I was expecting a lot from Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. Previews all gushed about the graphics, the co-op multiplayer. The chief draw was, for me, the Game Boy Advance connection. We've had quite a few games that offer simple bonuses for hooking up a GBA, and the lovely everpresent level map, but never a game that required a GBA. That's a challenge I'll gladly accept.
You might be aware that Nintendo's GameCube / GBA movement has an abundance of detractors. The biggest complaint is the expense involved, which, for FF:CC and 4 GBAs, could be crushing. The next largest is the idea that Nintendo is cheating game buyers who don't have the other half of the connection... like those bonus Super Mario 3 levels only available on eCards. The thought being that Nintendo could easily have included those levels on the SMB3 cartridge and skipped the whole unlikely eCard/eReader deal.
Personally, I don't give a crap about either of those, because I like spending money. And until Nintendo switches over to a release line of solely pro wrestling and bass fishing games, they can have all of my money that they want. Quality is worth jumping through hoops for.
So you're going to read a lot of negativity about connectivity, probably until Nintendo finally either dumps the concept entirely or integrates their console and handheld units so closely that you physically can't own one without the other. But this review isn't about that, because I say it works great. No, the problems with Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles go a bit deeper than the required GBA collection. Amazingly, for all the exposed gimmickry of using GBAs as a controller, the game has found a completely ordinary place to fail: unbalanced multiplayer.
Before we talk about the gameworld, forget the prefacing title. There is very little Final Fantasy in this game. Yeah, there's the odd Moogle, but that's as far as it goes. Of course, that really only indicates that, as gamers, we have a very narrow definition of what a "Final Fantasy" game should be, which isn't exactly fair (or interesting) to Square Enix. Since I've never really played a "genuine" FF game anyway, I'm going to move right past that.
I'm also not going to discuss the single player mode, because I've never tried it. That's just not why I wanted this game. In fact, there's a bunch of things I'm not going to get into - like how great the boss fights are, or the weird letter-writing stuff - and you're just going to have to take those as read. This is a pretty big game, and I'm covering the best of the best and the worst of the worst.
In FF:CC, you and your fellow GBA-owning pals become the sons and daughters of a small village in a world covered in miasma. This miasma kills everything except baddies and Moogles, so every year the village sends out its kids to gather the one thing that keeps the miasma away: a drop of the magic liquid myrrh that recharges the village's protective giant crystal. Your team - called a crystal caravan - must travel from region to region, braving enemy hotspots to collect the liquid. Once your caravan collects three drops of myrrh, the game calls that a "year" and throws a huge party... during which a text recap of your year's adventures is displayed. Then it’s off to the next year. Between all that there’s a continuous stream of confusing and nonsensical cutscene interludes that dog your travels between the dungeons. More on that later, I want to cover the good stuff first.
It’s a great looking game. Moogles are fluffy, the various worlds are detailed and convincing. It looks so good that you’ll forget how good it looks, because almost nothing breaks that illusion by looking crappy. You might notice some unfortunate moire patterning in water or grass fields, but that’s about it.
The nicest bit about FF:CC is how the game’s storyline and presentation work to streamline the multiplayer experience. To wit:
- Everyone hates splitscreen on console games, because splitscreen just sucks. Split 2P usually means a restricted, warped view, and split 4P can be confusing and distracting. FF:CC addresses this by borrowing Gauntlet’s age-old same-screen quasi-overhead viewpoint. But remember how you could press against the edge of an invisible barrier, stuck until your partners caught up with you? FF:CC uses the miasma as a device to encourage players to stay together. One player of the group must carry along a crystal chalice, which projects a spherical protection zone. Wander outside of that, and you eventually take damage from the burning miasma. Clever!
- Everyone hates inventory-supported multiplayer because it means that either everybody has to manage inventory at the same time (or, visit the same item shop all at once) or three players sit around while one mucks in his pockets. FF:CC moves all personal information to the Game Boy screen, so you can eat berries all you like without ever bothering the other players. Nice!
- Everyone hates getting behind when some players play more than others. Although FF:CC does offer a stats-based system for character upgrades, every magic spell in the game is available to all players regardless of level. You just have to find them during your dungeon crawl. And at the end of the dungeon, everyone’s magic gets wiped. So while your individual magic level will determine the damage you can dish out, it’s never going to be a case where one hardcore player has all the coolest spells and the new guys just suck along with nothing. Cool!
- Everyone hates boring, repetitive fighting. Turn-based combat can become drudgery death in old-fashioned games where everybody, monsters included, gets a moment to select an attack and then wait for it to be carried. FF:CC is all arcade combat, fast and furious. And just so you don’t think it’s all about button mashing, spellcasting is realtime as well, and requires a great deal of finesse for the advanced player. When players cast certain spells at the same time, they will combine to form more powerful and complex attacks. And since the action is all real-time, the only way to cast the biggest, baddest spells is to talk about it and plan it. Especially since some high-end spells require bizarre and exact timing sequences to pull off. Sweet!
- Everyone hates dying. Especially when one player dies and then can’t come back until much later, or the game forces a level reset or reload to get the dead guy back in the game. FF:CC is very free with character resurrection… players can protect against death by carrying Phoenix Down items, or any other player with a Phoenix Down or the Life spell can use it to the bring somebody else back to life almost instantly. Pheonix Downs are finite and are probably best held until boss fights, but the Life spell (like all spells) can be used continuously until the end of that particular dungeon. As long as a couple players have Life, everyone gets to stay in the game. And there’s no penalty for dying! (Unless all the players die, that’s when you get a level reset.) Excellent!
Many of these points are addressed by online PC games, but lack the fun of having everyone in the same room. This is important for tactical reasons… where you can actually talk about who should use what spell, and who needs the artifact powerup, etc. As opposed to typing it. Or voice-chatting it with dickheads you’ve never met. Plus, each player gets a different map screen on their GBA… so one person will have the level map, another will have the baddie locator, and the third will have the baddie weakness scope. It’s important that the players actively cooperate so that they collect all the treasures and find their way to the boss and the exit.
Each GBA also gets a “secret” goal. For example, “Open treasure chests” or “Only use focus attacks” or my favorite “Take damage.” It’s really up to you whether you keep it a secret or not, but whoever does best at meeting their secret goal gets first pick of the treasures found in this dungeon. It adds a small competitive aspect to a largely cooperative adventure. Even if you find all eight treasures in a dungeon, each player only gets to take home one of them, so meeting your secret goal could become very important.
FF:CC also lets you add and remove party members easily, so a friend can jump in at any point in your quest. In other words, you’re not stuck playing the whole game with the same party, start to finish.
All of which leads me to believe that Crystal Chronicles is geared for the casual, social gamer. The truly hardcore adventure types are going to prefer MMORPGs anyway.
So, the game looks great. The GBA screen is useful and smart. But now we’re going to see where Crystal Chronicles stumbles.
First, the monotonous cutscenes. You know I love plot in my games, but this game just doesn’t need it. All the great stuff I ticked off above has no need for a deep, absorbing plot. This game should be about action, about fighting monsters, about collecting powerful artifacts. In a room of casual gamers, the odds are low that everybody is going to care about the subplots like I do. Worst of all, these moments appear randomly, while you’re moving across roads on the overhead map. Adventure games used to have random monster encounters; FF:CC has random cutscene encounters.
To make matters worse, since your party can change from play to play, you could end up with a group that has no idea about Gurdy’s ongoing poetry or the rumors of the Black Knight… and most likely doesn’t care. It would probably be different if the cutscenes were sweeping, well-animated CG mini-epics, but they’re just simple shots using the game engine and text. 99% of them show your characters standing on a dirt road watching other characters talk to you. They’re lame.
And about letting people jump in and out of the quest… in theory, it sounds great. Everybody has equal access to all the magic, so people shouldn’t feel left behind if they’re playing alongside more practiced friends. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way. New people are going to do less damage and have a shorter life meter, so they’re going to spend a lot of time dying in an aggressive dungeon. Or some player is going to spend a lot of time healing from the back row.
Aside: We’ve had great success with two experienced players and two new players, but any party where the new players outnumber the old is going to get facerocked, and no one will have any fun at all. The game just doesn’t scale down appropriately when you try to bring in new players after hitting Year 4. So play smart and let the older group wean in the new meat. Everyone will have a much better time.
Minigames. The game already expects you to have 2-4 people playing, so why not include a bunch of extra bonuses? The game even makes you think there’s plenty of them, by connecting them to an ongoing Find the Moogle in Each Dungeon puzzle. We have found exactly one minigame, the Mario Kart Super Circuit knockoff Blazin’ Caravans. It’s neat in that you all play it on the GBA, but it’s a pretty lousy game to begin with. There should be minigames everywhere, card games, little arcade games, anything to promote a different way to play with your party members. The closest thing we found to a new minigame was a cow-racing event in one of the towns, where we all had to pick a cow to bet on… and then watch them all walk towards towards the finish line.
Another problem: towns are boring. You can’t enter any buildings. The townspeople all stand around and watch you walk past. Dialogue repeats often. You quickly get the feeling that they are immaterial to your quest. And aside from buying new weapons, they are.
Using a GBA as a controller forces a strange button scheme on you. It works like this: the d-pad is movement, A is attack and B is context-sensitive (read, pickup, that sort of stuff). The difficult part is that A is actually defined by you during play, and this can be very daunting for new players. Using the GBA’s L and R shoulder buttons, you cycle through a list of assigned actions, and whatever action is currently up becomes your A button. Attack and Defend are always available, and the rest of your available slots are filled with inventory items… magic spells and healing food. This means you have to get in the habit of quickly rotating through your action list to select the desired spell or attack function. It’s doable, even efficient, but a little tricky. It’s the price you pay for having that GBA screen available.
Also, toggling between the GBA screen and the Cube screen can throw people off. Obviously the TV is for fighting and exploring, but the GBA screen holds about ten pages worth of information. Inventory, letters from home, your favorite foods, artifact list, level map. You use the Select button to toggle between the two screens, but it is easy to forget which one you’re on, and start hitting buttons thinking you’re attacking… and instead you’re just scrolling through your equipment list.
But most disturbing is the game’s pattern of cycling dungeons and paths on you. There’s a fairly large world to explore, dotted by dungeons and towns, but the game makes only the smallest effort to keep you headed where you should. As a result, you lose a lot of time wandering from point to point, perhaps entering dungeons before you’re ready and therefore getting your ass kicked. This is especially frustrating when you’re trying to introduce new people to the game.
The only control the game provides – aside from popup menus that show you if the selected dungeon has myrrh available or not, because it takes three game years for a dungeon to regenerate myrrh – is through the miasma streams, rivers that separate sections of the map. In order to cross a stream, you have to have tuned your party’s chalice to a particular element… and in some cases, that simply isn’t possible depending on where you are and what elements are available to you. So, in effect, the game does try to herd you towards your goal, but it’s just not obvious enough about it or even good at it. Backtracking is common and boring. Plus, you have to physically walk through the stream, in a completely unnecessary sequence where nothing attacks you, nobody gets hurt, and there’s nothing to pick up. You just walk.
Given the effort towards fun, frantic multiplayer, I would have preferred the game just tell us where we should be headed instead of wasting our time with trial and error. Because in a game like this, I’m not really expecting a grandiose, story-based experience. We don’t want to get lost in an overworld map with continuous non-sequiter cutscenes. We don’t want to wander into areas that are beyond our skill. We want to pick up the game, battle through some dungeons, buy better weapons, and move on the next. It should at least show what dungeons are best suited for my current party. I suspect the game does have a method of controlling this – based on the year, your party’s level, the miasma streams, and the storyline - it just doesn’t share it. Several times (with new players) we entered a dungeon where we could not progress past the first few rooms without dying. And that’s all it takes for newbies to decide they never want to play the game again.
You might have noticed that all my problems with Crystal Chronicles center around one thing: the problem with bringing in new players. If you have four people (and four GBAs) and everybody is willing to play all together at the same time, you’re going to have a fantastic time. If, like me, you have friends who aren’t always around, or are just casual gamers, you’re going to end up disappointed and FF:CC is going to take an inevitable backseat to more accessible multiplayer games like Mario Party, Double Dash, Soul Calibur 2, Beach Spikers or WarioWare. There’s a lot to like about this game, you just have to fairly dedicated to get it to work.
