Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers Review
First off I'd like to say that the title for this Wii game is way too long. That is one hell of a mouthful to say. Now lets get down to it. This is the next Crystal Chronicles game in which you will be playing the part of a Crystal Bearer who charges himself with trying to discover what is going on with the a particular Yuke. The Yuke race was said to have completely disappeared, and yet there's one running around trying to collect a special type of crystal to try to resurrect her race. Along the way you'll meet some Selkies that will try to help, or hinder you, as well as some Lilties.
The graphics in this game make me wish that Square Enix had put it on another console. This game could have looked gorgeous, but instead there's plenty jagged edges, swimming pixels, and some choppiness. If you've played the first Crystal Chronicles, on the Gamecube, don't expect that big of a change in the character races. The different enemies also have the same general look to them.
The music in the game is on par with any Final Fantasy game, so you're going to enjoy it. There were several times in the game where I felt that I had heard a different variation on the song that was being played.
The controls are the ultimate undoing of this game. In a game that relies so heavily on pointing the Wii-mote and pressing the B button, it really fails. Another huge issue is trying to combat the camera while trying to stay alive during fights, these too can be your undoing. So pair the lack of precision in the pointing of the Wii mote, and the camera, you're talking about a very frustrating time.
The story was really straight forward, and though the cut scenes were filled with over the top drama, overall it was something that I wanted to continue. This is probably the only reason why I completed this game. The terrible controls about killed me. You're going to see several different places in the world where you're going to be able to unlock "achievements" or an equivalent to it (which makes me secretly hope that this could be ported, but I don't see how it could be done). There will be areas that will turn from thriving life to dark despair. It is during these dark times where you'll have to quickly dispatch of all the enemies and close the miasma stream. If you can do that you'll get rewarded. To be honest I think I was able to accomplish that 3 times in the whole game, the rest of the time, if I could get by it without having to mess with it, that's what I did. Without the precision controls there was a huge chance that I would end up dying a lot and never complete that part of the game. There's also the material collection, that after about the first hour I totally forgot about. These materials can be used to create items for your character to strengthen him, but really I didn't go out of my way to find extra supplies. One other thing is that the entire game hinges on you using your powers to lift objects or enemies and throw them around. This adds way too much repetition and frustration to the game.
This game was something I was greatly interested in playing, and ultimately very disappointed in the lack of execution. When you have to play the boss fight 15 times so that you can get to see the ending, there's something wrong, and its apparent because the final battle has "checkpoints" in it so that when you die, and you're going to a lot, you can try to struggle to the next one, and then die and return with full life. I'm sorry to say that this game gets a 5.2 out of 10.
