Final Fantasy Crystal Chronices: My Life as a King Review by ItsNotRudy
A fresh take on building simulation with RPG influences keeps you busy for hours, but lacks vital features until you decide to download the add-on content.
Developed by: Square Enix
Console: Nintendo Wii, WiiWare Exclusive
Players: 1 Player
Genre: Strategy, RPG, Simulation
Price: 1500 Wii Points
| The Good |
| Enchanting characters and graphics - It’s fun to watch your city become larger and bustling – You can dress your female assistant in a bikini – Good quality : price ratio.- |
| The Bad |
| Paid downloaded content is needed to bring out more potential – You’re confined to the city, no adventuring at all – A lacking story as a reason for the building activities |
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is a downloadable Final Fantasy game for the
Nintendo Wii. However, it doesn't play quite like the Final Fantasy you're used to. Square Enix decided to deviate from their usual turn-based or action RPG and creates a game where managing a kingdom and it's inhabitants are your main concern. Adventuring, monster-hunting and exploring is left to hired warriors. Players find themselves trapped within the bounds of the castle walls, delegating construction, sending out mercenaries to collect resources, managing the population and satisfying various petitions. Downloadable for a meager
1500 Wii Points, (15 dollars) My Life as a King proves to be a long game with a fair amount of content for a game that's 50MB in size.
According to legend, an empty castle is what once was a powerful and bustling kingdom. The child of an exiled king arrives in his inherited kingdom, only to find an abandoned castle and a giant blue Crystal in the middle of the town square. The Crystal speaks to the young king and grants him the power of
Architek, which allows him to create buildings from memories of them and using a resource called Elementite. Assisted by Chime, Hugh Yurg and three Moogle Brothers the king set's out to rebuild the kingdom and ressurrect his homeland and protecting it from a fiend calling himself "Dark Lord", seeking to destroy your town.
The game takes place after the happenings in
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (GC), but doesn't reference back to it much, so it is not needed to be played to understand the story. Each day consists of basic tasks, starting with the reviewing of the Financial Reports and Adventurer Reports, which are glorified logs of the daily spendings/income and diaries. After reviewing the logs you may award the best Adventurers with Medals, which increase a stat of choice and set up behests (it's the name for quests in this game) via a kingdom map to send them out to a dungeon or to change Adventurer's jobs. Sadly, this is the closest you get to building your Adventurers, as they decide what to buy with their pays and how to tackle encountered monsters. Certain behests have level recommendations; if your Adventurers do not match the level you may order them to repeat an earlier behest or to go train for experience with your Guild Manager; Hugh Yurg. Behests involve the exploration of dungeons and oceans, the eradication of Boss monsters and collecting resources for shops to allow research new weaponry or to stock up on Elementite. These are tasks that sound like a lot of fun, but you don't get to see or do any of it; you're confined to the city walls. Behest managing becomes a repetitive task, delaying your real desire, which is rebuilding the town, managing adventurers and create a bustling environment. A day lasts for about 5 minutes and can be ended early when the player chooses to rest for the remainder of the day.
Once you setup a few houses, families will come to inhabit them and pay taxes. Bigger houses let's you collect more taxes. Taxes or "tithes" are influenced by the value of the house and the happiness of the inhabitants. The population's happiness is measured by a Morale meter. This morale meter fills up as the player motivates his people by speaking to them in person or donating money and resources to their stores. Morale also goes up after an Adventurer defeats a powerful Boss. After the Morale meter is fully filled the player may use it to temporarily increase his own happiness. When in a state of happiness, talking to Adventurers that are bound to head out to a dungeon increases their stats temporarily. Talking to common townspeople inspires them to bond more with their relatives and neighbours, causing the Morale meter to fill up faster in the future. When you fill up the Morale meter several times you can choose to upgrade your city's title, which will result in more taxes gained from the population. Taxes are used to pay Adventurers, so they can buy better equipment.
The building process is fairly simple; meet the required amount of Elementite and obtain a "memory" of the desired building. New buildings are unlocked by asking inhabitants of the town about them or by making Adventurers clear dungeons. The player has to step on one of the glowing tiles spread across the city and shake the WiiMote to summon the lovely assistant Chime. Chime will bring up a menu with different buildings to choose from. Each building has a build limit, so you can't instantly fill the town up with houses and stores. Building has to be done strategically or nobody will benefit from it. For example, when building a Black Mage school, it is wise to surround it with houses that attract a race that has a natural knack for Magicks as the school promotes the growth of the Intelligence stat, which powers up Black Mage spells. The player may visit built schools, shops and halls to fund their cause, allowing Adventurers to buy better gear and learn new skills and spells. Downloading Add-on Content (dubbed DLC) allows you to build more and different structures, expand your castle wall, explore more dungeons and clothing your assistant Chime in a sexy bikini. The DLC costs the same as the initial game and includes a lot of the variety and content that should have been in the initial game, but doesn't allow you to actually see the dungeons or take part in the behests, which is a shame.
The story is there for filling purposes, it has little effect on the daily tasks and it only continues after certain things are achieved or built. It consists of of short cut-scenes where the player, the Dark Lord, Chime, Moogles, a penguin that keeps insulting you and Hugh Yurg have short conversations. Overall, it's boring and does not include character development since the player is a mute protagonist as we see in the majority of Nintendo house games such as Mario, Metroid and The Legend of Zelda. The game can be replayed when the story ends in a harder setting with the preservation of your old Adventurers. Due to the game's small size, there is no actual voice conversation. Unfortunately, this also means there are only a select amount of ambient sounds and background themes, making the sound repetitive and boring after a few hours of gameplay. The graphics are nicely done and really rich in color. Buildings are cartoony and very detailed. Framerate for the menu popups and structure building suffers after a lot of objects have been built, since the game does not include a limited view distance and is very intense in the special effects department.
Conclusion
In a nutshell;
Final Fantasy CC: My Life as a King is a game where you stay at home and send other people out to play Final Fantasy. Do not look at this game as one of the regular Final Fantasy games, but rather as an interactive building/management sim with a little dash of RPG. The story is very limited and cliché, a lot of aspects of city management like tax control, natural disasters, individual wealth and such are at basic levels or left unaddressed. The game is playable and enjoyable without DLC, but doesn't feel complete without it. It starts off very slow and repetitive, so it will not captivate people looking for quick and intense fun, making this game good fun for a niche market, but slow and lacking for mainstream RPG players.
| 8.0. | Presentation |
| | Very neat and crisp logo's and menu's across the board. Everything is rendered in a medieval theme and includes a lot of detail for a budget game. |
| 7.0 | Graphics |
| | Characters and houses look very well rendered. The animation is lacking, very robotic movement and no changing facial expressions. Looking out from the kingdom there is very little to see than a lot of grass and a mountain or forest in the distance. |
| 6.0 | Sound |
| | As usual for Square Enix, very fitting music, but it get's repetitive after a few hours of playing. The lack of voice acting is dissapointing, especially since there are only a few cutscenes. |
| 7.5 | Gameplay |
| | The game starts out slow and can become repetitive when you're saving up and making behests to build the expensive things. |
| 8.0 | Playtime |
| | The initial bare download will keep you busy for over 10 hours, downloading the DLC will add at least 50% to your original playtime. The New Game+ allows players to tackle it at a higher difficulty. |
Overall: 7.5 / 10 "Fairly Good"
[Review] Final Fantasy: My Life as a King -
03-13-2009, 07:34 AM
Hybrid Mode
