Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Echoes of Time (Nintendo DS)

[aruljothi]

Release Date: March 2009
ESRB Rating: E10+
Genre: RPG
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix

These days, the best place to get yourself some awesome, Diablo-style loot whoring action isn't on a PC or even a console -- it's on handheld gaming systems. If this is the genre that speaks to you, and you've already conquered Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony (PSP), or Phantasy Star Portable (PSP), or the original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (DS), then you're probably looking for your next hit of item-collecting hotness. That new hotness is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. Despite the unnecessarily long title, this little DS cart is packed with countless hours of good old-fashioned loot whoring wrapped in a geektastic, fan service bundle.

FFCC:EOT follows in the footsteps of its predecessors Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (GameCube), Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (DS), and of course, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, the highly-addictive pseudo-real-time-strategy game that took the Crystal Chronicles archetypes and placed them in a buzzing gameworld on Wiiware. FFCC:EOT brings things back to its roots, which is to say it's a hybrid single-player/multi-player action-RPG in which cooperative adventuring and tons of customization are they key attractions. To be honest, I can't really relate to Echoes of Times' story any more than Ring of Fates' or My Life as a King's. For such a sophisticated game type, the plotlines are too juvenile for me to associate with. Maybe a 'crystal sickness' that afflicts one of your wee villagers might go over big in Japan -- but for me, not so much. The only thing I bother to pay any attention to is where I have to go next, and what I have to do. Therein lies FFCC:EOT's success.


Using a new game engine called the 'Pollux Engine,' Square Enix has finally fixed, for the most part, the biggest ailment that troubled the first Crystal Chronicles on GameCube -- that it was a major pain in the ass to play with other people. Of course, the Game Boy Advance didn't have the wireless capabilities that the DS does, and while that was great for multiplayer sessions with several people using just the GBA, now the impact is even greater. Differentiating itself from its predecessors, FFCC:EOT lets one person play on a normal-sized television using a Wii, while up to three other players can connect wirelessly using their DSes. It sounds like a small thing, but it's really cool. Some people (your parents, for example) may not really care to stare at a tiny screen questing for loot, hours on end. So having the action displayed on a big screen is definitely a bonus. And since there's zero latency, if you're playing on a DS, you can actually just watch the TV screen and run around with virtually no discombobulation. The only times that isn't practical is when, on the DS, you run to a different part of the screen than your Wii partner. And while I didn't personally get to try it, since 1) I haven't bothered to go through the trouble to add anyone's million-digit friend ID code to my Wii, and 2) I was playing a pre-release review version of the game, FFCC:EOT also supports online play with Phantasy Star Online-style chat shortcuts to encourage an international adventuring community (for example, choosing "Hello" from the menu automatically translates the greeting into your partner's mother tongue).

The Wii version of the game is pretty much identical to the DS version, although there are obviously some enhancements; the transparency effects, and the overall color saturation, are nicer than the handheld version. The layout is different, though, with the primary game screen placed on the left, and the DS's lower menu screen situated on the right-hand side of the TV. While it doesn't maximize your TV's dimensions, it's still a very good layout that's optimal for gaming sessions.