Final Fantasy – Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates has a gameplay premise almost as hefty as its name in that it tries to bring the action of the original game found on the GameCube to the somewhat more constrictive DS platform. While the DS sequel improves upon the original in many ways, namely that of no longer having to carry around that forsaken bucket through every level, it introduces just as many more with its arrival onto the handheld scene. While none of them are deal breaking, it is questionable how well the title has adapted to the small screen and controls found on its new home.
The single player story doesn’t take any risks, but delivers a satisfyingly solid plot. The game is centered on the adventures of Yuri and Chelinka, a pair of twin children who join up with a cast of three other adventurers in their quest to find out more about the mysterious crystals found in their world, both in their hands and in the clutches of powerful monsters. Though in cutscenes the twins are two wholly separate characters in gameplay the two are merged, with the player simply controlling Yuri and using his melee abilities as well as Chelinka’s magical prowess. The other characters are controllable as well, and each has their own strengths and weaknesses that the player must often count on to progress through a particular dungeon.
While the player can control any one of the party members the rest are then controlled by the AI, which unfortunately are about as intellectually capable as a box of oranges rolling down a hill. The AI-controlled party members will attack quite slowly, fall into hazards often, and occasionally get so distanced from the player that they must press the L button to summon them back to their side. It is obvious that the game is more geared towards a group of human adventurers playing in the multiplayer mode rather than towards a polished single player component, and thus the single player suffers in numerous solo-centric areas such as this.
Combat makes up the bulk of the gameplay, which is made easy and fun thanks to responsive and intuitive basic controls. All basic combat moves are performed using the buttons, with the expected mappings of attack, jump, lift, and item use found on the face buttons. These can be combined in interesting ways, such as how not only can you slash enemies in a traditional manner but also jump up and hang onto flying enemies as you stab at them, stomp downward onto enemies you are standing on, or even pick up stunned enemies and slam them into a nearby wall. Certain enemies are weaker to these advanced moves, which injects a great deal of variety into what could otherwise have been monotonous hack and slash gameplay.
Each character in the single player represents a different tribe, or class as RPG veterans will know them as, and each tribe has a unique special ability. When used these special abilities swap the two screens and make the touch screen the primary gameplay screen, and then the player must use the stylus or their finger to tap onto enemies to attack them using their tribe’s powerful ability. A big issue had with this however is that it can be cumbersome to quickly switch between using the buttons and using the touch screen, regardless on if you use your stylus or your finger to tap out the attacks.
The magic/item system is also somewhat cumbersome to use, but is controlled via a much more accessible scheme. Casting magic or using an item is as simple as holding X which makes a cursor appear at your characters feet and then guiding it using the d-pad towards the intended target. At this point the player can either let go of X to cast/use at that location immediately, or press L to freeze the cursor there and let the player move around and execute the ability at their leisure with a second tap of the L button. In the single player using magic is a hindrance as while the player is moving the cursor their character remains motionless, but in multiplayer magic is a massive boon as one player can distract enemies while the others blast them from afar with magic.
Multiplayer is a two-sided beast itself, delivering compelling ad-hoc gameplay while at the same time having no support of WiFi play in any regard. The multiplayer campaign makes use of the same locations found in the single player as well as in the same order, but throws away the plot and the AI party members. If two players join up it will be the two of them all the way to the end, though due to the AI issues mentioned previously there isn’t much of an argument for this being a bad thing. Multiplayer is where the game shines the most, and playing alongside a couple of friends and ripping through a dungeon is not only fun but alleviates most of the flaws found in the game.
That doesn’t mean that some flaws still plague the title, marring even the praiseworthy multiplayer. In our experience with the title the framerate during multiplayer could often take a dive and slow down noticeably, which was never apparent during the single player. Additionally the game has zero camera control and instead makes use of a fixed camera angle, which is often too close to the action and always at a bad angle for any downward movement. Due to the camera angle the player can only see a couple of feet down from their character, which makes some jumps more like leaps of faith than they by rights should be. In a title that has many platforming elements and punishes players with an HP hit for such things as falling in water the inability to see just about anything below the player is often a large problem.
