Explosive crystal characteristics essentially influence physic-chemical properties, functions and applications, including safety, thermal stability and compatibility with other chemical substances, mechanical properties, initiation and detonation performances. Based on the properties and shortages of current high energy explosives, regulation and control of the explosive crystal characteristics to improve the performances of explosives and expand their applications has achieved increasing research attention and become a significant branch of energetic materials. This review summarized the current development of the control principle and process methods of explosive crystal characteristics including polymorph, crystal quality, particle shape and aggregated structure, and focused on the analysis and discussion of crystal characteristics, property and performance, and application and prospects of high quality reduced sensitivity explosive, explosive spherulite and explosive with hierarchical micro-nanostructure. Additionally, considering the current major problems, several developing suggestions based on explosive crystal engineering are proposed. All these investigations may guide the production, process and application of explosive.