Boring, repetitive gameplay, useless characters, terrible AI, all combine to make this game nothing but a chore to play.
Well, I was wrong. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (Ring of Fates) turned out to be a very boring, repetitive, hack-and-slash RPG with useless characters, some of the worst AI I have ever seen, the story was really cliched, the main characters were very immature, and it just became a chore to play the game. Anyway, here is a detailed run-down of Ring of Fates.
Graphics: 6/10
Graphics are a little above average, but nothing to brag about. Most of the environments were boring, but there were a few exceptions like a forest dungeon and the two towns. But other than those few places, it looks pretty boring. The spell effects which in my opinion, are a big thing in RPGs, are kind of plain looking. The character models are a bit better. Though they look very pixelated, though that is normal for DS games, it seemed to be much worse than most games for the system. The FMVs are also nothing to brag about. The opening video looks really good, but the ones in the game (which are only a few seconds long and there are only a couple of these) all look about the same. So basically, the graphics are just a little above average, but inferior to most 3D RPGs.
Sound effects: 7/10
The sound effects are ok, none of them really stood out, but that can be a good thing since sound effects can distract the player from the rest of the game.
Music: 6/10
Unfortunately, the music is quite boring and easily forgettable. For me, music is a very large part of a game. But the music in Ring of Fates just seemed like it just wasn't really there. You never really noticed it and it added to the boring-ness of the game.
Voice-acting: 4/10
Almost all of the voice-overs in Ring of Fates made me cringe. All of the characters in your party have terrible voices. The two main characters sound like rediculously immature little kids, another one of your party members sounds like a bad Mickey Mouse imitator, and one of the other ones sounds like a 4 year old girl. The sole redeeming part of the voice-overs is the fact that they're actually there. There aren't very many DS games with voice-overs, but the crappiness just made me want to turn the sound off whenever I heard any character's voice.
Story/dialogue: 5/10
The story is ok, it was kind of hard to follow until near the end and it involved some odd concepts but it wasn't bad. The two main characters are fraternal clavat twins Yuri and Chelinka. The twins are able to use the power of magic crystals, but they must be together to do it, but even then, there are consequenses that are revealed late in the story. Over the course of the game, you are joined by Alhanalem, or Al, the Yuke, Gnash, the selkie, and Meeth, an annoying female clavat. Eventually you find out about a plot from a group of evil-doers that involves the mysterious red crystals. After some complex and a few seemingly random events, a lot of long filler dungeons that keep the story from going anywhere and just take up time, you defeat the evil-doers. But there's a decent twist to the story that really helps the game out, and everyone still lives happily ever after.
The dialogue is pretty bad. The characters may have real personalities but it doesn't really help any. Except for Yuri and Chelinka, there really isn't any change about the characters over the course of the game. Yuri and Chelinka are rediculously immature, even after they grow up. They are always yelling "Mama!! and Papa!!" and always crying, it almost made me want to skip the cutscenes. Thankfully the other characters weren't quite as bad. Al is the kind of wise character, but he always, without fail, ends a sentence with an adjective. While this is kind of different, it eventually becomes a pain to figure out what he's talking about. Gnash just doesn't really have any dialogue. He probably says a total of 10 lines in the whole game, including a couple silent exchanges between him and Meeth. Meeth's dialogue was just annoying, she ends every sentence with a word and adds "ie" or "y" onto it so it comes out like this sentencie. And like Yuri and Chelinka, Meeth also sounds very immature and just gets annoying after a while. The dialogue for the other characters isn't bad, it's just your regular dialogue, except for the shopkeepers in the main town. They have real personalities and one of them almost seems to be hitting on you sometimes though you really can't tell if she is or not. So basically, the dialogue is below average.
Gameplay: 4/10
The gameplay is one of the areas where Ring of Fates suffers the most, and frankly, it's the most crucial part of a game like this.The hack-and-slash action seems fun at first. Then after the first dungeon or two, it gets really boring and repetitive. But once you get your other party members, it gets even worse. Yuri has a sword and fights a lot like the clavats from the original crystal chronicles, having a kind of button mashing feel. So Yuri is a good main melee attacker. He's also the only good melee attacker. Al throws magic orbs that look a lot like bombs. He's basically a hit and run attacker but he mainly relies on magic (explained later) to do damage. He's definitely the character to use if you like to stand back and fight. Unfortunately, Yuri and Al are the only decent characters. Gnash fights with a bow and arrow. It sounds like he would be great if you like to stand back and kill monsters without risking your own health. However, that's not the case. Gnash barely does any damage with each arrow and his triple shot ability requires you to get right in an enemy's face leaving you open to attack and nullifying any advantage of a long range weapon. So basically, Gnash just does what Yuri does, only Yuri does it a lot better. The only reason you would ever need him is for his double jump move. Meeth is also useless. She hits enemies with a ladel. Yes you heard me, a ladel. It only hits about once every 2 seconds making it pretty useless. Meeth does have a special weapon though, an urn that she can crawl into and roll into enemies, but this ends up being incredibly slow and doesn't help much, once again, she tries to do Yuri's job, but he's a lot better at it.
Magic is used by collecting orbs, or magicite of different types (one for each kind of magic) that you find in treasure chests and are dropped by monsters. Every spell uses one magicite. You hold X and a targeting ring appears on the floor near you. You use the control pad to move the ring around and you can let go of X to fire off the spell, but if you want to, you can press L to lock the targeting ring in place and move another ring on top of it to fire off a more powerful spell, however, it is painfully hard to use the more powerful spells unless you're playing on multiplayer.
Also, the AI. It's some of the worst I've ever seen. Your characters may hit an enemy once every 5 seconds if you're lucky. They're also terrible at following you, getting stuck behind corners, and falling off of ledges. Thankfully you can hold L for about a second to warp the rest of your party members to you.
Lastly, the difficulty, it's really easy. None of the bosses gave me any trouble playing on single player and it's even easier on multiplayer.
Summary:
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates is boring and repetitive, with only slightly above average graphics, boring music, painfully bad voice-overs, boring story and bad dialogue, very boring gameplay and terrible AI.
Rent or buy: Neither, unless you're a huge fan of the original.
Final Score: 5.6 rounded to 5.5