The GameCube Archives Score: 6.0/10In what I find ironic, I
never finished a Final Fantasy game before I beat
Crystal Chronicles a
few days ago for this review. I say this as someone who has been around
for...quite awhile. I'll never forget playing the first Final Fantasy for NES
at a friend's house--my first RPG experience--and being completely baffled. I
picked up
Final Fantasy VI in a mass SNES purchase, played through the
first hour, thought it was cool, and never went back to it. For reference,
Chrono Trigger is my favorite video game of all time.
FFVI should have immediately hooked me.
|
Pictured: the opening menu for not Chrono Trigger.
|
But that's not all. PS1 era? I made it eight hours into
FF9, then never
went back. I played
FF8 for 12 hours and then stopped! At some point, I
realized that Final Fantasy just might not be the franchise for me. I often
found the gameplay systems overly complicated, and the story lines convoluted
and ridiculous. Here's the irony: months ago, Square announced that a remaster
of
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles--the only Final Fantasy game
released for the Nintendo GameCube, would be remastered for the Switch. I'd
just bought a copy for my GameCube off of eBay on a whim, and considered the
matter serendipity. It seemed like a sign that
Crystal Chronicles should be the first Final Fantasy game I'd
complete...and on its original system.
|
I mean, just look at the GameCube-ness of this.
|
Square and Nintendo's acrimonious parting in the mid-90's greatly saddened me.
As a huge fan of
Super Mario RPG and the aforementioned
Chrono Trigger, among other games, I felt like I was sure to miss out
on some great future Square titles because of my Nintendo fanboy status. Sure
enough, as much as loved my Nintendo 64, I got tired of seeing rave review
after rave review for every one of the numerous games Square released on the
Sony PlayStation. Admittedly, one of the reasons I didn't hugely appreciate my
GameCube during its original run was because I took numerous periods off from
it to go back and play games I'd missed on the Playstation. There was no way,
for example, that I was going to go my whole life without playing through
Chrono Cross, the sequel to my all-time favorite game. Maybe that's
why, in addition to my indifference to the franchise, I missed out on
Crystal Chronicles the first time. Anyway, it looked weird.
|
Actually, on closer inspection...it looks kind of like
Chrono Cross. Seriously, they couldn't even do a GameCube
Chrono Cross remaster? C'mon, Square!
|
Fittingly,
Crystal Chronicles greatest asset brought me around to
finally purchasing the game. Sixteen years after its release: I bought the
game because I heard its incredible soundtrack on eBay. Indeed, after spending
30-plus hours with
Crystal Chronicles, I can definitively say,
Crystal Chronicles sound design is by far the best thing about the
game.
 |
The medieval interpretation of Lonely Island's "On a Boat" is particularly fitting for this sequence.
|
Square assigned
Crystal Chronicles' soundtrack to Kumi Tanioka,
known for her work in the world music genre. Tanioka decided to use mostly
medieval and Renaissance-era instruments for the game's soundtrack, giving the
game a wonderful, comforting, autumnal feel. Her compositions are timeless, and
as a whole, come together to form one of the greatest video game scores of all
time. For the English versions of the game, Square hired vocalist, Donna Burke, to sing the two songs from the game involving lyrics. Burke even reworked the
songs' original Japanese lyrics for better flow. The Aussie Burke also
provides the game's narration in a lovely, lilting Irish accent.
|
It's just SO PASTORAL!!!
|
If only the rest of the game lived up to the standard of its sound. The story
sure doesn't. Going in the opposition direction of the rest of the franchise,
the story for
Crystal Chronicles is bare bones, and barely there. You
play as whichever character you create, from a choice of four races. You live
in a world divided by miasma, a substance toxic to life. The four races (all balanced differently between physical attacks, magic, etc.) live
in a world highly separated by walls of the miasma. The only thing that makes
life possible in this world is the protection of crystals. Towns all have a giant crystal in
the center that keeps the miasma away. Travelers have to take smaller crystals
with them just to get from one place to another. The thing about these
crystals is, they eventually run out of power. It's up to caravans to search
for special trees, which contain fuel for the crystals. You're part of one of
these caravans, and you must journey from place to place, reach a stage, fight
through (the monsters that thrive in the miasma) to a boss guarding a tree,
beat the boss, and get the crystal fuel. And that is it. That (up until the insanely
laborious final boss battle) is the story.
|
No, YOU hang in there!
|
But as basic as that story is, it majorly contributes to much of the
gameplay's frustrations.
Crystal Chronicle's world map is subdivided into
roughly half a dozen screens, each composed of two to three levels, and,
generally, a town. Each screen, or area I should say, is sectioned off by a
wall of miasma you must travel through. These miasma walls are elemental, so
you must make sure the crystal you are carrying is coded to either fire,
water, wind, or earth (most levels have a corresponding element, allowing you to switch the element you're carrying). If it's not, you can't progress, and that includes
going backward. Changing crystal types just to progress to the next screen is
extremely tedious--but
Tedium could well be the name of this game.
|
If I wanted restricted travel, I'd live in the 2020 real world!
|
You'll notice the tedium as soon as you start to move through one of
Crystal Chronicles'
levels. You've got a little Chocobo buddy following you around carrying a
crystal to keep you safe. If you outrun him and your protective bubble, you
immediately start taking damage. Even if you just keep pace with him, he
eventually gets tired, and makes you carry the crystal for a little
while...which makes you easy prey for monsters. When you're not carrying the
crystal and fighting, things are just...okay. There's an intentional delay
between when you press the button to swing your sword and when you actually
swing it. If you time tapping the button just right, you can do a three-hit
combo with it. This is an Action RPG game, so all of this fighting is in real
time. You can also use orbs you find in each stage to launch magic attacks or
heal yourself--and these things all have cooldown periods. You've got a limited size
command list to assign these specific magics to, which you can do at any time
through the game's clunky menu system.
|
Great, another miasma wall, my favorite!
|
You can also pay blacksmiths to craft better armor and weapons for you based
upon diagrams and materials you find throughout the game's levels.
Unfortunately, the game is cryptic on whether or not these weapons and armor
are better than what you already have until you've essentially had them
created. The game is cryptic about a lot of things. So many important game elements aren't
explained, and aren't anywhere close to intuitive. Good luck figuring them out...or even realizing they exist!
|
But why? WHY?!?!
|
For instance, the game, seemingly at random, has you run into other caravans
when you're travelling on the road. You'll get hints and tidbits at how to
access the game's final boss from
these encounters, only you won't know that's what you're getting. You'll also receive a ton of completely useless information. Anyway,
these encounters become so frequent, tedious, and repetitive, you, or at least
I, will start smashing buttons on the controller trying to skip them. They become incredibly tiring. Considering the game is fairly open-ended, with an in-game year passing after several stages are beaten (with many stages repayable at a higher difficulty in consequent years), that's a lot of encounters.
|
I'll give you whatever you want, just please, please, PLEASE get out of my way
and let me get on with this game!!!
|
As for the RPG element of the "Action RPG" moniker, you can find and collect
"artifacts" throughout each level. After you defeat the boss, you get to chose
which artifact you'd like to apply to your stats. Generally, each artifact
either gives you stronger attack power, defense, or adds a permanent heart to
your health. Because you only get this at the end of a level, leveling up
is...yes, tedious. On top of that, the difficulty in the game scales in
inconsistent ways. I found myself cruising through the game for quite awhile,
when suddenly, I found my attacks were doing essentially no damage to enemies
who were suddenly taking me out with just a couple of hits. I then had to grind
through previous levels again and again to level up stats and get
better weapons and armor. While grinding is an element in most RPG's,
Crystal Chronicles' tedious method of levelling up makes it particularly unforgivable here. Every time it seemed I was finally making progress, I'd have to grind some more, forced to move all around the game's maps
yet again (your wagon, used to traverse the map controls clunkily, as well!).
|
Could you at least give me a second to put this down?!
|
While misery loves company, the game's multiplayer modes don't remove any of
this tedium. All of the tedious aspects are still there. The entry level to
the multiplayer is ridiculously high, as well. Every player (up to four can
play together) must have their own GameBoy Advance and link cable. The GameBoy
Advance then acts like a controller, with each player having an individual
viewable menu on their GameBoy Advance screen. Why not just let players use a
GameCube controller? It's not like a better menu couldn't have been designed,
which everyone can just use on the television screen. And here's another
annoyance--there is no accessible level map when you are roaming around the
sometimes labyrinthine stages...unless you play using a GameBoy Advance and
link cable. You can do this as one person if you select "multiplayer" as your
play mode, but then YOU'VE got to carry the crystal around the stage yourself.
That's right, in multiplayer mode, there is no sometimes helpful Chocobo.
Someone
has to carry the stupid crystal.
So is there anything beyond the sound that makes
Crystal Chronicles worth playing?
|
Surely SOMETHING must have driven me to get to this screen.
|
Well, the graphics are very nice, a pleasant isometric view of detailed 3D
environments. Like the sound design, the graphics, often portraying pastoral
areas, are quite comforting. There is no slowdown, and everything looks nice
and runs smoothly, even during the more chaotic moments. Really, the entire
production value for
Crystal Chronicles is quite high, and the level intros
may be my favorite element of all.
Comments
Post a Comment