Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers Preview [Wii]

11 Dec 2009 at 10:41:15 by Tim McDonald

Anyone else finding themselves amused by Final Fantasy's naming system at the moment? Ignoring the naming shambles that occurred between Final Fantasy II to Final Fantasy VI, we're currently waiting on the releases of the XIII and XIV games. Except they're not the 13th and 14th games, are they? That would mean ignoring Final Fantasy X-2, or the Final Fantasy XII spin-off Revenant Wings, or the multiple Final Fantasy VII games, or Dissidia, or Mystic Quest, or the scores of other games. These days, each “number” pretty much just defines it as a separate world which will end up with its own continuity of side-games and sequels. Importantly, though, we'd also be ignoring Crystal Chronicles, a spin-off game that has since become a meta-series in its own right – and has now resulted in this game being named, in a manner reminiscent of Frankenstein's monster, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers.

Crystal Chronicles is very much a Nintendo-exclusive series, and in part, it's the Final Fantasy side-branch that seems to be toyed with more than any other. The original game was a multiplayer-focused Gamecube title which pretty much required link cables and Game Boy Advances for any enjoyment. Follow-ups, too, have changed things up; the Crystal Chronicles WiiWare title My Life as a King functioned like SimCity, while My Life as a Darklord was a very literal take on tower defence.

Now there's The Crystal Bearers, which is yet another radical departure from anything Final Fantasy has done before.

This is apparent right from the opening. Protagonist Layle is already established as a fighter, not least because of the crystal shard embedded in his cheek which grants him telekinetic powers. Crystal bearers, as characters like Layle are known, are hated and feared by the general populace. This is the Crystal Chronicles world 1,000 years in the future, you see: the magic-using Yuke race has been annihilated by the technologically-adept Lilties, and magic is now seen as a fearful, despicable thing, beautifully illustrated by the number of people who spit the words “Crystal bearer” at Layle like an insult.

It's not the plot that shows off how different this is, though, but the first playable scene. Layle has been hired to escort an airship, which rapidly comes under attack by flying dragon-like monsters – at which point Layle grabs a gun and leaps off of his own aircraft, and the game becomes a rail-shooter. That's right: the first playable section of this Final Fantasy game is you using the Wiimote to shoot monsters out of the sky.

It gets weirder. Once the monsters have been downed, the antagonist, a member of the supposedly extinct Yuke race, promptly drains the Crystal-based power from the ship's engines and flies away on one of his remaining dragon beasties. Fortunately, Layle – as a crystal bearer – is capable of powering the ship's reactor, and so the second playable section of the game involves steering the airship, which has a ludicrously big turning circle, through a canyon. It doesn't appear to be possible to fail either of these, incidentally; they're minigames of a sort that break up the action. As first impressions go, though, it certainly made us sit up and pay attention. Shooting followed by driving? Madness.

Following the “safe” landing of the airship – which grinds to a halt about three feet away from a city entrance – we're allowed into the game proper, and we can try out Layle's telekinetic abilities for ourselves. He's easy enough to control, with the analogue stick directing his little Clavat feet around whatever environment you're in, and a tap of a button centring the camera behind him. The Wiimote controls pretty much everything else: moving him close to something and tapping A will generally cause him to use it (normally, talking to people or kicking open chests, so the usual hero stuff) while aiming the Wiimote at something and holding down B lets you abuse your telekinetic powers to hilarious effect.

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