"This screenshot pretty much tells you everything you need to know."

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers may share the Crystal Chronicles name with three multiplayer action RPGs, but other than taking place in the future of the same universe, it has almost nothing to do with the previous games; at least not in terms of gameplay. Instead, it is a singleplayer game that’s quite unlike anything I’ve ever played, and is frankly quite bizarre.

The Crystal Bearers takes place a thousand years after the events of the original Crystal Chronicles game. The series has always revolved around four races: Clavats (read: humans), Selkies, Lilties, and Yukes. But in this future era, the races no longer live in harmony. The Lilty tribe destroyed the Yuke crystal during “The Great War”, banishing the Yuke to oblivion. The Lilty now live in prosperity while both the Clavat and Selkie tribes live in poverty.

You take on the role of a Clavat named Layle, who has the unique ability to control gravity. This basically amounts to “using the force”. Since magic has been abandoned in lieu of technology, people fear him and are, in general, pretty repulsed by him. Of course, this might also be due in part to the fact that he’s kind of a jackass.

Crystal Bearers is a hard game to classify. It takes place in a fairly open world comparable to the overworld in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. As you travel through its many areas, “miasma streams” open up in the sky. This is where enemies come from.

Combat revolves around using Layle’s gravity powers to manipulate objects and enemies. By pointing the wiimote at something, you can either lift it above your head or jerk it in a direction. Hurting enemies usually involves throwing objects (or other enemies) at them or jerking them into obstacles. What makes the combat more interesting, though, is reactions.

Picking up bones, for example, made dog-like enemies stop attacking me. Instead, they followed me around affectionately. Another time I threw a giant beetle into another beetle. Since each of the beetles backs curved to make half a sphere, they combined into a ball on impact that I could then throw at another enemy for extra damage. Some enemies even let you use their powers while you hold them. Holding a goblin archer above your head lets you aim the arrows he’s shooting before you give him a good ‘ol toss. It’s all these little touches that make what initially appears to be an incredibly simple combat system more interesting.

The problem is that overall, the game doesn’t require you to do that much fighting. Since you do not level up in Crystal Bearers, the main motivation for fighting is to get materials for making equipment. While some enemies will drop money, your main source of income throughout the game will be treasure chests that respawn throughout the world.

The miasma streams feel much like a day night cycle. If you don’t defeat all the enemies that spawn before it vanishes, the enemies will also vanish. But if you do finish them, you can close the stream manually. The first time you close the stream for an area, you will increase you maximum health which makes finding different places where miasma streams appear very important.

In time, you’ll get very acquainted with navigating the world the game takes place in. Why? Because you have to. The map available from the pause screen is more “pretty” than useful, and while you do have a radar while fighting enemies, you don’t have a compass. The only way to know where you’re going is by looking at the signs posted every so often. Unfortunately, you can’t look at signs while riding a chocobo which can make things a little more irritating.

There are lots of people walking around the game’s cities as well as its overworld. Strangely, you can only talk to a select few of them. This makes the world feel a bit empty. That isn’t to say you can’t interact with people. You have access to all your gravity powers outside of battle which leads to all kinds of mischief. The people will also react to your actions. Tossing a balloon at a little Lilty boy made him display happiness while tossing a bench at another citizen had a bit different of an effect.

If I had to put Crystal Bearers in a genre, I would say it is a “being a jackass simulator”. Not only is there much potential for mischief, the game strongly encourages it. The only way to read the newspaper is to yank it out of somebody’s hands with “the force”. Knocking over rich, old ladies is a legitimate source of income. When I needed to get somewhere quicker, I actually committed “Grand Theft Chocobo”.

While it is possible to use your powers for good, most of the time it’s just not worth it. Many of the sidequests I performed awarded me an amount of money I could have gotten quicker from walking over to a couple more chests. Still, I found a certain joy in doing some of the odd jobs despite how ultimately pointless they were.

But if anything can prove it can feel worth doing despite being pointless, it’s the various designs you can get for the back of your jacket. The game has loads of them and they give you no stat advantage whatsoever. The designs are purely cosmetic, yet I couldn’t help but dump most of my money into unlocking them, and I was always anxious to see what the next one would be. I can not justify that.

This is a very story driven game. There are a large number of cutscenes to move the story along, but not in a frequency that ever felt burdensome (I’m looking at you, Xenosaga and Metal Gear Solid). To break up the game even further, there are some minigames. The introductory sequence, for example, has a rail shooting section where you gun down flying monsters while falling through the sky. This is followed by steering a giant airship through a canyon. There’s even a simple rhythm game where you must dance with various people at a ball.

"The action is peppered with a few minigames spread throughout your adventure."

The music in Crystal Bearers is fantastic. There is a ton of variety throughout and most of it contains live performances. You’ll hear rockabilly, surf rock, tango, slide guitar, epic orchestral, and upbeat jazz specifically parodying Muskrat Ramble. It’s easily one of the best soundtracks of 2009.

One of the game’s biggest faults is its camera. You can center it behind Layle by pressing “Z” while manual adjustment is made using the d-pad. There is an option to have it manually follow you, but it’s so poorly implemented that the developers decided to disable that option by default and rightfully so.

This is a highly experimental game which is probably why it is full of serious problems. The gameplay is very interesting, but also feels sloppy at times. Despite being announced before the Wii was even released, it almost feels as though the game isn’t finished and its new ideas aren’t fully realized.

In spite of all that, the large overworld is engaging and I always wanted to see the next area. The story is interesting and avoids a lot of JRPG cliches (though they’re not completely absent) and messing around with Layle’s gravity powers is a lot of fun. Honestly, I found the game to be more enjoyable than it has any right to be with the amount of issues it has. The thirteen hours I spent completing it seemed to go by in a heartbeat. They’ve laid down some very quirky and enjoyable groundwork and I’d love to see them refine it in a sequel. As it stands now, though, this first attempt is as unconventional as it is a mixed bag.

Tags: Crystal Chronicles, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, Square Enix, Wii

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 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.