| Alright, I played FF Crystal Chronicles with my friend like we planned, and so far it's a lot of fun with even just two people. We got through the first year of caravaning, meaning that we played through three dungeon areas, so I think I was able to get a decent first impression of the game.
Okay, so first off, I'll go through the process of starting a new game: After you choose whether to play single player or multiplayer, it shows an opening cutscene and then you're given the chance to name your hometown. The default name is Tipa, and after you choose that, you get to choose which slot you want to create your character in. There are eight slots per save game, so you can have up to eight different characters on the same game at once. Now, once you pick a slot, the control switches each person's GBA screen and they get to choose their race, their hair/body style (there are four different styles for each gender of each race), their family's trade, and finally their name.
After creating characters we see their families saying goodbye and a little cutscene showing the caravan (ie a wagon and some characters) leaving the town. At this point you're switched to the overworld map. Now, the overworld is basically just a path leading to different areas of the world. There are no random encounters, though you will occasionally meet other characters. Traveling is accomplished simply by choosing which direction to go when you come to forks in the road.
Now, onto the interesting parts; the dungeons and battle system. The first thing I want to say about this is that teamwork is critical in this game. If you don't work together, you will not survive, simple as that. One player has to carry the Crystal Chalice while the others follow, so you also have to stick together as a group. Because what the Chalice does is form a protective sphere around you, which the miasma (poisonous fog) can't get through. But the moment you step out of the circle, which is denoted by a colored line, you start loosing life rather rapidly.
Now, about the battle system itself, you should know that FFCC is an action RPG that uses realtime combat if you've heard about the game before. In other words, you run around and actually whack enemies with your weapon while they're also attacking you instead of just choosing options from a menu. The magic is also realtime, and you have to charge spells up before you can cast them, meaning that you have to hold the button in until a cursor appears on the ground and then you can move the cursor to where you want to cast the spell, at which point you let up the button. One the other hand, you don't have MP in the game, and you can use any Magicite orbs that you find as many times as you want.
About Magicite orbs, you may recognize the name from FFVI, but the way that they work isn't at all the same. Besides the way that you use the magic, as explained above, you don't get to keep Magicite after you beat a level. This means that every time you enter a dungeon you have to collect and equip the new Magicite that you find. Also, as you'd expect, different types of Magicite lets you cast different types of spells. The Magicite that we found were Fire, Ice, Thunder, Cure, Clear, and Life. From these basic spells you can mix and combine them to make more powerful spells by having people cast one or more spells in the same place at the same time. An example would be combining two different elementals that I listed, Fire, Ice, and Thunder, to make a Gravity spell. This is a really fun and unique magic system, and the combining of spells really ties into the cooperative nature of the game.
From what I played (three dungeons), FFCC has lived up to everything I expected from it. The use of connectivity between GCN and GBA is definitely the best yet; you have to be in pretty much constant communication with the other players to trade information from the different types of radar made available to the players on the GBA, combine spells at the right time, request healing, all sorts of things. I can't wait till me and my friend can get together again to play more. | |
