The Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles sub-series has always been a bit weird for me. The first game on Gamecube had some fun ideas but was completely ruined by crappy leveling, the chalice(worst idea since QTEs in action games) and HAVING to have 4 GBAs to play with multiple people. The 2 following games in the series on the DS(let’s not count the crappy Wii port of the second DS game) were actually a lot better and they were actually fun.

Now comes a new game in the sub-series, going this time for single-player action instead of multiplayer. This game has been in development since… just around when the Wii came out I think, maybe a bit before. So it’s been in development for quite a while. So it MUST be a great game, right?

Read on and see!

Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Date of Release: December 26 2009

Platforms: Wii

Genre: “Action RPG”/Mini-game collection
Players: 1
Rated T for Teen

Looks and Sounds
Well the graphics are really nice. For Wii I mean. The characters are well modeled and nicely detailed. There’s a nice variety of areas to visit and all of them look fairly nice. The animations are nice and smooth as well, rarely seeming out of place. Other than in a few of the mini-games at least. The character design takes a step away from all the other Crystal Chronicles games and goes for a more “realistic” looks with the characters. Each race keeps their defining features, but the characters aren’t chibi anymore. Lilties are still smaller and have vegetable features on their heads, Clavats are usually blond humans, Selkies usually wear some kind of fur and have colored hair and Yukes are walking armors. They actually look pretty good for the most part, though some Lilties look more like fat Banga (from the  tactics/FF12 world).

The sounds… ugh… Menu sounds are the usual FF menu sounds which is fine. But the music… WTF happened here? Is this Final Fantasy or is it Bubsy? Seriously, were their usual music composers on a coffee break for those 4 years of development so they decided to put in crap instead of music? The battle music is a crappy mix between rock and country which is really anti-climactic, some other music is like normal rock, but just about a 5 second loop, and everything else sucks. The only thing that remotely sounds like FF is the chocobo music which is pretty much untouched. Speaking of Chocobo, what happened to their usual sound? Instead of their trademark “Wark”, they get really weird high-pitched screams… Weird. Anyways… there’s some okay tracks, but they’re few and far between.

As for the voice acting, it starts out surprisingly weak, but after the first few cutscenes the performances actually become really good. No problem here, good job.

Story
The story is actually pretty interesting. During an escort mission, Crystal Bearer Layle meets up with a Yuke, who were believed to be extinct after the Great War some time before. Crystal Bearers, just for reference, are people who were randomly given super powers by the crystals. The Yuke in question is looking for green crystals name Crystal Idols, to restore the Yuke Race’s Crystal and resurrect the race in the real world. At first Layle is asked to find the Yuke and stop her from doing whatever she’s doing, but finds out he should be helping her. There’s a few nice twists, the main character faces various conflicts in regards to his decisions and such, and overall the story is very nice.

The characters are pretty good. At first, they seem pretty bland and boring, but they become more interesting as the game moves on. The villain is probably the worst character in the game, dwelling in the same cliches as… most FF villains really. Also,  the villain is unknown for most of the game, but using your brain you’ll figure it out minutes into the game. The other characters are interesting. Althea, Belle and Keiss are a good supporting cast , with distinct personalities. Layle starts out the blandest of all, but he actually gets pretty fun as the game progresses. The interactions between characters was also pretty interesting, with some fun nicely written dialog.

The story and characters was actually the only reason I bothered with finishing the game at all.

Gameplay
Combat
The combat really sucks. At it’s core, it’s simple. Point at something, press B to catch it in your powers, and then shake the controller in a direction to affect the object. Depending on what you point at and in which direction you shake the controller, you get different effect. Shaking on the sides makes the object get thrown in that direction. Shaking down will usually smash things into the ground. Shaking up will make you grab the object or enemy, unless the enemy is standing in it’s “normal” position, in which case it will do the same thing as shaking down. If the enemy is “stunned”, you’ll grab it. When you grab something (AKA holding it over your head and obstructing half the screen), you can point at something and press B to throw it, causing damage. If you threw an enemy at another enemy, you’ll cause damage to both. Certain enemies will react differently when you “lock on” to them and shake them in different directions. Enemies can also have various reactions when thrown on other enemies. As an example, certain skeleton types can fuse together, roller bugs become balls when they hit each other, and flans getting hit by anything become mini-flans that can combine back together.

Some enemies also become weapons when you pick them up. Cactuars and Ahriman will shoot projectiles in front of you instead of being thrown (though they have limited “ammo” so you’ll throw them when they’re “empty”). So that adds some variety to combat. Too bad the aiming for those “weapons” is not as precise as it should be.

Overall, the combat is boring. Very boring. And other than a few battles, you can actually skip them all. But that’s not a good idea. Going through each area battle and locking the Miasma Stream gives you (one time each, other than one battle later in the game) an item that increases your maximum HP, which is pretty invaluable when you get to the end of the game.

One really weird thing is that there’s an invisible time limit. Each field has 2 versions: one with the miasma and enemies, and the other with NPCs and… nothing else really. After an unknown amount of time, you’ll switch to the other one, regardless of if you’re close of beating all the monsters are not. And each time you get a short and lame animation to tell you the change happened. Similar to Castlevania 2′s day to night changing sequence, but more annoying. And it sucks because you then have to wait if you wanted to get the life-boosting item in the area. And there’s no leveling, so after getting the health boosting item, there’s no point in re-doing any of the battles.

What bother me is that the core mechanic for fighting is just no fun. And it annoys me because the first segment of the game (a mini-game) includes a machine gun you can shoot at enemies…. Why not for the rest of the game too? Including both the Crystal Bearer powers and the machine gun could have made this a lot more interesting to play. Have some enemies that can be killed with the machine guns, others that require the powers, and others that require both. And I might have done more than 8 battles in the whole game that way.

Mini-games
What you’ll be doing the most in the game, other than walking from one place to another, is playing mini-games. And they pretty much all suck. Some of them look like they might be fun, but are ruined by unresponsive and overall bad controls. And some of them are just plain stupid, like the one where 2 bikini-wearing girls are trying to knock each other off of a floating platform by hitting each other with their asses, and you must help one of them win… Wow.. Lame. Each mini-game includes a scoring system so you can try to beat your previous score. But there’s really no point to it.

Anything else!
If you’re not playing mini-games, you’re most likely be walking across the world, or watching cut-scenes. Fighting is an afterthought since it’s so boring and you can skip most of it. You have a sort of leveling system… By opening chests and finding secrets you get money, or materials. You also get materials from enemies sometimes. Money is used to buy materials or accessories. Materials are used to buy accessories as well (requiring less money). Accessories boost your fighting power. So the closest thing you get to leveling is being able to equip 3 pieces of equipment. An amulet, a ring and earrings. These boost the range of your power, your attack power, your defense, luck and… whatever Focus is. Some pieces of equipment also give certain power ups like health regen.

Platforming in this game is stupid. Instead of being able to jump normally, you go to the edge of a platform. If you’re on the right spot and have the camera aiming at the right spot, a “jump” icon will appear, and pressing A will bring you to said icon, in what is the most unconvincing jump animation in any game ever. Going next to certain ledges smetimes gives you the option to jump up them too, usually leading to treasure chests. Some parts you can aim at certain objects and use your bearer powers to attach to them… And that just about how deep the platforming gets… it’s really lame.

Navigating in the game is a total mess. The game will usually tell you to go somewhere, but half the time, unless you went there before, there’s no indication as to where it is you have to go and you’ll be walking around aimlessly until you find it. Sure, the mission map tells you the general location of the place you have to go, but finding it is still not as easy as it should be. Eventually you get fast-travel options which helps a bit. And finding the moogle Slitzkin (I probably misspelled this…) is the only real way to know if you’re going in the right direction, since he’ll tell you where to go next. Quite helpful. You can also walk through the fields faster by using Chocobo, but their screaming when you make them dash is annoying.

One last element is medals. They’re sort of like achievements. “Get high scores in mini-games” or “kill certain enemies” or “Find certain items” or “Discover certain secrets”… Stuff like that. Each medal you get goes in a grid, and you get hints for what you have to do to get adjacent medals. The mechanic of it all is actually pretty good. THIS is what I’m talking about when I talk about getting good achievements in games. Some of them suck, sure, but there’s some good stuff in there. My only gripe with this? There’s really no reward for them. I think an emblem for Layle’s jacket or something stupid like that if you get them all. Very lame. But a step in the right direction.

Overall
The game has been in production for 4 years… why is it so boring and unpolished? The combat is bad, the mini-games are not fun and mostly stupid, with crappy controls. The bad camera becomes an issue really fast as well. Especially in an enclosed area, or near walls, it’s really bad.

The story and characters got me through the end so I could actually review it. The only other good element is the graphics.

The game has some interesting ideas, but doesn’t really use them, and it’s just no good.

(just a hint: if you somehow make it to the final boss, use the cannons on top of him to destroy him really easily)

Pros and Cons
Pros
- Looks really good (for Wii)
- The story is nicely done and the only real reason to play this game.

Cons
- Boring combat
- Not a lot of interaction with NPCs, you can barely talk to any of them
- The mini-games have crappy control, and aren’t fun
-  The camera is horrible (didn’t really mention this in the review, but whatever… the camera just really sucks)
- Only around 7 hours long (though this might be a good thing since the game isn’t really good)
- You can’t skip cutscenes (even on a new game +)
- Layle does a bunch of cool things with his powers during cutscenes… why can’t we do any of that in the game itself?

The Save Factor
Hum… I don’t know. The game features really lame gameplay, but a good story. I say just rent it and that’s it. No Save Factor on this one.

jobocan Console, Games, Review, wii