Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time
Four People, Two Systems, One Crystal, No Problem!
Though I am hardly surprised, there have been far too many Crystal Chronicles games released lately to keep track of. Granted, each one is unique and independent of each other, but I can’t believe Square has actually made an entire franchise out of these tykes. At any rate, Echoes of Time differentiates itself from its companion games by featuring impressive cross-platform multiplayer gameplay–it’s really neat that you can play with friends who don’t hate videogaming enough to actually buy a Wii; they can just chill on their handhelds while you play on (half of) the big screen.
Echoes of Time is almost a direct follow-up to last year’s Ring of Fates, and as a result improves much of the mirthful loot-whoring action and frills-free adventuring the Crystal Chronicles series provides. For starters, the game focuses more on dungeon-crawling than the lame-duck plotline, which is entirely optional and thankfully skippable. Dungeon designs are massively improved as well; even edging out current loot king Phantasy Star Portable in this regard. And finally, you can hire AI partners to go questing with you, a welcome addition as doing quests alone made Ring of Fates downright unplayable as a single-player experience.
So, which version should you get? Well, aside from a few nicer graphical details, the Wii version is, for all intents and purposes, identical to the DS cart of the game. As I’ve alluded, Echoes on the Wii splits the television screen into two, with pointers replacing touch-screen control, which is kind of a broken and discombobulated solution. Finally, the disc game (which honestly should have been released on WiiWare) costs a bit more than the DS version, which might be the final straw for most people.
Scorecard:
Graphics: 3.5
Sounds: 3.5
Fun Factor: 4.0
Replayability: 3.5
Overall Score: 3.5
