yet another

I bought Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles today. I’m generally not a huge fan of action RPGs, but I do like a few of them. (Threads of Fate and Odin Sphere come to mind.) It got good reviews on 1up and IGN, so I went in hoping for the best.

I’m not very far into the game (only about half an hour in, just enough to clear the tutorial dungeon) and already I can tell it’s going to be a WAY better experience than FF3. Obviously I haven’t gotten far into it so my “real” review will have to come much later, but here’s my breakdown on it so far.

+ Graphics are hot. I don’t know what the IGN reviewer is talking about, so far the graphics are way more impressive than FF3’s. I HATED FF3’s world/town graphics. Augh, ESPECIALLY the world map. Ring of Fates is consistently gorgeous on the DS, whether you’re battling, walking around, or sitting through a cutscene.

-/+ The voice acting so far is hit-or-miss. Chelinka sucks. Al is just… oh God. Al is just OBNOXIOUS. Meeth or whatever is also pretty annoying, but at least more tolerable than Al. But the plus side is that Yuri, the main character (or at least for now) is tolerable and his father is actually really good. I know that because this game is “kiddier” than, say, the main Final Fantasy series, the characters have to play up stereotypes and exaggerate aspects of themselves in lieu of actual personality. For example, Al tends to end his sentences with words that end with an “-al” sound, which of course he accents and pronounces like his name, even if it’s not really how it’s supposed to be said. (For instance, “comic-AL” instead of “comical” and “unstab-AL” instead of “unstable.”) I didn’t really expect anything awesome in this category and I guess if it ever gets really bad I can just mute it, but still. My kingdom for good, consistent North American voice acting!

+ The story is cute, if cliché. Okay, yes, you have that unnamed, masked villain on the sidelines, and yes, every character so far plays a common literary stereotype. But damn it all, it’s really cute. My favorite character so far is the father. He’s the wise, well-grounded guy who gives surprisingly insightful advice to his children. Man, I wish MY dad said stuff like that to me, like “If you have a strong will, you can accomplish anything” and whatever. Al and Meeth intrigue me more than they annoy me (despite the horrible voice acting). The brother-sister fighting is kind of blah, but whatever. Chelinka has a cute moment when she, Yuri, and the father are looking up at the stars. “Shh, your sister is asleep.” “No she’s not, she’s just pretending.” “Way to ruin the mood, jerk.”

+ The puzzles are cute. Obviously since I’ve only done the first dungeon (and a tutorial one at that) the puzzles are easy enough for any retard to solve, but I anticipate harder shit to come. Kind of like when I buy a new Zelda game, I don’t need to actually play it to know that by the time I hit the last dungeon of the game, I’m probably going to need to cheat and use a walkthrough to clear it.

- I’d kill to be able to change the camera angle. So far it hasn’t been that bad, but I foresee future battles that will be made more difficult than they need to be simply because there is only one fixed camera angle.

- Multiplayer is local multi-cart only. Which means I can’t play with my sister since she doesn’t have the game. I also can’t play with any of my friends online. I’ll try and convince my sister to get this game. I heard that the multiplayer is way more awesome than single player, and if I’m having such a great time by myself then I can only imagine what it’ll be like to play with others.

+ The controls aren’t dumb. Your basic attack button is there to kill shit, and I suppose if you really wanted to you could button mash your way to victory… but that would be boring. Ring of Fates lets you interact with enemies in a bunch of different ways, like slamming them into walls (and getting extra goodies), or jumping on top of them and pummeling the crap out of them, or picking them up and slashing them apart in your hands, so on and so forth. And I mean, I’ve only played with Yuri so far, and all he can really do is whack shit around with his sword. I can only imagine that things will get more complicated when the other characters (and the magic system!) come into play. But the game is also blissfully uncomplicated: it all comes back to jumping with B, lifting/throwing with Y, and attacking with A. Beautiful.

I’m really glad that I found a good RPG for the DS to get into. This is basically everything that Children of Mana should’ve been, but wasn’t.