When I think of Square-Enix, I think Final Fantasy and when I think Final Fantasy I think turn-based role playing games; but the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles series takes a different approach by giving you multiplayer dungeon crawling action. Echoes of Time is the second of the series following the Game Cube title Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, released in 2004. This past March, Echoes of Time was released on the Wii and the DS. Considering the Wii is not as powerful as the other current-generation of consoles, it certainly should have better graphics than a DS. Well, it’s an exact port, which is certainly disappointing. Luckily, it has a few things going for it that might get you past the graphics.
The game begins and it’s your 16th birthday and you’ve got to go out into the woods and perform a passing of rites to become an adult that involves interacting with a giant crystal. Upon returning to town, a local child has come down with the crystal sickness, and you’ve got to go find the ingredients for a remedy. Setting out on your journey, you visit the big city and run into an old man named Larkeicus who both teaches you to use magic, as well as leads you in the right direction to the ingredients to the remedy. Basically from here you will return back and forth to this man who will send you on quests that define the major storyline. Of course there are several plot twists throughout the story as you find out who the primary antagonist of the game is.
It turns out that the giant crystal in your town has shattered as it is found to be of significant importance to the life on the planet, so you’ve got to collect the crystal shards, and that’s where we start to see the game’s plot.
When you visit the big city for the first time, you visit an adventurer’s guild where you pick up some additional party members, but you never really get attached to any of them. There are a few important characters that you’ll interact with, but you never really care about your own.
Echoes of Time took me about 12 hours to complete. As I stated earlier, the game was released on both the Wii and the DS. It is clearly evident that it was designed for the DS as you see the two separate screens. No effort was taken to enhance the graphics or change the interface for the Wii. But, don’t let this run you off quite yet. Like the original Crystal Chronicles game, Echoes of Time is multiplayer where you and up to 3 of your friends can crawl the dungeons together. What’s cooler, is that the DS and the Wii can play the game together, so if you’ve got a Wii and you’ve got a buddy whose got a DS sitting on your couch, or even one across the world, you can all still play the game together.
There are a ton of dungeons that you will visit multiple times including a library, aqueduct, fire and ice caves and even a graveyard. There are also lots of mini-games in the form of quests that you will unlock as you play. You can return to a quest-giver in town at any time to play these games, which will eventually give you access to some of the most powerful gear in the game. You will also collect scratch cards from enemies that you can redeem in town for some special prizes. They are interesting, but not all that entertaining to play.
Of course Echoes of Time is a dungeon crawler, which means your going to be hacking away at a wide variety of monsters throughout the levels and solving a ton of platforming puzzles with up to 4 different character classes to choose from. In the adventurers guild you can create and name your 4 characters and choose their types. There is a heavy melee class, a heavy caster class, a ranged weapons class and a hybrid.
There is a bad camera angle sometimes and awkward controls that you can’t customize. This game would be better played on a Nintendo gamepad without utilizing the Wii remote.
The screen on the right controls which character you are currently playing, as well as determines what spells your characters will cast. This set up actually works very well for the dual screened Nintendo DS, but not so much for the Wii.
It is very difficult to change equipment for your party members. It is equally difficult to purchase equipment. You have to first switch to the party member you want in the world screen, then go into the menu to equip them or go into the store to purchase for them. Then go back to the world screen and switch to the next party member and repeat.
Finally, if you aren’t playing with friends, you’ll find that your party members are very retarded. They never heal you or cure you of status ailments, and most of the time, they simply stand around not doing anything, just watching you.
Ah the weakest aspect of Echoes of Time. As I’ve mentioned already, the graphics are quite terrible and probably wouldn’t tax an original Playstation. On the other hand, one very positive thing I like about the graphics is that when you equip new weapons and armor your character model changes. Thank you. Finally. There are so few games out there today that do this right.
There are some cartoony looking cinematics in the game that look just as bad as the regular graphics. The music is sub-par and the voice acting is very mediocre. Really, the presentation is really something that needs to be looked beyond when playing.
Once you get over it’s many flaws, it is actually a very fun game. It seems though that many gamers in this day and age can’t get over a game’s flaws and then can’t enjoy them for what it is. To put it simply, if you don’t enjoy games with top of the line graphics and controls, you won’t like this. If you enjoy dungeon crawlers, especially ones that you can play with your friends, and you go in with an open mind, you’ll likely really enjoy this game, as you have the ability to continue to play through the dungeons and challenge quests after you have beat the game for additional gear. I was pretty hesitant upon initially playing this, as I just couldn’t get the hang of it. But I stuck with it and after a few hours, I was really enjoying myself. Later this year, a new Crystal Chronicles game is being released for the Wii and the trailers for it actually look amazing. So time will only tell if Square-Enix can make up for it’s flaws in Echoes of Time.
