Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

R-JENERATION: With good teammates, 'Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles' can be a lot of fun

"Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles" can be fun if the player is willing to invest time and energy into it.

"Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles" isn't a game for everyone.

And even if it's for you, you may still not be able to play it. "Crystal Chronicles" asks a lot from prospective players, but for those willing to put in the money and effort, or for those for whom neither is an issue, it can be a rewarding experience.

Unlike most Final Fantasies, "Chronicles" isn't a turn-based RPG but rather a multiplayer action game in the style of "Gauntlet" or "Secret of Mana." The game can be played with one to three people, but the real fun comes when you get four people together. The screen never splits up to accommodate each player, so all must occupy the same screen all the time.

Storyline-wise, the world is covered by a deadly mist, which is warded off by special crystals. A "chalice" (known as the bucket among my friends) contains such a crystal, and the entire team must stay in its protective bubble or risk slowly losing their lives.

How you and your friends decide who carries the bucket is up to you. In my group, I have officially become the "bucket relocation engineer" responsible for its transport at all times. I'm also known by a far less informal, far more vulgar nickname that I'm wary of printing in a family newspaper.

And that really sums up the entire point of the game: Your experience will be almost entirely dependent on the people you play it with. Depending on whom you play with, the game will either be enjoyable or unbearable.

If you're playing with a good group of friends who will share items, do their jobs and be cooperative with the chalice, "Crystal Chronicles" can be some of the best fun you can have with four players and a video game system. If the people you play with hoard items, don't work with the team and intentionally try to force teammates out of the bubble, chances are you'll get fed up quickly.

In a sense, the game is a bit like massive multiplayer online games such as Everquest, only the dwarf warrior is sitting next to you on the couch instead of 1,000 miles away. As such, your success in the game will be dependent on the strength of your party. Most likely, you'll split up "jobs" among team members.

My group had an all-offensive warrior, a full-blown mage, a secondary warrior with some magic skills, and myself, a healer/long-distance fighter. When the group cooperates -- the mages combining spells for larger spells, the chalice being moved around effectively, and the healer keeping an eye on the life of his friends -- a kind of synergy rarely found in video games develops. My friends and I even came up with our own vocabulary to speed communication; when the group is low on life, someone yells "group hug" and my teammates gather around my character so I can heal everyone at once.

And that's what makes this game far more appealing as opposed to online games, at least for me. You may be controlling an electronic character, but you're interacting with flesh-and-blood teammates.

That's the good news.

The bad news is you'll need to invest a bit of effort into actually playing. Unless you're playing the far-less engaging single-player mode, each player must use a Game Boy Advance as a controller, connected with a link cable.

For many people this isn't a problem, since if you have a GameCube, there's a good chance you already have a GBA, and if you don't have a link cable, any place that sells video games will have one for less than $10.

Then comes the challenge of collecting three others to play with you on a regular basis. For people such as college floormates, it shouldn't be such a big deal, but if you're not confident you can regularly gather three buddies in front of the same TV, "Chronicles" might not be your game.

As I said, this game isn't for everyone, but if you meet the prerequisites, you should have a great time with it.