Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Review

If two or more people are playing, each has to have his/her own Game Boy Advance. Now you know. So stop pestering all the FAQ writers, because there is no other way to go about it. The GBA gives you a personal menu where you can assign equipment, manage your inventory, read letters from your family, and look at specific maps handed out to each player. While you’re in GBA mode, you are completely vulnerable to any monsters nearby, but you can leave the GBA on radar and just glance at it occasionally. The GBAs keep the TV screen clean and force more cooperation between players (i.e. sharing information), but I believe they could have pulled this game off without the connectivity by using “mini menus” and getting rid of some of the useless stuff like the family status.

Playing a 3D game with a Game Boy is somewhat awkward. It can really start to hurt your hands after a while, too. The A button is used to attack (or talk to NPCs), and holding down the button charges up for a magic spell or focus attack. Sometimes, this charge doesn’t work, because it either doesn’t want to, or an enemy keeps hitting you. You use the L and R buttons to cycle through your equipped commands. It’s kind of overwhelming at first, but it soon becomes second nature to switch from Attack to Cure then back to Attack in two seconds. There isn’t any specific button to defend, however. Defend is one of the commands that must be selected, and I really doubt you will ever use it because of this.

It only takes eight hours until FFCC is no longer fun, but then you still have another 12-16 to finish the game. You can technically beat FFCC rather quickly, but assuming you don’t read a hundred FAQs before you begin, you will probably go about your quest all wrong and end up spending a lot of time correcting your mistakes. As I said earlier, the game is very repetitive. By the time you get to your fifth dungeon, you’re struck with a sense of deja vu. Still, 20+ hours is a long time for you and your friends/siblings to play together. You should congratulate yourself; it may be the only time you cooperate that long (of course, that’s a gamble in its own right). The game is very involving, and you will want to finish it no matter how sick of it you become. Will you ever want to play the game again? I really doubt it. If you can find some more, or different, people to play with, it might be fun to save the world again, but… you do this at the risk of your own sanity.

The fantasy adventure feel is captured without fail, which lends to the games engrossing atmosphere (despite all its problems). FFCC is one of the most impressive-looking GameCube titles to date. Unlike most Square games, there are no FMVs, but the in-game engine is remarkable. It’s a mix between the real and the cartoony and is impressively smooth, clean, and poignant enough to give you that authentic fantasy look. The fixed camera is a bit strange, though, in that it likes to swivel around a lot, and the game is plagued by several obvious invisible walls. The Japanese composer, Nobuo Uematsu, responsible for the music to the first eleven Final Fantasy games, has no association with FFCC. Instead, Kumi Tanioka takes his place, and she does a fantastic job. The music rings of Celtic festivities with lots of horns and strings and other instruments you might find in a Harvest Moon celebration. It’s all very fitting, but I found myself enjoying the music more out of context of the game. While the score isn’t as compelling or moving as previous Final Fantasy work, it is perhaps the most upbeat and does the best job of making you feel like a part of a fantasy world.

Final Comments

As a Final Fantasy game, FFCC fails to deliver. Without the Final Fantasy moniker, I don’t think this game would have sold. Is it even any fun? Ideally, yes, as a multiplayer co-op, because it really forces you and your teammates to work together. Yet it suffers from a plethora of awful design issues that ultimately bring the experience down. Remove the multiplayer aspect, and you have pure rubbish. Take note: Do not play this game alone, because it defeats the purpose of why it was made. You might think, “Ha! It was made to promote that gimmicky connectivity crap.” Yeah, that’s true, because the requirements are expensive and the end result isn’t very novel. If you already own a GBA, though, and you known someone else who has one, go rent/buy FFCC and knock yourselves out. It won’t give you what previous Final Fantasy exploits have, and it’s going to irritate you to no end, but it’s very rare you get to play a game like this, anyway.