Gamertell

Title: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time
Price: $39.99
System(s): DS*, Wii
Release Date: March 24, 2009
Publisher (Developer): Square Enix, Inc.
ESRB Rating: “Everyone 10+” for fantasy violence, language and mild suggestive themes.
Pros: Good graphics, less backtracking, immediate action (and magic), decent story and cutscenes, real-time combat and WiFi multiplayer.
Cons: Some awkward controls, repetitious respawning, periodically clumsy AI allies, difficulty in un-equipping items and inability to pass some areas in single-player mode.
Overall Score: One thumb up, on thumb sideways; 80/100; B-; * * * out of five.

Ah, the never-ending Final Fantasy franchise. So many games, so much time required to play them. The latest addition to the handheld family of FF games, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, is more a dungeon crawler than a role-playing game.

Sure, you level up your character, key articles (weapons, helmet, armor and an accessory) and magic and can build playable characters from pre-set types, but action is real-time.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing but it does make this feel less like a Final Fantasy game. The grinding, backtracking to talk to villagers and silly monsters do prove to be periodic reminders that you are still in a the Final Fantasy world.

Happy Birthday, Now Kill Something

As your avatar comes of age and earns the right to use magic, you set out on a quest to help fellow villagers. As you attack nasties, take on a few fellow adventurers (or simply create a few), collect stuff and level up, things soon go wrong and you are called upon to help restore the world to it usual, blissful order.

You fight by button mashing your key weapon or pressing a button to activate a spell and move it at a target. Missing becomes a result of player inaccuracy instead of statistics.

You begin alone but, once you get to the next town, you can go to a store front and order up some travel companions. You can only take three with you at a time but they are free and you can swap them with acquired companions or other creations. You can also change the AI Settings (Just Follow Me, Do Your Best, Don’t Use Magic, Protect Yourself and Go Nuts With magic) at any time to try and get them to be a bit more helpful.

You can also play at at member of your party by tapping their icon in the left side of the touchscreen. Also on the bottom screen is a mini map of your location, which nicely indicates open doors and key objects, and a row of colored crystals along the right that you tap to use immediately available magic.

You, Three Strangers and a Lot of Stuff to Pick Up

The real-time combat - mashing instead of the turn-based attacks based on odds - does work pretty well although with some accuracy issues. As with many 3D DS games, up is not always up (it’s really Up+Left) and most of the world is positioned on an angle so you do a lot of crooked walking and will likely missing a lot more attacks and object tosses than you’d like. There is an option to have the controls auto-angle so it’s easier to get around but, until you get used to it, it makes combat a bit awkward.

My main complaint with the single-player mode are that the AI puts characters in your way so, when you want to pick up an item a defeated opponent just dropped, you might pick up an ally instead. Then you have to drop them and try again. It’d be much easier to make dropped stuff auto collected since your pouch seems pretty bottomless, at least for small items and money. The AI control also makes your allies try to hover closer to you, so when you have a puzzle to complete that requires characters in specific locations, you get one in place and the others shift just enough to move off of a switch or ledge where you need them to complete the puzzle.

Also, to attach extra crystals to weapons and such, you need to un-equip your target item (eg a weapon), which is not a menu option. Instead you need to equip another weapon to un-equip the other one. At least once that’s resulted in my mistakenly losing the original item I was holding. In fact, the menu system as a whole is pretty frustrating, making equipment management far more difficult than it needs to be. Also, when browsing through menus, even in the single-player mode, the action does not stop, so plan to take cheap shots from respawned or unkilled opponents while searching for that nonexistant “Unequip” command.

The game does offer a multiplayer function, both ad-hoc and WiFi, which may be necessary to complete those puzzles where fidgety AI characters won’t stay in place so you cannot complete the puzzles alone. The connection did stay steady and I was able to get through several areas without a single stutter. Also, although there were several people in my party, two of us ventured into areas together while the third wanders to who-knows-where. Still, the two of us had to cross through doors together to proceed.

The game’s map is kept manageable by being relatively small with new, key locations popping up when necessary. You still have some of the silly FF-style backtracking within towns to talk to people to unlock the next quest or within dungeons to find new objects (eg new keys) and open previously un-openable doors.

The game’s graphics look great, especially for a DS game. It has some of your standard FF-style cutscenes that are far more glorious than necessary but still beautiful.

Also, there aren’t any random battles as you traverse between map locations. Instead, monsters generate from the same spots, you can figure out patterns. That also means you can often pass through a door and then back to a room to make them come back, resealing all the treasure chests and regenerating monsters for easy leveling and collecting more stuff.

There are also several side quests presented as mini games in a central location, which is convenient.

The Never-Ending Saga

In general, the Echoes of Time for DS is fun and looks great. If you are a solo gamer you’ll likely get very annoyed at portions of the game that require better cooperation (red: real people)  than the AI can provide.

If you periodically play with others, you’ll be able to get through even the most annoying areas with ease and likely enjoy the game a bit more.

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