I went through the motions with this game. At first I loved it, then I
hated it, then by the end of the game I started to enjoy it again. I
just hate needless backtracking, and this game is full of it. This
isn't a very big game in the first place, but the end got really really
hard, so you're forced to backtrack through dungeons multiple times to
get strong enough.
I loved the graphics and the music, but the gameplay did get
repetitive to me. The boss fights was enough to get me through the game
though, and the ending (while it felt tacted on) was worth playing
through this game just to watch it unfold. The overall lack of
storyline is what makes me disappointed in this game.
----------Battle System----------
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is an overhead dungeon crawler
RPG. The game is very action oriented, so there will be alot of
slashing and hacking, but there is a very original magic system that I
kind of enjoyed. You can't save up any spells with you before a
dungeon, but what you have to do is kill an enemy and hope one of them
drops a magic orb. If you collect a Fire Orb then you can use unlimited
Fire magic until you exit the dungeon, so there's NO MP in this game,
which is awesome.
You only have so many spaces to put things though. I think you
start out with 3 or 4 spaces. These spaces will include "Fight",
"Defend", and so on. Each magic and item you want to carry with you
takes it's own space. If you have enough spaces to carry two magic
orbs, then you can Fuse them. If you have 2 Fire Orbs next to each
other, then they can for Fira. If you have a Fire and Thunder next to
each other then you can create Gravity. The list gets bigger the more
magic you can find, but there's only a few original orbs you can find
and hold.
One thing that kind of bugged me about the game was your
inventory. You can only hold about 40-50 items (I'm guessing). If you
want to make good items or want to carry alot of health items, then
you'll be tossing out alot of stuff you want. There's no deposit or
bank that will store unwanted items. To make weapons and armor you have
to start with a scroll. This scroll tells the blacksmith how to make
the item. Then you need the required items to make that item, and then
you finally have to pay the blacksmith. Making items is a long process,
and to make what you want you'll have to carry a ton of items with you,
and back to that, you'll be ditching alot of stuff you want because of
that.
The dungeons revolve around similar puzzle structures, but the
differ enough to give you a decent challenge, there was a few that I
was stumped on for weeks. Other than those few puzzles, all the
dungeons are the same, all you have to do is get to the exit and fight
the boss. Getting to the exit is the hardest part. While all the bosses
are different in their own ways, you still have to kill them the same
way, hack and slash, with only a couple exceptions.
After you beat a dungeon you'll get rated on the way you did the
dungeon with a random reason. For example, the reason at the end is to
collect the most gold, then if you collected alot of gold then you'll
be rewarded with a ton of points. The more points you get the better
Artifacts you get to choose from. These Artifacts is the only other way
(other than equiping items) to edit your stats. You can boost your HP,
MP, Strength, Magic and so on over time by re-doing dungeons and
getting more Artifacts. In multiplayer this is how the four players get
to choose who picks the artifact first (whoever has the most points at
the end of the dungeon).
----------Characters / Story----------
At the start of the game you get to create your own character
through a series of questions and customizable things. There's four
races you can pick through, each have their strengths and weaknesses.
After you made a character you'll be whisked off into your adventure.
The world is surrounded by a mist called Miasma. This Miasma is what
monsters live in, but to humans it's deadly. Your job as a caravaner is
to take a chalice and go to every Mryth Tree and collect a drop of
Mryth to bring back to the village and feed to the giant crystal that
protects them. If you play in single player, then a Moogle will come
with you carrying the Chalice (which has a small crystal on top of it
to protect you). In multiplayer you'll have to get one of your buddies
to carry it.
After you've collected three drops of Mryth you'll be warped back
to your original village of Tipa, have a party with the villages, sing
and dance and restart your quest to gather more Mryth. This is the
basic idea of the game and it can get pretty repetitive.
Your characy is a mute, so he can't talk. You'll meet various
people in towns, but they don't progress your story at all. The only
"story" in the game until the last 40 minutes is the caravaners you’ll
meet and greet on the road. These scenes really don't help out the
story, but the characters can be interesting. You'll eventually meet up
with the same people over the course of the game and get more of a
sense of their personalities, but by the end of the game none of that
will ever matter.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics impressed me quite a bit. This is, for the most part,
an overhead dungeon crawler like a Balder's Gate game, but Crystal
Chronicles surpasses just about every dungeon crawler I've seen to
date. The dungeons are all unique to each other, they look great, and
they're really long. The boss battles are HUGE and was the main reason
I ventured further and further into the game. I just wanted to see what
I had to fight next. The enemies looked great and the character models
look awesome. The cutscenes are extremely impressive to me, with the
fluent movement of the characters, and all the detail put into them. I
enjoyed these short cutscenes more than I did any Xenosaga game to
date.
But for all the good, there is the bad. You can tell Square cut
some corners in this game to possibly save up on disc space. This game
could of easily been split into 2 discs. Whatever. There's just alot of
repeating backgrounds, for example there's the Moogle Nests, which all
look exactly the same, no matter what. Then there's the towns, which
are big, but you can't go into any houses or anything and most towns
only consist of one giant screen, no sections at all to make them
bigger or more interesting. There's no camera control in the game, so
you're stuck with what Square gives you in a fixed camera views. At the
end of the year is the same cutscene everytime.
----------Sound----------
The music is classic Square, some of the best music I've heard in
a game since Kingdom Hearts possibly. The sound effects are good, just
about every monster have their own unique grunts. There is no voiced
out dialog, but before you enter a dungeon a lady in a real somber
voice will give you a cryptic overview of the dungeon, similar to
Mister Mosquito.
----------World Map----------
The world map is a simple connect the dots map, where you get only
a couple options of moving to your next destination, be it a dungeon,
port, town or Miasma stream. The game is seperated in four sections,
each section is guarded by a Miasma stream surrounded by mist. You need
to match your chalice's element to let you through the Miasma. The
Miasma's element changes every year. Within dungeons you'll find a
bright circular object, these things are what changes your elements
within the dungeon. When you find these you can quickly change your
element on the world map after defeating the dungeon. There's an
"Ultimate" element you'll need to find to finish the game, which is
arguably the hardest part of the game.
When you walk across the map you'll often be stopped by a
cutscene. These scene's seem unimportant and worthless, and rarely have
anything to do with the "story" of the game, but they become very
important in the end of the game. You'll often have to make a Yes or No
question, or possibly have to give or buy items from the people you
meet. The overall lack of storyline is what makes me disappointed in
this game.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
17:59
You don't save after it's completed, so it allows you to continue
before you take on the final dungeon doing whatever you missed. I
missed plenty of stuff with this game, there was alot to do, but
nothing truly important in my eyes I think. The ending was pretty good,
much better than the rest of the game.
