All kinds of spoilers:

The location of all of the important items can be found here: http://www.victoryga...pic.php?p=10323. This is helpful for when you find something new that lets you access areas that you saw a while back, but can't remember exactly where.

Now, I'm only 7 crystals in, but here are general pointers I've picked up through my travels:

(Mild spoiler warning, although they are more like hints/tips/tricks)

If you can't seem to hit a switch where you are, or getting there seems impossible, you either need to go around to get to it, or it's just a decoy switch. There are decoy keys as well.

The side of the door that the color is on, is the side that the switch is on. So sometimes you have to go under/over and around the door to hit the switch or get the key.

At dead ends and strange looking places, always check for hidden ladders and break-away walls. HINT: If you duck, you can hit the ground. There are cases of break-away ground.

Head bosses are pretty tough. You have two options: Grind out a level (which I've admittedly done before) or TAKE YOUR TIME. It's a platformer in dungeons, and the thing about platformers is to look for patterns and exploit the weaknesses. This is very important, especially with Darkon. He swings his tail when he walks away, and he tends to shoot things out of his mouth nearby. There is plenty of time between attacks to rough him up a bit. Also, he swings his tail when he recovers from shock, so back off early.

All of these things took me a while to learn. Enjoy the wisdom.

spoiler said:

Did that help?

Edit by Beef: Spoilerised that text. We really need to get some spoiler tags sorted out - for now, doing them in white in quote tags is the only way to stop anyone reading them accidentally and spoiling bits for them. We'd appreciate it if outright spoilers like that were hidden in the future - cheers.

I'm not sure about the coordinates, but if you look at your map, you'll see the green area on the left and the blue area on the right. The second spirit, I'm almost positive, is a lone tree in the blue area. It sticks out real bad. And the third can be found on the way back to the pond. Be sure to swing at any odd looking trees.

Er... Some help may be in order.

I seem to have completely overlooked the third crystal and went straight for the fourth. Does anyone know where on the map I can find the dungeon? Coordinates would be nice...

This game is actually pretty good. Think of Secret of Mana + Zelda II + Act Raiser, and that's a pretty good idea of what this game is. I really enjoy it, it's like a quicker, less RPGish Secret of Mana, which is nice, because I don't want to put 30 odd hours into a game.

But complaint: Moving from area to area is ridiculously difficult. Levels are so far between that there's a huge difficulty curve every time you go to a new area. Thank the gods that when you die, you still get to keep all of your experience and gold. Otherwise, I would have given up long, long ago.

I swear to God, the image on Simon's laptop computer is the opening image of Monkey Island from The Curse of Monkey Island.

To the point: This game seemed easier than the others. The plot was predictable. Also, I seemed to have come up 8 points short. Anything special for getting all of the points? Anything behind that big metal door at the end?

I cannot beat the 16th mission, Crossroads 1/4. If anyone has any advice for this particular mission, send it my way. I've been trying for a long, long time. Thanks!