Ranking the Crash NST Categories

Ranking the Crash NST Categories

Now that NST has been out for half a year, I feel like updating how I feel about each category. I’m going to group them into tiers, and while the categories are numbered and ordered, those within the same tier can be considered close enough where you can call them equal.

GREAT:
1. Crash 1 (All Gems) - All Gems is an example of simplicity at its finest. The game is undeniably lacking in movement tech, but makes up for it in smaller optimizations such as cycle skips and corner cutting. Mask management is of the essence, as proper invincibility and damage abuse can save a lot of time. The bonus rounds are the selling point of the run, as many of them have really cool layouts and tricks. There are also two skips (Great Gate and Cortex Power) that require some finesse but overall are not bad at all to perform. The run has a slow start with Island 1 being mostly filled with levels that require revisits, but after that the run picks up very quickly and culminates in arguably the hardest (and coolest) level in the Crash trilogy: Stormy Ascent. All Gems ultimately shows what makes NST Crash 1 so great: it took a game with a lot of promise that suffered from primitiveness and brought it up to the standards set by its sequels. Overall a fun and relaxing, but also exciting, category.

2. Crash 3 (105%) - In terms of depth and tech, Warped 105% is easily the most interesting category in NST. Just about every level (including the vehicles) has some form of movement tech to them, and it keeps things fresh and interesting as a result. The existence of Gate Clip breaks open the possibilities of level order, giving 105 arguably the most interesting route in the entire trilogy. An abundance of cool one cycles that range from piss easy (Sphynxinator) to very hard (High Time) as well as cool bonus strats just add icing to the cake. Where 105% suffers is an absolutely brutal midgame (almost everything from Gate Clip at the end of Warp 2 all the way to the beginning of Warp 4 is a run killer), as well as side effects of simply being Crash 3: vehicles are abundant, and while they have tech, they can be both boring and buggy (to the point where sometimes they don’t even work properly). These issues aside, however, Warped 105% is potentially the deepest of all categories in NST.

3. Crash 2 (102%) - The last six months have shown us that, in spite of its original counterpart being the most popular of its trilogy, Crash 2 is ironically the black sheep of NST. Without the cool cycle skips and optimizations of Crash 1 and all the crazy movement of Crash 3 (Hobsliding notwithstanding), it’s easy to overlook Crash 2. However, 102% brings a lot to the table. The addition of Relics gives 102% an extremely unique route that sets itself apart from the original game’s 100%, and there’s no shortage of really neat one cycles as a result. Changes to the mechanics of Crash 2’s Secret Warp room also serve to shake up the level order, and unlike most the original game, proper invincibility usage is of the essence. 102% is also the only category in the entire trilogy that makes heavy use of running shoes, as the entire last third of the run uses the incredibly fun Shoes+Slide Jump as its primary form of movement. 102%’s biggest weakness is that it has easily the slowest start of all the categories in this tier; whereas All Gems and Warped 105% pick up their pace after the first Island/Warp Room, 102% doesn’t really hit its stride until you reach the Relic portion of the run, approximately 2 hours in. The fact that all Relics are done at the end (as opposed to Warped 105%, where the Relics are scattered across the entire run) also makes this category feel a bit more repetitive than its Crash 3 counterpart (though the running shoes help rectify this a bit). In spite of its shortcomings, 102% is still a really fun, albeit long, category.

DECENT:
4. Crash 3 (Any%) - Crash games in general tend to not have particularly interesting Any% categories in comparison to completion ones (with some notable exceptions, and in NST this still holds true. Crash 3 probably suffers the least from this, since, despite the removal of having to break all boxes as well as other factors that add so much depth to the game, Crash 3’s Any% still has all of the cool movement tech and tricks at its disposal. It’s ultimately not as interesting as 105%, and it still suffers from being Crash 3, but in the end it’s probably the most interesting of the Any% categories in NST.

5. Crash 2 (Any%) - There is undeniably some bias here, as I would say about 99% of the strats and optimizations that are present in this category owe their existence to me (that’s not me being arrogant; there was just a long period of time where I was literally the only person doing anything with this category). Crash 2 Any% doesn’t have the crazy tech that Crash 3 has, nor does it have the “hard game” spectacle that I believe draws people to Crash 1. However, there are so many little things that you can do to shave off time that your time can show how knowledgeable you truly are about the category. Levels with Hobsliding are more abundant than they are in Crash 3, but they exist in shorter bursts instead of ones that get carried for very long periods of time. Crash 2 Any% ultimately doesn’t look like much to an outsider, but once you get deep into it there is quite a bit of depth.

MEDIOCRE:
6. Crash 2 (100%) - The biggest thing that hurts this category is that there’s simply nothing special about it. Almost everything cool in 100% also exists in 102%, but when you finish dragging through the first passes of everything in 102%, you are at least greeted with some really cool movement tech. With 100%, once you get through all of it, you are given a single gem pass of a level to try out your cool new running shoes and then the run ends, and you are left questioning what you just did with the last two hours of your life. The absence of Relics and one cycles also makes the route much less interesting as a result, and in some parts it actually makes things harder and/or more tedious than they are in 102%. The end result is a category that is not necessarily terrible, just very inferior to both 102% and the original Crash 2’s 100%. I suppose it’s alright if you want to do a completion run but don’t have time to do 102%, but at that point I would just suggest doing All Gems.

7. Crash 1 (Any%) - This category is where the downsides of Crash 1’s lack of movement tech really show. It’s not that there’s nothing to this category, because the optimizations are there, but a lot of what does exist is also present in the infinitely deeper All Gems. This is a fine category for starting out with NST Crash 1, but once you go to All Gems, coming back to this category shows how barren and boring it can be in comparison.

BAD:
8. Crash 1 (105%) - If any category in NST perfectly embodies repetitiveness, it’s this one. The biggest problem with Crash 1’s 105% category is that it is extremely repetitive, with every level being visited at least twice, and several being visited three times. The simplicity of Crash 1 works against it here, with very few one cycles, none of which are particularly interesting. The lack of running shoes means that the movement tech never changes to make up for the repetitiveness, making this category feel like an All Gems run immediately followed by a more unforgiving Any% run. And to top it all off, while All Gems has one of the greatest last levels in Stormy Ascent, 105% has one of the worst last levels in the form of Stormy Ascent’s Relic (immediately followed by Cortex, who is actually rather annoying to fight maskless). Ultimately, there is barely anything this category does that All Gems doesn’t also do without also feeling extremely repetitive.

MEME:
9. Full Trilogy (Any%) - This category doesn’t bring anything new to the table that each game’s Any% separately doesn’t bring. All it really does is show “Hey, I can play all of these games”. It’s nice for marathons and races, but it should never be taken seriously. It’s miscellaneous for a reason.
10. Full Trilogy (312%) - See above. The only reason 312% is below Any% is because it’s three times as long.

JOKE:
11. Crash 1 (102% No DLC) - There is a single reason this category even exists in the first place: people had already done runs of it before Stormy Ascent was announced and released, and when we redid the Crash 1 leaderboards to compensate (by adding All Gems and changing 102% to 105%), we had to put those runs somewhere. The one selling point is that the lack of a teleporter between Islands 1 and 3 (as using it is banned) makes the route a little different, but ultimately you’re just playing a worse version of 105% (which itself is already a bad category) that simply removes Stormy Ascent. It’s like doing a 120% run of Spyro 1 except you’re allowed to miss gems and the run ends at Gnasty Gnorc.