Not your typical dungeon exploring FF, but with as much as this game throws at you, you'll be just as happy.
The Gameplay of FFCC:MLaaK is a very unusual break from the series' typical dungeon exploring, turn-based fights, and the more reason hack-and-slash battles. Instead, you play the role of a king to rebuild his kingdom from nothing but a crystal, which in turn grants you the ability of Architek, magic that allows you to build different buildings using your own memories. The game expands to much more complex levels, proving that it can make you plan out things just like any standard RPG. You must determine what to build, where to build it, who to higher as an adventurer, and much more. The economic portion of this game gives this title a good start in planning.
Just because you can't go out on adventures doesn't mean that there isn't any dungeon exploring action. You may not participate, seeing how you are the king.(yeah, I bet their just scared because I could kick butt like I did in FFCC) Though you can higher explorers to do the exploring for you. You can assign a Behest, or otherwise a quest for which you can higher people to go on. They can level up, fight and do many things that you would expect from a typical Final Fantasy game, which actually proves to be an interesting RPG formula. At the end of each day, you can keep insight of everything each explorer has done inside the dungeon, or staying in the comfort of their home. For every fight, it will keep a log of how the battle went. For every time they stayed and healed, the game will let you know. With a level up system on these explorers, their stats and equipment will reflect on how well an exploration goes. Also, dungeons are split into different level groups to provide you with a rough detail on where to explore and not.
Moral seems to play a large role in the game. With the use of moral, you can allow for morality boosts around the kingdom so that you can stay out later each day, or you can use it to boosting the Kingdom's status, capable of improving the kingdom. More on the economics portion of the game, shops like the weapon and armor shops with be very essential for the explorers. Though regardless that they sell weapons, you also play a role by deciding when you should upgrade the products being sold there, at a fairly high price.
Speaking of price, the $15 tag on this game seems to be a rather bit staggering. Luckily there's nothing to have a heart attack over. The standard gameplay lasts for a fairly long time, though it seems rather shallow when you look at the past FFCC titles. The extra download content can be rather useful, but it seems somewhat forced when you see things like having to purchase the other races of the game in a single $8 package or wanting to buy other houses for the convenience of lasting gameplay. And that's ony; the start for download content on this game... Buying the game with all it's download content makes it feel like you're purchasing a full priced game, which in someways feels rather expensive for this title...
The music in the game is fairly basic, though it does get the job done. It's not as glamorous as it was in the GCN title(some relation), but it does provide for the mood of the game when those moments come.
The graphics are fairly good, though regardless that the character movements can be rather sketchy. Often you'll see uneven clash in movement from when a character is standing still to suddenly running, or just suddenly fall down right in that spot when running at full speed. But at least it looks smooth for the most part. The detailing is fairly amazing when considering that this is a WiiWare title, though the characters facial emotions will always stay the same, no matter what type of moment it is. At least they could have let the characters blink...
There is not much of a true story to where I have reached in the game, but it has an intriguing movement to it with the introduction of certain characters and the references of the past title that was released on the GameCube. Other than that, it seems alright, but lacking at the moment.
All in all, a very anticipated title that barely lives up to its hype, though with the height of the price tag, it is questionable whether it is worth getting the extra bonus content or not, though the game will feel lacking without some of them. Considering the alright music and the decent graphics, this game presents fairly well with such limited memory. If you are a fan of the Final Fantasy series, this is a game to look at. If not, you may still end up liking it in the end.
~SomeOddGuy