who are all competent but don’t seem to know if they’re in a horror or a comedy. Accents are all over the place, and Gabe’s foil Mediodia is one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever had to fucking listen to. It’s genuinely unbelievable how detestable she is, taking a hatchet to the atmosphere with her irritating antagonism and 90s high schooler inflection. She gets less obnoxious later on, but the damage is done by that point.
If I were to point at one thing the game could absolutely do with less of, it’s the lore dumps we get from Gabriel’s visions. In a manner directly lifted from the first BioShock, we’re shown ghostly echoes of past events that are all fine in isolation but far too numerous and lengthy. As someone who likes the story, I still found myself walking away from some of these echoes because they were dragging the pace down too much.
Oh, and I'll help myself to another complaint while I'm here - please don’t make insurmountable obstacles out of very small gaps, or ladders Gabriel can reach just by lifting his arm. The amount of time spent clearing paths that could be realistically sidestepped by any able bodied man is just a bit too Videogames(™). It’s the only misstep in Tormentosa’s otherwise gorgeously crafted environments.
Crisol: Theater of Idols excels as a lower budget horror with high ambitions. It's got its foibles and I can nitpick all day, but so much style and effort has been poured into it that I just have to come away impressed. Fantastic visual and audio direction does a lot of the heavy lifting, taking this from a solid little homage to something more special. Creepy, intriguing, and with enough mechanical gimmickry to feel more different than it actually is, I’m certainly very glad I played it.
Also, it’s stunningly cheap to buy for what it is. These days, that’s one of the most remarkable things anything can be.
8/10
