In some respects, it's a bit surprising to see Square Enix continue with the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles line as its own series. While certainly possessing some interesting ideas (I'm particularly fond of the always fully-clothed Yuke species), the original game had quite a few glaring flaws (including having to stack your cast spells to do more powerful versions and the stupid bucket). Still, with the increased success of Nintendo systems of late and the desire to show that they're going to give it some exclusives, it makes sense that Square Enix would revisit the platform with one of the more awkwardly-named games in quite some time, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates, which we'll just call by its ending to save time and breath.
Ring of Fates centers around the coming of age of twins Yuri (male) and Chelinka (female), who grow up with only a father and the care of their neighbors Alhanalem and Meeth. Their lives seem fairly normal until they see a ghostly apparition in the caves near their home, and a sinister man in red seems to hover over them in a ploy for using the worlds' crystals for a sinister plot. Meanwhile, the twins deal with the various adversities they come across, both globally and personal, as they come to terms with their own legacy regarding the crystals.
I'm honestly a bit disappointed in the game's story. Not because it's cookie-cutter. I've forgiven many games, including RPGs, for that same problem. No, the problem is that Ring of Fates makes a distinct habit of threatening to shake the player out of complacency with its storyline, but doesn't. One prime example is Meeth, the Lilty neighbor that ends up joining your team after having spent a three-year time skip trapped alone in an underground dungeon. She's actually shown having gone a bit crazy in that time, talking to herself in a fashion reminiscent to Tom Hanks talking with Wilson in Cast Away. However, after the emotional reunion with the rest of her old friends, Meeth suddenly gets over the problems that obviously arose after being stranded alone for so long. I really think that, and many more parts of the game, could have received more attention.
Similarly, the ending resulted in a large amount of disgust as well. First, I will say that the game has perhaps the best fate for a final boss ever. But after that? The story could have concluded in one of three ways. One would have been an excellent meditation on the price one has to pay to confront evil. One would have been a great look at the nature of sacrifice and family ties. And one would be a giant cop-out that would make it seem that Square Enix is afraid of a difficult and thought-provoking ending. Go ahead and guess which one they picked.
The game's combat system is similar to the original Crystal Chronicles, but with a couple of tweaks. To begin, you now have eight pockets, one for each type of item and magicite (for spell casting) you can use during battle, and can thus fill up to their respective capacities. This has its ups and downs – it's much easier to carry tons of items and spells, but each can only be used once. Moreover, since you have allies at all times, you can just tap their picture on the touch screen and either start controlling them or direct them to cast spells on a point for you, allowing even a single player to use the impressive moves. Both of these are welcome changes from the previous game, where you were much more limited in what you could hold and what you could do with it.
But by far, the best part of the game is that the bucket is almost completely absent in this game. For those unfamiliar, you had to carry around a bucket in the first game, and you took damage at a heavy clip every time you strayed past its shielding boundary. This made multiplayer games a particular pain, as you had to stay right by your allies and one person was always stuck on bucket duty, instead of something helpful like fighting enemies. Not only are you allowed to go past your allies, but you're encouraged to at several points, as several characters have abilities that they can use to access areas others can't. You're almost totally free to explore as you'd like. Technically, there are two areas still involving a spiritual descendant of the bucket, but one is a very small area and the other is just a puzzle room that no longer requires the bucket once a switch is hit. Otherwise, though, you're free of the bucket.
Beyond that, though, you actually have a fairly standard adventure game, where you sit and wail on enemies until they die, and you do so until you've got enough strength for the next area. Some basic strategy ends up coming into play with several enemy types (particularly enemies prone to blocking), but it's mostly just learning the rote patterns and applying them. To be honest, once you get the hang of it, the only way things get difficult is if you haven't gotten new equipment in a while or are just not in the mood to grind out a couple of levels, in which case fights take a while to appropriately dodge and counter in most instances. By no means is the game challenging; I suspect it's meant (if not actively marketed towards) the younger crowd who are still getting used to role-playing games. However, one bright spot is that when the inevitable new game plus comes into play, all the enemies are given much more power in the second run through the game – I would have gotten dramatically bored with turning the same old enemies into paste over and over.
I'll admit to one particular joy, though. In the game, you can pick up smaller enemies. You can just pound them while they're over your head, but it's actually worth it to smack them against the wall. Not only do you damage them this way, but you make it much more likely that they'll drop items usable for making new equipment. It's actually a useful technique, which I'd still do without the bonus because picking up an enemy and smacking them into a wall is way more fun than it has a right to be. The fact that I can literally bash the nose off of one particular enemy (the mouse-like Mu, found in most areas of the game) is just gilding the lily.
The graphics, to be honest, pull a giant bait-and-switch on you. When you first load the game up, you see fairly well-done cinemas, with well-rendered characters and plenty of animated excitement. Then, you actually get into the game, which resembles a nasty accident between N64 graphics and a textile factory. There are tons of clashing colors on very blocky characters, and I honestly wish they had cut out the cinemas in exchange for smoother graphics all around.
The graphics aren't a total loss, though. One thing that the game definitely deserves credit for is actually making each character have a different appearance with every armor and helmet they can equip. You get all sorts of different appearances – from the game's take on classic Final Fantasy jobs (like ninja, black mages, and thieves), silly outfits (a frog?), and some neat new additions (I like the blue outfit, and the Selkie that joins your party dresses as a pirate in his ultimate armor). If the game actually had solid graphics all around, this alone would be worth playing around with.
The game's music is fairly good. Each area's soundtrack fits it quite well, and it does an excellent job of drawing you in at several points. There aren't any really clunky parts, and even the parts where there is rain makes the rain an actual part of the music and adds to the mood. But yet, I can't really speak all that glowingly about it, either. It's a good job, sure, but it's not blowing the doors off with an incredible tune selection. I didn't mind listening to it, and in fact regularly kept earphones on while playing. But at the same time, I'm not going to find a soundtrack or remixes of the game's music either.
The game's voice acting is another story, though. First, the good news – villainous right-hand man Cu Chaspel has both some of the game's best lines and has an excellent voice actor (sadly uncredited in the game). It does help that a good half of the voice-acted scenes features his work. I'll be honest: he was so good, I kept rooting for him to pull a Kefka throughout the game. But beyond Chaspel, though, the voice acting is mediocre. Yuri and Chelinka are on the annoying side when they're younger, but their older selves and everyone else are just kind of there. Either they should have gone for better performances to hold up to Chaspel's work, or they should have ditched the voices for cleaner graphics.
The multiplayer is a bit hampered in that you can't play through any of the game's plot with multiple people; you can only go do extra missions or play the racing minigame unlockable within it. Moreover, you can only do multiplayer locally; the WiFi only allows you to trade the custom Moogle you make during the main game. I know that Nintendo WiFi is a bit wonky and perhaps not ready for online adventuring like the game provides locally, but even in person I don't feel a burning need to connect with everyone else.
I'm not saying that Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates is bad, per se. It's just that it achieves its middling score in a much different fashion than most games. In most instances, I think a game is average because it doesn't strive to be more than that. With Ring of Fates, I feel like the seed of a great game is in the card. It just was never allowed to come to fruition, and the end result is a game that feels half-completed. Sure, everything from start to finish is there. But it was pulled out of development right when something good could have come from it. It's alright for those just getting started with the genre, but veterans are inevitably going to be left with wanting more.
