Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers Preview Page 2

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

Crystal Bearers knows you want to experiment with this stuff right away, and gives you ample opportunity: in the second room, a collapsing ornament plonks a load of giant stone balls in your path which need to be swept away with telekinesis so that you can get through. Or, er, you can spend a few minutes throwing them at the hapless bystanders, which is far more likely. That's when you'll probably discover that you can use your telekinetic powers on the bystanders directly, which will result in five minutes of you throwing everyone at everyone else - and when I said you could abuse your telekinetic powers, I wasn't kidding. A few hours in, I spent ten minutes in fits of hysterical laughter systematically dropping every child I could find down a well. I'm going to hell.

The minigames occasionally use telekinesis, as with an early escape on a chocobo cart from which you fling your pursuers around with wild abandon while collapsing nearby cliffs and bridges on them, but it's primarily the hook for the main game. There, it's used to pull switches, hurl yourself from platform to platform, break open the occasional locked chest, and – as you'd expect – fight. When you get into a monster encounter, you can pick up any nearby objects and lob them at the enemies, or pick up the enemies themselves. It's simplistic, easy to get to grips with, and it works well when the camera isn't getting in your way, although the time it takes to “grab” onto an enemy can make it a tad frustrating when they're fast-moving.

Truthfully, the most interesting thing about the combat is in the series of Medals – read “Achievements” or “Trophies” - that the game has. These are tied into everything, from item collection to minigames to combat to silly little things, and they make everything fun. Sure, you can bash those enemies against the wall ten times, but a glance at the Medals screen shows that there are four different Medals tied into them based on how you interact. To get the Gardening Medal, for instance, you need to ram a particular plant-like enemy into the ground. A hemispherical insect enemy can be slammed into another, causing them to temporarily fuse into a ball. That gets you one Medal. Sending that ball pinging around the area, smashing into other enemies, will net you a second Medal. The combat that could potentially get stale quite quickly becomes a lot more involved when you're trying out all sorts of combinations in an attempt to unlock another medal that you just know is tied to them in some way, and which could involve either your telekinesis or other enemies and objects in the environment. Bosses, too, have their own twists, with one featuring a series of weak spots that must be hit followed by an homage to Shadow of the Colossus.

It's an interesting balance with the game offering you as much as you put in, but it's hard to tell from a few hours play whether that will hold up. It's not like you need to fight if you don't want to, though; there's no levelling up, and while forging equipment from items that monsters drop is cheaper than buying it, you can simply shell out cash if you want to. Equipment has a variety of effects, with some raising your attack and defence, while others have more indirect but interesting abilities, like increasing the size of your pointer, making it easier to lock onto fast-moving enemies.

This seems to be the focus with Crystal Bearers, in fact. If you want to experience the story, you can run straight through most encounters and race through the plot. If you fancy exploring, there's plenty to do; if you want all of the Medals, then you've got your work cut out for you. If you're more the sort of person who wants to focus on minigames – of which there are loads, some of which I only found when backtracking a little way through areas – then those are there for you too. Our impression thus far is that it's a title for casual gamers, with fairly easy gameplay and the ability to let you do what you want to do, although Crystal Chronicles stalwarts will likely want to find out what the hell's going on with the Yuke Tribe.

While Crystal Bearers controls naturally and holds its own well over a short period, our only concern is that it might prove too simplistic over the long term. For now, though, we've enjoyed what we've played and we look forward to seeing where the interesting plot will twist next, and what's really going on with the extinct Yuke tribe.

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