It’s been about 9 month since the last episode of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on the Nintendo Wii. Previous chapters in the series had you controlling multiple characters of various classes and races giving you a great traditional RPG dungeon crawling experience. Released on December 26th, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers takes a new approach by putting you in the shoes of a single character throughout the entire journey, and it doesn’t really feel like it belongs in the series at all. Square-Enix was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the game to review for you, so lets hop right in and see what it’s all about!
The events in the game take place a thousand years after the original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. While the Yuke tribe has been apparently annihilated and the Lilty Tribe has prospered in science and technology, a new breed of powerful beings known as the Crystal Bearers have arisen and are considered outcasts and criminals, as the general public is scared of their magical powers. You play as Layle, a young Crystal Bearer who has been recently put in charge of escorting the airship Alexis on it’s maiden voyage, when suddenly monsters attack and the game really takes off.
Really it’s pretty tough to determine the actual plot of the game until the end. You basically will be working for various parties and never really know who the bad guy is until the end where you’ll have a pretty epic final battle unlike anything you’ve ever played in a Final Fantasy game. While the story itself is pretty decent, I just couldn’t ever really enjoy Layle. You just can’t be a badass with feathered hair.
Like Echoes of Time, The Crystal Bearers took me roughly 11 hours to complete, so it’s really short for a Final Fantasy title. Once you beat it, you have the option to play through it again with all of the items that you’d acquired on your previous play-through. There is a crafting system similar to the other games, but you can only create jewelry. While crafting, if you place the materials in a certain order, you’ll create something with additional stats.
For the most part, The Crystal Bearers is a single player game, but if you’ve got a friend with you, they can pick up the 2nd controller and help control certain things on the screen, but I didn’t ever find a good use for this. Finally, in an attempt to bring the Xbox achievement system to the game, you are presented with a reward system for doing all kinds of different things throughout your journey, but I don’t feel this added anything to the experience.
Really, the game-play has it’s highs and lows. It’s not really a dungeon crawler in the traditional sense since there are no spells, skills, or weapons and armor. Layle has Jedi-like powers in that he can move things with his mind, so all of the combat in the game involves lifting things and throwing them at the monsters, and believe me, it gets very repetitious and not until the end of the game does it ever really become any fun when your stats are good enough to quickly pick up the objects and shoot them farther. All of the combat is done in real-time but really could have taken lessons from Square’s other titles like Infinite Undiscovery and Star Ocean: The Last Hope. There is some platforming, but it is very basic. You don’t even have to aim and you can’t mess up. You just walk close to the edge of the platform and press A and it launches you to the next one. I can’t help but think this game was designed more for kids and not for the true Final Fantasy demographic.
Besides the standard game-play, there are a ton of mini-games incorporated that are actually pretty fun. You’ll get the opportunity to skydive and shoot monsters, fly an airship, ride a Chocobo and many other fun activities. Frankly, I felt the mini-games were significantly more fun than the regular game-play.
Finally, the controls are just very awkward. It’s very clear that the Wii Remote and Nun chuck weren’t designed to move you and control the camera like the 360 or PS3 controllers were. My hands actually got sore while playing due to some of the awkward controls. Everything was designed to utilize the Wii’s motion capabilities, which personally I’m not a big fan of. I’d rather just hold onto a traditional controller.
Besides the fact that Layle looks like a douche, we finally have an RPG that looks great on the Wii! This is what Wii games SHOULD look like. Unfortunately though, there are no weapons or armor in the game, which means you won’t have the pleasure of seeing your character look cooler over time, which was a big let-down for me considering Echoes of Time had that feature.
While there aren’t any annoying characters in the game, the voice acting is just pretty mediocre. It just sounds like the actors are reading a script instead of becoming the characters themselves, much like the monotone performance you’re getting from me right now. The soundtrack in the game is pretty decent though, as the music for the most part really goes with the situations that you’ll be placed in, but really, what’s up with this redneck music when your fighting out in the open?
I really got my hopes up for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers. Even though the graphics in the previous title really sucked, it was such a better game than this one. Really, the only thing that felt like this was a Crystal Chronicles game was the fact that it was set in the Crystal Chronicles world. The game-play doesn’t feel very much like a dungeon crawler, there aren’t any weapons or magic, you only control a single character and it is very repetitious. You do get the benefit of a bunch of mini-games to keep you entertained and the graphics are great for a Wii title, but that’s about it. I feel that games should stop trying to be innovative when it comes designing the game-play around the gimmick of the motion controller and just stick to the basics that we all know are fun. All in all, The Crystal Bearers is not a bad game, it’s just very mediocre. Let me know what you thought about my review by rating this video and leaving your questions and comments below.
