Worth the 2 year wait!!!
Ok The first thing you should know is that in Story mode you are forced to play certain characters(up to 4 at a time with total control over which one you are in control of at any given time). HOWEVER there is also a Solo mode in multiplayer where you can make your own guy and play around, I think you will only have access to the stages you have reached in story mode so you should play it first.
Another thing people should know is that this really doesnt have to much in common with CC except for the character designs which kinda sucks because CC's world was so awesome. There are no towns with crystals protecting them, no caravans to go get Myrr drops to power your town's crystal. There isnt even any myst in this game. This time the story centers around evil people tainting crystals which makes the stuff nearby into monsters and stuff and it has something to do with the moon. So that part is kind of bad and I could see people knocking the score down alot for making the game totally unrelated.
Another way in which Ring of Fate is different than CC is combat. The combat is still action based but its a little different than before. You have your normal hack and slash combo's but now when you do charge attacks you dont get to aim them with rings. Spells still get to use rings and there is this wierd system where you can lock a spellring in place and then cast another spell and stack the new spells ring on the old one to create more powerful spells. Its a pain though because monsters move and rings dont. Each race has a Tribe ability where you hit the R button and go into this special attack screen on the bottom (which takes waaay to long to load) and then monsters get rings around them and if you touch a monster then your character launches a special attach but these require Skill Points. They are pretty powerful but a pain in the butt to use because your character can't move while your doing this and it takes a few seconds for the action to switch to the lower screen.
Another bad thing about this game is that it seems waaay to easy to collect materials and recipes for making armor, weapons, and accessories. You really dont have to work very hard to upgrade which kind of really sucks. Thats not to say you wont be strapped for cash though because it takes money to make things and buy materials but there is also this one moogle shop that sells "magicite pockets", health/magic/defense upgrades/ "item pockets" and health/sp upgrades. These will suck up all your free money and you might even try to make armor and weapons to sell so you can buy more upgrades. But still I would have much preferred a harder time collecting materials to make stuff. Still its not like CC where there are only 3-4 upgrades for weapons. There seems to be alot more and they can have random effects on them, I have yet to reach the final form of any weapon or armor. Something cool also in RoF is that your armor and weapons show up graphically on your people(atleast in battle, not in cinema). And there are some cool outfits.
So far I really love the game and dont really mind any of the differences. I miss collecting Myrr drops but oh well. I think you also got to refight boss monsters in CC?? In RoF boss monsters get replaced with a small mob with a really powerful leader monster which is cool but not as cool as boss fights hehe.
I have no idea how far into the game I am(10-20 hours heh i forget) so there is probably way more stuff to discover and talk about but its pretty irrelevant. The only thing you really need to know is that if you have a DS you have to own this game.
I better get to see a Papaopamus soon though or im going to kill somebody!!!!