Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (DS) Review

Posted by Jordan Williams on 03.31.2008

If this was a contest of who had the longer name, this game would win hands down. But does the follow-up to the Gamecube co-op adventure game succeed over it's older brother?

When everyone remembers the Final Fantasy spin-off Crystal Chronicles, they either have two memories of it; a great co-op beat-em-up that had a wonder sense of graphics and team work in which a team member would sacrifice themselves to keep the rest of you alive, or an impossibly hard single player game that forced you to stay inside of a bubble and take the long way around everything while you were constantly swamped with enemies.

Well, this game definitely finds the middle ground between the two.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Ring of Fates (FFCC:RF for 'short') takes the CC style of gameplay and puts it on the DS, for every thing it fixes of it's Gamecube counterpart, however, it seems to make a bigger problem out of it, but more on that later.

FFCC: RF follows the story of Yuri and Chelinka, two clavat (humanoid humans) who have discovered a mysterious magic power after a friendly adventure into a cave. On this story they are joined by Alhanalem (Yuke), Gnash (Selkie, very reminiscent to Gau of FFVI fame), and Meeth (Lilty). From there it takes on the pretty standard "We must destroy evil because we are good" story you'd expect from a Final Fantasy game, and in truth, it does its job. They let you know right from the get-go that you aren't expecting a tour-de-force here. This is a beat-em-up game through and through, despite its lineage.

The downside is that its lineage might be the biggest thing working against it.


Graphics

We start off with the graphics, which truthfully aren't very bad, but are just a bit bland. There are nice environments and textures and the creatures are detailed enough but it all just seems a bit recycled from the DS version of Final Fantasy III. The game boasts the ability to customize your character in any way, and this does hold true as your character does change depending on every single piece of equipment you wear, sadly however, when you hop onto ad-hoc and play with friends you don't get many customizable options for the unarmored player. They either look like Yuri, Chelinka, Gnash, Meeth, or Al or a gender swap (However in Al's case it looks exactly the same). But there's a massive downside in the form that the game suffers from almost crippling lag whenever there is too much going on screen. This makes trying to cast spells downright impossible late in the game.

The cut scenes, both FMV and not, are well done. They use all of the epic camera cuts you would expect them to make and work well for such a small game. Its right up there with the best you can get on the DS's 3D hardware, but when it begins to push the limits it really begins to strain and that can sometimes get very annoying.

The bottom screen functions as your main menu, but you won't end up using it much in the heat of unless you are swapping out magic spells. Why? Because you can't pause FFCC: RF at -any- time.


Gameplay

With not being able to pause being one of the minor gripes, there's actually some good here in this little cartridge. The gameplay is handled almost identical to the Gamecube counterpart except there's much more emphasis on attacking and beating up stuff rather than spells, as well as no one in your party ever has to carry the damned crystal chalice.

Yes, no more 'stay in the circle'. You are free to roam the entire map given there are no environmental hazards like water or lava in your way. The gameplay does change a bit depending on which character you make/are using in the story mode. The Cravats specialize more in melee and hand to hand combat and since your main character is of that clan you will most likely use this character the most. The Yukes are the spell casters of the game, which actually hurts their value since spell casting is almost completely useless this time around. Selkies focus more on ranged attack and avoidance, utilizing extremely useful double-jump ability, and Litlys are almost in the same boat as Yokes, being mostly a spell casting class.

You might be asking yourself right now, however, why the immense hate on the spell casting system? I'll tell you right now, it doesn’t work that well. The layout of the DS is fine in the sense of the jump, grab, and attack buttons. But with spell casting the ball has really been dropped. You have to hold down the X button and move a crosshair under the general area of the enemy (or party member) in question, just like in the Gamecube game. But there are a ton of problems with this time around. The crosshair moves VERY slow with the DS's D-pad. It's almost a crawl and most enemies never stay still long enough for you to catch them with the spell. On top of that spells in the game are a limited quantity; you can only hold 10 at a time by default. Although enemies sometimes drop an extra spell or two upon defeat, you will at times find yourself burning up a spell on an enemy only to find out you need it later to unlock a door.



Another problem that makes spell casting almost impossible is the VERY poor teammate AI. Unlike the original Crystal Chronicles, you are never forced to go this game alone in the story mode for long, eventually you will always have Al, Meeth, and Gnash (for the game's purposes Yuri and Chelinka are both represented by Yuri's avatar.) But honestly, it still seems like you are playing alone. While you will spend every moment of the game fighting for your life as your character, your AI teammates will get stuck on walls, constantly walk into hazards, or stand there and not attack AT ALL. There's a 'callback' button (L) which will automatically teleport any lagging characters to your side, but it does nothing because once they are there they will do nothing but run up to the nearest enemy and just take damage. At most the other characters feel like spells in themselves due to the special 'race abilities' each member possesses. You'll most likely never use Meeth and Al unless their ability is needed to get passed a certain point. You'll almost exclusively use Yuri for his attack power and Gnash for his double-jump.

This all ties back into spell casting because it's almost vital to have your enemy distracted by something when you cast a spell. Say in co-op. You can tell your buddy you are casting a spell, in that time they will run interference by attacking the monster in question and keeping it away from you while you sloooowly move the crosshair under them. However, with the complete lack of 'I" in FFCC: RF's "AI" your CPU controlled teammates will stand around like bumps on a log while the monster moseys over and whacks you in the face.

All in all while the game DID eliminate two of the biggest determents to its older brother in the way of impossible single-player and a lack of freedom when playing. They also added in much bigger problems with horrible teammate AI and utterly useless spell casting. Despite all of that, playing the game like a straight beat-em-up IS fun for awhile, and it's very possible to beat the game this way. So the completely broken spell casting an AI problems don't ruin the game, just a small part of it.


Sound

It's a Final Fantasy game. You know exactly what to expect here. It has all of the familiar tunes you would expect from it, and not much else. Sound effects are pretty much the same deal. There are a lot of them, but they aren't really memorable. Basically, it's what you would expect from a game with "Final Fantasy" in the title, nothing more, and nothing less.

I will take a moment; however, to point out that this game does have a huge chunk of voice acting. Not as much as last years Transformers, but enough to take some of the important cut scenes to a whole new level. However, I will have to point out the dialogue...it ranges from very good to absolutely horrible and there is only one person to blame for this.

Meeth.

They decided to give every character a certain personality tick that shows up in their dialogue and written text. Gnash speaks in caveman third person. Al tends to always end his sentences with descriptive adjectives; Meeth however...decides to add "ie" to random words.

"What the hell? I'm in a Final Fantasy game?"

turns into

"What the hellie? I'm in a Final Fantasy gamie?"

Sure, it looks cute now, but after about seven hours it gets DAMNED old. That's the only real gripe about the sound. It's alright, but nothing that will make you hunt down an mp3 of.

Lasting Appeal

This where the game was built in mind, it has a single player story mode but the brunt of the FFCC series was always meant to be about co-op. But there's a big problem with this one...despite the game saying its Nintendo Wi-Fi compatible, it's not what it sounds like. The only thing the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection is used for is for trading customized moogles.

Yep.

If you want to slug it out with some friends you are going to have to find three people who own the game and play it that way. This brings up a very big flaw, perhaps the biggest flaw of the game in the sense that co-op play is almost unplayable. The lag between the four DSs coupled with the lag of the game itself insures that you will never play at a moderate speed. It sucks the fun RIGHT out of something that extends the life of this game.

Even with such a low point, the story mode does have some time on it. Despite its repetitive dungeon crawling gameplay, it never seems to 'feel' old because it's so mindless, which IS a good thing. You'll clock about 12 hours and once you do you'll find out that it was pretty well spent, but I doubt you'll do it again.


Fun Factor

Given what the game is, it's hard for it NOT to be fun. If you are a fan of beat-em-up games then you will have a blast with this. It's ALMOST a DS equal to the Marvel Legends/Ultimate Alliance series. It's easy to get lost in the button mashing action but it rarely ever feels boring or too repetitive. If you pick this up expecting something in the vein of a traditional Final Fantasy game though, you will be in for a big disappointment.



When co-op actually isn't laggy, the fun really shines through as it adds a new layer to the game and you can actually see four players going at it in real time. But it's too few and far between to be noteworthy.

The 411

This is a solid game with some faults, but they can be easily overlooked if you are willing to give it the chance. I said earlier that the single biggest thing working against this game is that it is attached to the near-perfect Final Fantasy family. If this game was simply "Ring of Fates", a lot of these problems would be excusable or easier to overlook, but because it has Final Fantasy in the title you can't forgive them for messing up some of the stuff they did.

FFCC: RF (last time I'm typing that) is a nice little game, and manages to fix a few of the problems that it's Gamecube brother had, but at the same time brought a new batch of problems with it. It's a good distraction, but not enough to keep you hooked.

Graphics	8.0	Slowdown aside and color changes aside, they are highly detailed and customizeable and visibly push the DS to it's limits.
Gameplay	7.0	If you look at the game as a simple beat-em-up, it's all good. But the ball was really dropped on spellcasting.
Sound	6.5	Nothing you havent heard before or will ever want to hear again. Voice acting is a nice touch, though.
Lasting Appeal	5.0	Lack of any real online play really hurts this title, and I doubt you'll be able to find four people to slog through this with.
Fun Factor	7.0	This game is a great little distraction for the 12-13 hours it'll take for you to beat, after that you can try beating the game solo but I doubt you will.
Overall	6.5   [ Average ]