Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles

GameCube

Square/Enix - 2003

Crystal Chronicles. It’s a Final Fantasy game, alright – but nothing like you’re used to. It’s part of the Final Fantasy universe in much the same way as Final Fantasy Tactics - A fascinating sidenote to enjoy. You live in a world covered by a debilitating cloud called “The Miasma”. Your village is protected by a huge crystal that somehow wards away the deadly fog, but it must be refreshed with the Dew of a Myrrh tree at the end of every year. Otherwise the Miasma will swallow the village whole, killing everyone that lives there. You and your brave companions set out in search of enough myrrh to keep your crystal activated for yet another year of life. Good luck. There’s more than monsters out there . . .

Instead of the tradtional FF approach (turn based RPG) Square-Enix made a brief foray into the fine genre of action/adventure RPG. You and as many as 3 other minions get to run around in real time ending the brief lives of countless less important life forms. Together. Unfortunately, this requires having no less than 4 GBAs and 4 adapter cables at the ready. I think I just felt my wallet twitch. Damn you Nintendo! You’re sooooo . . . sooo . . . marketable!! I’m through buying your crap!! For now . . .

While I’m on the subject of Final Fantasy, isn’t time we stopped calling it friggin’ “Final Fantasy”?!! Clearly, this latest installment is far from final. On one hand, I am a japanese major and well aware of the fact that the japanese often kidnap words from english then expose them to radiation in order to create a new superword previously unknown to humanity, but on the other, I’m super pissed.

Playing Crystal Chronicles with four people: Sex. Winning the Champeenship. Lord of the Rings Movies. The fourth of July. Christmas. The awesomeest awesome to awesome since awesome first awesomed awesomely. (P.S. awesome)

Playing Crystal Chroniclesby yourself: moldy cheetos

I think I’ve made my point.

What liked: Fun new take on Final Fantasy. Multiplayer gameplay is interesting and challenging. Lots of little touches you expect from a square-enix game. The sheer thrill of saying “Papaupamous.” Try it! Gives me chills!

What disliked: One player mode is truly obnoxious. Also, some of the stages can be long and boring, even with multiple people. But then again, you can’t argue that there aren’t enough of them . . .

What to expect: A refreshing (but quick) FF game full of great graphics, awesome music and lots of world to explore.

What not to expect: A true departure from Final Fantasy.

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: 4 player mode, huge worldmap, charge attacks and spell combinations.

Ratings on:

Control: 8 (spell combos are kind of hard . . . but that just makes it fun.)

Graphics: 9 (could have used just a bit more variety, but visually stunning and stimulating.)

Sound: 7 (Fantastic Music – from the opening song to the worldmap music, it’s simply amazing . . . and it repeats 20 billion times. Oh well.)

Style: 7 (A lot of the ideas here aren’t new, and most of the monsters are guests from other games, but the way the game is put together definitely deserves some points.)

Difficulty: 4/7 (4 for 4 player mode, 7 for 1 player mode.)

1st hour: 9 (twitch twitch. drool. So. Pretty.)

2th hour: 8 (Hey! I’ve heard this song before!)

3rd hour: 7 (Hey . . . I’ve heard this song before.)

5th hour: 7 (Goddam this song.)

1st week: 9 (Hey – you guys wanna play?)

#1 reason why I hate this game: Did you like River Belle path? I sure as heck hope so, because you’ll be going there every third cycle or so.

by Zombie FreeOhio