First Crystal Chronicle, one of the best, but a few set of flaws keep it from being perfect.
- One of the best multiplayer game out there.
- Unique, short but unique storyline that involves memories and miasma over the usual corrupt religion, corrupt gov't, etc etc...
- Complex (for the time) character designs with four different races.
- Lots of excess stuff to do, some is challenging even if maxed out, which "fills in the game"
- Sound is beautiful clear, and the songs are outstanding.
- Graphics are good for the game-cube, cartoon like, but I like that.
-Controls are not laggy, but some problems there.
A lot of good pros, while else would it get an 8? There are quite a few flaws though, and some really irritated me.
Flaw #1: Game Boy Advance advertising.
This easily brought the game from a 10 to a 9. It's that bad. You have to use game boy advances or sps (DS came out soon, but no, can't use those) and connector cords to the GCN to use them as controllers. That made the controls very simple on multiplayer, and sometimes hard if you had a crappy GBA. If that's not enough, you need one for single player too! You can't see bonus conditions (which I'll get too later) unless you own these things. Playing this game in 2010, locating a GBA and a cord for two people was a *****. This was a marketing strategy, and probably the most annoying flaw within the game.
Flaw #2: Short storyline, lack of depth stats.
9 to 8.5 for this one. The storyline is very, very short. I mentioned it's interesting, involving miasma and memories, which aside from Kingdom Hearts, that is a rare feat. It had great potential, but they didn't expand on it. They made the storyline six hours long. the other 40 hours is maxing out and getting items. For an mmo, okay, but that is very annoying. Also, your characters stats are very simple. Strength, Magic, Defense, hearts for hp, that is it. I liked the hearts actually, and the three stats are not what I'm complaining at. That is fine, what makes it too simple is, maxed out (if you manage that...) or close enough, the classes don't differ. Thief like race Selkie can use Focus Attacks, special attacks faster, and get better ones, Clavats get a few more points in deffense, Lilty's get a few more points in attack, and Yuke get a few more points in Magic. That's it. The only differentiation is the Selkie honestly. Lilty may be the "warrior" class but you can be a mage with it if you really wanted to be, vica versa. Square Enix really needed to make classes stand out, not blend together.
Flaw #3: The final flaw, the difficulty alone and together
The game is easy, very easy with two and decent equipment. Alone, however, it's like marching to Hell with no one behind you. They made Single Player so hard, you get lonely, frustrated and quit. This really made it a team player game. Now I beat it with friends, so I was lucky, but I wouldn't advise playing this if you didn't have friends. Infact, 8.5 is a score with friends, 7.5 or 7 is probably a score alone, that's how bad playing alone is....The difficulty being skewed from single to multi is one thing, but the other part to this is maxing out. I had to add this game to my 'unfinished list" Final Fantasy NES, Legend of the Dragoon, and this are the only three unbeaten/unmaxed games. Naturally I beat this and Legend of the Dragoon, but...Final Fantasy...yeah. But this as well as the ps game I couldn't max out. Items yes, stats no. It's too hard. You enter areas, earn bonus points for a score rank to get one of the four sets of artifacts. If you get 999999 points you can stilll get the crap items; it's all luck. Maxing out isn't luck, it's skill and patience. I'll admit Dragoon's insane level up system was worse, but this isn't much better. I down this game more than praise it though, it is a really good game, it's flaws are just hideous and almost ruins it for me.
All in all:
I complain more than compliment,but it's a great game. The graphics, sounds, controls, storyline was all passable and good, it just had too many flaws.
You play with friends, I highly reccomend this series, you play alone, not so much.