Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time Review (WII)

A nice idea but just doesn’t work on the Wii

Oh dear…

I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to save some of you a bit of time and start with my conclusion. I think most of you probably won’t want to read on, I know I don’t… So in conclusion – please, please don’t buy this game on the Wii.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (hereafter just “EoT”) is a cross-platform offering from Nintendo allowing DS users and Wii users to play together. Sounds like a great idea, but not when the Wii users get a direct port of the DS version, dual screens and all…

The basic story of EoT goes something like this: You are a kid in your village that has just “come of age” (whatever that means), and right after your coming of age ceremony one of your friends contracts an ancient illness that hasn’t been seen in generations. Naturally no one else wants to leave the village so off you go exploring the world to find a cure. Oh, and to save the world too…

Not having any friends playing this either on DS or Wii (They made the right choice…) I was resigned to a single player adventure. The first thing I noticed when I loaded up EoT was how truly awful it looks. My lovely 40″ HDTV was filled with a vile brown textured background with 2 small screens in it. Essentially what I had was a DS on my TV. As if that’s not bad enough, I also had DS graphics on my TV. Everything about EoT looks horrible – It probably looks great on a tiny little DS screen but why couldn’t they have at least polished the graphics a bit for the Wii?

To be honest, I nearly put the game down as soon as I saw the dual screen mess in front of me, but that wouldn’t have been very professional now would it? So I created my character and jumped in to the action, which is where the next problem for us Wii owners becomes apparent – the controls. Just moving around the world the controls are fine for the most part, but in battles and puzzles there are some problems. The first problem I noticed was trying to “stack” magic. I just can’t seem to do it – by the time I’ve maneuvered the first magic ring into position and tried to get another one, the enemy has usually cast their magic on me forcing me to start again.

you should have stopped reading after the first paragraph

The next problem I encountered was in one of the early puzzles where you have to push some blocks onto switches to open a gate. The first few blocks went in fine, but the last 2 required me to open a cage, run in, and push the blocks out before the cage closed again, then get them on switches. It was a very simple puzzle, except for the fact that with the camera angle and controls I just could not get the blocks out of the cages, and you lose health every time you get trapped in the cage. The final issue I have with the controls is that to use magic (the stuff on the smaller of the 2 screens) you need to point your wiimote at the screen to select the different spells, which is not easy when you’re already in the heat of battle on the main screen.

EoT is most definitely designed for multiplayer, but as I’ve said already I was stuck playing it alone. No problem I thought, I can recruit 3 AI characters to help me out. Well I was wrong – sure I could recruit them, but help? No chance. You are able to customize these AI companions and give them some basic behavioural instructions like “Always uses magic” or “Follow me” etc, but what it boils down to is that the AI is useless. In fact some puzzles become next to impossible as they require you to push multiple switches at the same time – no problem if you’ve got your mate sitting beside you and you can just tell them what you want, but try getting the AI to push that switch for you…

I also wasn’t particularly impressed with the story. In fact after watching the opening cutscene I was left rather confused and a touch disturbed as with nothing to explain what I was watching, it looked very much like some old dude was trying to molest a little girl. The story turns out to be a typical “save the world” scenario, but is still very weak. The main draw of EoT is dungeon exploration, but whenever I think of Final Fantasy I think of epic storylines and character development, and EoT just doesn’t have this. Online multiplayer will also be a big draw although I’m afraid I can’t comment on how well it works, but it surely can’t be as bad as playing with the AI.

So if you’ve made it this far, you’ll be after my conclusion? Well it hasn’t changed: you should have stopped reading after the first paragraph.