My Kind of Perfect

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers Review

For me, this review seems a bit late, but you know the holidays. I got it two days after Christmas so I had a late start already and I couldn’t play it much but I managed to clock in a decent amount of time in order to type up my review.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers is an Action/Adventure Game for the Nintendo Wii and it was released on December 26th, 2009

The newest installment in the Crystal Chronicles series for Nintendo consoles gives the series a brand new look and feel. This game as opposed to other installments in the series is focused on single-player. Although, in certain areas a friend can join in with another Wii Remote and help out. Point is, in this title, multiplayer is not a main feature as it had been in other titles.

Story

The Crystal Bearers is set many, many years into the future where the Lilty tribe has destroyed the Yuke’s Tribal Crystal, practically erasing them from existence. The Lilties are now the most dominant race and the Clavats and Selkies are the minorities. The Lilties have practically outlawed “magic” and only a select few, known as Crystal Bearers still have magical abilities. It is in this world that we find Layle, a Crystal Bearer, suddenly encountering a very powerful Yuke named Amidatelion. This encounter leads Layle to want to track Amidatelion down which puts Layle on a path to discovering a conspiracy in the Lilty Kingdom that threatens the future of his world.

Score – 8.5

Gameplay

For me, the controls were a bit wonky to begin with, and they took some getting used to. You can configure some of these controls differently if you want to and I ended up having to. You move Layle with the analog stick and move the camera with the directional pad. You control Layle’s powers by pointing at something and holding B until you lock onto it. From there you can toss whatever you have locked onto around or pick it up. There are some other context based commands such as opening doors, swinging from things, pulling switches and such.

Gameplay consists of adventuring through different environments and getting to where you need to go, for me I found myself getting lost, a lot, the game doesn’t really have a full map function. Through exploring you will come across Miasma Streams that pop up throughout the world. These let out monsters that you need to defeat in order to temporarily close the Streams. One thing I did not like about this was that you had to wait to battle monsters. Also you have a time limit to close these Miasma streams. I sometimes find myself almost finishing an area only to have time run out, it got a little frustrating. Battling with these monsters can also sometimes be bothersome as there is no actual “attack” action. You basically start by picking up an enemy and throwing them into another one, or throwing objects such as rocks, into them. Occasionally you will learn different ways to use these monster’s abilities or attributes against them. These actions are what actually what make fighting in this game fun.

Score – 8

Graphics

The graphics of this game are top notch, they are similar in style to the old Crystal Chronicle titles but really take advantage of most of the Wii’s power. The game feels fresh because with a new time setting comes all new environments and they do look quite nice. Most of the game’s environments are all around very colorful and vibrant.

Score – 9

Final Note

For people who have loved the Crystal Chronicles series but have never had any friends (like me) to play with, this game is for you, with its Single Player focused gameplay. The Crystal Bearers has rich gameplay, graphics, and so far the story is fairly intriguing. Fans of Final Fantasy and Crystal Chronicles alike should pick it up. For the Crystal Chronicles fans, it’s another installment in the series. However, for Final Fantasy fans, I find it to be a bit more serious than other titles. For this reason I find myself enjoying it more than other entries in the Crystal Chronicle series.

Overall Rating