“Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time” is the follow up to last year’s “Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates“. I’m not sure what the deal is with all these ridiculously long game titles, lately. Regardless, Echoes of Time makes a lot of improvements from the last entry in the series, establishing itself as a stronger multiplayer title, though the game is far from flawless.

Like the other games in the Crystal Chronicles series, Echoes of Time is an Action RPG. The first thing you will do when you start the game is create a character. Unfortunately, you won’t have a lot of options in this process. In fact, the only options you will have are gender and choosing from one the series’ four races. Thankfully, this is made up for by the fact that all of the game’s equipment is visible on your character.

The DS and Wii versions of the game can actually be played together in multiplayer. However, both my party member and myself played the DS version for the sake of portability and easy touch screen access. Echoes of Time’s story mode can be played with up to four players. This was the number one draw for me as Ring of Fates only allowed multiplayer in a separate non-story mode.

Multiplayer can be toggled on or off at any save point. After the game’s very first cut-scene, you can walk to a save point and hop into multiplayer before you even fight your first enemy. This was an excellent design decision.

Combat in Echoes is very simple. You can perform a basic physical combo attack with a single button (bows and a few other weapon types have no combos), jump, cast magic, and pickup and throw allies, enemies, and items. Fortunately, there are a couple methods for character growth. Reaching certain levels will grant new abilities (such as a charge attack) and enemies will occasionally drop items that will permanently increase your character’s resistance to a specific element or status effect.

Magic casting still uses the same ring system from the original Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube. Holding the cast button down will let you move around a ring and the spell will be cast within it once you let off the button. You can also combine your rings with the other players’, as well as lock your own rings in place to layer more on top of them. This allows you to cast more powerful spells. The simplest example would be layering two fire spells to cast “Fira”.

What sets the magic apart in Echoes is that the developers have finally decided to abandon the orb-collecting system the series’ used up until this point. You now always have the following spells equipped: Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, Cure, Life, and Clear. Using them will take MP and combining spells will take an even greater amount. It’s definitely a relief to no longer be forced kill countless enemies in hopes that they will drop the right colored orb for you to use on a door-opening switch.

One of of the games biggest downfalls is how incredibly formulaic it feels. It can be a lot of fun to jump in a party with a few friends and play a dungeon or two, but if you plan on playing for an extended period of time without breaks, the game will start feeling very repetitive.

After most dungeons, some sort of story segment will happen. Unfortunately, the story didn’t feel at all compelling to me. I still looked forward to completing dungeons, but for a very different reason. Every time a dungeon is completed, new equipment is available in the town. Each piece gives your character a whole new look.

You can either make equipment from the various materials that enemies drop or simply buy it. Making equipment is usually more cost-effective and can even allow you to get certain items early. Equipment can even, to a small extent, level up. If a weapon or armor piece reaches level three, you can convert it into a jewel that you can then attach to another item to enhance it. So rather than selling your old equipment, you can combine it with your new equipment. Fortunately, the shop interface is much more intuitive than the last game, always showing stat comparisons between every item. You can even see these comparisons when looking at a scroll for making a piece of equipment.

I really couldn’t see myself playing this game alone. If you’re looking for a singleplayer action RPG on the DS, look elsewhere. But if you want a really simple and easy to pick up game to play in relatively small doses with one-to-three buddies, “Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time” can be a fun little game to kill some time with, though it could have done with a few less block-pushing puzzles.

Tags: action rpg, Crystal Chronicles, Echoes of Time, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Echoes of Time, multiplayer, nintendo ds, Square Enix

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.