[Review] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates

Storyline Summary

FFCC: Ring of Fates is a fairly standard JRPG in that you, a male lead named Yuri, are forced into taking the place of "the man of the family" after your own father's death. However, some changes to this are that you are uncommonly young and have a twin sister to temper you on occasion. Many mysteries arise-- why was your father killed? Why was your mother killed, and is she even really dead? What happened in your friend Analheim's past? Who is this mysterious girl ghost who follows you around and why does she do it? What is going on at the temple? You try to solve these mysteries not because of your father's death and your need for revenge-- the more standard JRPG plot-- but because you want to protect your sister, your friends, and live a peaceful life.

Storyline Rating: 5/5

Graphics and Presentation

The graphics of FFCC: Ring of Fates are nice. The cut scenes are terrific, and the voice acting-- occasional, though always used to the best effect, is also fairly good. The Lilty female character, Meeth, sounds like she's voiced by a boy and not a girl, but besides that.... The apparent clothing that you wear changes when you change armor-- though, it isn't changed in cut scenes-- and I always enjoy that touch, for added realism.

Graphics and Presentation Rating: 5/5

Character Development

Meeth's character is incredibly annoying. She adds -ie on the end of everything, making every word out of her mouth very "cutie." She generally acts like she is, not a child, but someone with a learning disability. Analheim's character's speech is almost as annoying-- he ends every sentence with an "al." Besides that, the two have rather interesting characters in some respects. Analheim has a mysterious past that is really intriguing and Meeth managed to live by herself for a long time, going a little bit insane with loneliness.

The other three characters are Yuri, Chelinka, and Gnash. Gnash is the character I have most issue with. He is the character who is shown to have a close communion with nature, and of course he has to have broken speech because of it. This is a stereotype, an offensive one, and an overplayed one. Yuri is a fine character, well-rounded and believable, as is Chelinka, but as I mentioned in my earlier post, I am a bit angered by the fact that she is the magic user, non-playable and shoved aside in favor of a male-dominated party. Chelinka, as the only other female character, sounds like a boy, isn't humanoid, and is a bit mentally challenged, completely undercutting the fact that she's female. Chelinka and Yuri are such good, well-rounded characters. They have strengths, weaknesses, fears... and yet, the fall into stereotypical JRPG roles. This could have easily been fixed by allowing you to exchange roles between the two, and make one your lead character rather than the other,  just switching story lines. But this wasn't done. 

Character Development Rating: 4/5

Game Mechanics

Monsters come at you in real-time rather than just by scurrying around-- always a welcome thing-- and there are actual reasons that the monsters exist and are acting the way they do. I always wonder why tons of monsters are just wandering around and attacking you in JRPGs, but FFCC: Ring of Fates has an actual reason that I believe, and their environments reflect the kind of monster.

Each player-character has different "tribe abilities." Tribe abilities are very difficult to aim in this game due to the fact that you need to use the touch screen only in this one case where at all other times you need to use the buttons. This makes it nearly impossible to aim quickly enough. All characters can use magicites and use magic, but magic itself is hard to aim because you need to dodge the monster attacking you often, and you can't move while you're using magic. Getting hit interrupts you, so if you keep trying to use magic, you'll generally die.

The worst part of the game mechanics is that you can choose any of the player characters to play at one time, and you personally control that one. But the AI on the characters you aren't playing is horrible. Generally, the character you're playing is the only one that ever gets a hit in, and all the other characters do is stand there and have their life points drained away. This means you have to heal or revive them, but never get anything out of them. They're next to useless, and often end up not following you very well or following you and falling into pits of lava.

Game Mechanics Rating: 1/5

Summary

This game is pretty fun to play, but mainly because I find the story intriguing and I enjoy the fact that I can play my favorite kind of RPG character: an archer with superior jumping abilities. The actual mechanics of the game are awful and the character development can be a little iffy. There are some nice things about the mechanics-- the monsters visible rather than hidden until you run into them, mainly-- but generally, they suffer from poor planning around the console the game was built for. The AI is the biggest problem, since everything else could be handled with enough planning, but there's not really any way to get around poor AI.

Game Rating: 3/5