Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles marks the return of Final Fantasy to a Nintendo platform following Squaresoft’s (now known as Square-Enix) shift to the PlayStation with Final Fantasy VII. Crystal Chronicles is a joint effort by The Game Designer’s Studio and Square-Enix, an obvious departure from the publishing giant’s recent console offerings, or better yet anything they’ve ever made.
Moving off the traditional path of Final Fantasy games this action RPG offers multiplayer support for up to four players via connectivity with the Game Boy Advance. As the pioneering game for Nintendo’s borderline stupid GCN/GBA connectivity obsession, I have to say it is pretty damn fun. But is it revolutionary? Far from it. Hell, truth is the single player game is much more rewarding than the far-fetched connectivity multi-player game. Read on to find out why.
Presentation
Crystal Chronicles has basically no options, just like all FF games before it, so just start new game. The intro video is simply breathtaking. The song that plays just brings you into that great “I’m playing Final Fantasy” feel. Too bad you won’t feel that way after playing.
Storyline is very scarce, you barely get any at all; something almost unheard of in the Final Fantasy series. It goes like this… a powerful dark substance called Miasma, has covered the entire world after a terrible meteor struck. This miasma is fatal, causing instant death to anyone who comes into contact with it. But then the Crystal was discovered. This powerful crystal could keep away the miasma, protecting all types of races from its deadly poison. Large crystals were placed in the bigger towns, while smaller Crystals were placed in villages. However, this crystal needs the sacred substance, the water Myrrh, to get its power. Only for a single year could the Myrrh protect the races from the miasma. That’s why, every year, the villages and towns send out young, adventurous villagers from their home to seek the Myrrh trees, which held the Water of Life. These villagers traveled in crystal caravans, and spent a year collecting drops of Myrrh from different trees. In the words of FFX’s Sir Auron “this is your story.” Every stage is started with a little story of the area from to female narrator, whose voice sounds like to Angel of love. I found this the most enjoyable part of the game, since if she’s as sexy as her voice. She must be the hottest woman on the planet!
Graphics
The visuals of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is both beautiful and sort of dull at the same time. Square-Enix went with a very natural look for the game’s art style. All the characters have simple, down-to-earth appearances instead of the over stylized borderline retarded fashions of Final Fantasy X. The character design seems to have taken not only pages but the whole book, from FFIX to create the look in Crystal Chronicles. The characters are super-deformed like the PSone title mentioned, though they’ve been stylized to mirror characters you might find in an illustrated storybook, like Tolkien’s The Hobbit. All in-game textures appear quite crisp and clean to complement with well-fashioned character models. FF:CC also sports a dead on framerate that never causes slowdown. In a nut-shell it’s the FF look we know and love at its best.
Sound
Game Designer’s Studio has squeezes as many tidbit’s of sound possible into each town and dungeon without bombarding the player with unnecessary noise. You’ll immediately detect the sound of running water and large waterfalls, birds chirping and characters going about their normal lives. Also, considering that the story isn’t the main attraction, like to basic Final Fantasy series, the absence of voice actors doesn’t really harm the presentation one bit. Besides, the gentle/sexy, female voice (that I mentioned earlier) that introduces each area with a bit of narration ensures that Crystal Chronicles is not completely without spoken dialogue. The soundtrack is filled with excellent scores that effortlessly blend with the visuals and gameplay, creating an extraordinarily refined sound and feel of post modern Europe.
Gameplay
The first thing players must do in Crystal Chronicles is create your character. There are four different character types and variations of each, variations include Clavats, Lilties, Yukes, and Selkies. All types have four variations as male or female for a grand total of 8 altogether. Each type of character has its own unique set of skills, abilities, and equipment at the beginning of the game and each character type also starts out with a basic attack, a special attack, a secondary ability, and magic spells. Every character’s special attack is executed by holding down the attack button, which causes a glowing circle to appear on the ground. You then move this circle around to target an enemy and release the button to unleash the attack. The secondary ability is different for each type of character. The human boy character can use his shield, for example, and the lanky armored characters can actually disappear and avoid attacks. To switch between all these options, you simply need to press the shoulder buttons on the GameCube controller or the Game Boy Advance.
To enter stages, you navigate a carriage on an overworld map, in which players will even run into other groups and people to interact with, in addition to finding moggle spots and towns, while adding to your adventure in your journal. The stages all are done with pretty quick. With extremely basic maps that have close to no use of brain power to navigate. So without brain stimulating puzzles to work your way through. All you really do is run around and kill stuff.
The world of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is covered in smog that is utterly lethal to the population and only the Crystal Cage, an artifact that falls into your possession, can repel it. Apparently the smog doesn’t affect monsters, but you and your buddies step outside the circle of the Crystal Cage’s protection will meet certain death (ok maybe not certain). While this means the player’s field of movement during battles is limited by the Crystal Cage’s range, one of the characters can carry the item around, keeping the party from stagnating in one place. When attacked, the Crystal Cage can be set down and all four party members can take up arms against the enemy. This causes a turtle effect, which makes for 95% defensive play. But that’s only during multiplayer. When you go solo Mog the Moggle with follow you with the Crystal Chalice so you can be a more offensive player. That brings me to the opinion that besides having to get friends with GBA’s and cables, it makes for more fun when playing alone.
Another gift or curse of Crystal Chronicles is the love/hate magic system. Casting the basic spells is damn sure easy. But when you’re solo the lack of magic slots make combining spells frustrating. Plus the constant pause of stopping to switch magic to heal or attack is a major waste of time. It doesn’t matter though since all you have to do to beat 90% of the baddies is hack away with your sword. In multi-player to combine a big spell successfully is more satisfying than finishing the game. Do to the fact that it requires charge time, precise timing, and a lot of luck. All while goblins are chopping at your privates! But I also know a few people unlike me who really like the system. I guess it’s whatever floats your boat huh?
Lasting Appeal
Unlike a traditional Final Fantasy game, Crystal Chronicles isn’t a very lengthy game, fifteen hours at best your first time through, and unfortunately there’s no good reason that justifies playing the game again. That is unless you have many friends with GBAs that you can swap around and use different strategies with. Aside from that, there isn’t much incentive to playing through Crystal Chronicles more than once.
Bottom Line
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles delivers on a few things known in the series, simple play mechanics, high quality sound, sweet graphics, and the feel of being a hero. The game also delivers gameplay that makes use of the GBA for a controller. However, I still have a love/hate relationship with Crystal Chronicles. I don’t hate the game for what it is; I hate it for what it could have been. In my opinion FF:CC suffers from a lack of storyline and all combat no substance gameplay. Don’t expect the same Final Fantasy experience you may have had in the past.
