Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Review: A Bumpy, But Memorable Journey

FF Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition captures the same joys as the original, as well as the same inclination to hinder you from playing it.

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Playing the original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles remains one of my favorite childhood memories. I couldn’t wait for the weekend, when I would set off in a caravan with my best friend and his little brother. I wanted to find new dungeons, upgrade my weapon, and unravel the mystery of the black knight. So every Friday, I grabbed a handful of AA batteries from the living room drawer. I also made sure to pack the special GBA-GameCube cable and my old model, mostly functional extra Game Boy Advance.

You see, Crystal Chronicles required each player to use a GBA as their controller during co-op, so everyone had a screen for menus. It never failed that, after only about an hour of play, someone’s GBA would die. Or my friend’s little brother would die too many times. Or, after we finally got everything sorted, someone’s mom would come in and pull them away. But that sweet hour of multiplayer dungeon crawling was worth all the hassle. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition captures that same joys of discovery and teamwork, and that same inclination to hinder you from actually playing it.

The Sights And Sounds Of The Road

I forgot how the story of Crystal Chronicles goes from cheerful to dark at the drop of a helm. The player takes the form of an adorable mini-person – not quite chibi, but much more bite-sized than the fully-realized anime avatars of more modern Final Fantasy games. You can choose one of four tribes which have very different appearances and slightly different stats, and set off on a caravan ride to hunt down glowing trees and their mystical dew called Myrrh. The Myrrh is needed to power a huge crystal in the player’s hometown that protects the residents from a poisonous miasma. Once you get three drops, you’re treated to a dance party where your character recounts their travels as every clan does their own special jig.

It’s a delight to watch, with the characters given a fresh coat of paint due to the whole “remaster” thing. The sound also gets a slight upgrade thanks to new song covers and fully voiced cutscenes. The reason I call this upgrade “slight” is because there is one great misstep. The lyrics for the title song and the pre-dungeon narrations are wonderful and capture the feeling of a magical journey. It’s the voice acting that brings out Crystal Chronicles Remastered’s hidden darkness. It commits the ultimate sin of making moogles speak.

Have you ever heard “kupo” out loud? It carries the same energy as English Dub Naruto’s “Believe it!” The dedication to accuracy is commendable, but it just isn’t cute no matter how good the voice acting is. And there is a decent range of voices (for player characters, too), but they don’t achieve much for immersion or storytelling that the text doesn’t do on its own. Nor do the aged animations. The characters look better, but they kept the old animations. Or lack thereof. For every joyful jig, there’s a cutscene where the player character maintains a blank expression for the whole conversation.

But back to the story and its actual darkness. Soon after your first dance party, you get hints of the tragedies plaguing the world. What happens if a caravan never returns? How does a doomed village cope with the fact that death by poison gas is creeping up on them? One level shows exactly that, and suddenly the game is more thoughtful. The story of Crystal Chronicles is filled with these notions of dread lurking on the edge of bliss. For a game that’s so lighthearted in its presentation, it delivers a surprisingly multifaceted narrative to those willing to dig deeper.

Doing The Circle Before Battle Royale

The actual process of obtaining myrrh droplets takes the form of a co-op action RPG. One to four players start on the outskirts of an area, and must get to the core. Naturally, a boss monster waits at the core and must be defeated before the path to the myrrh tree is revealed. The heroes must also tote a heavy chalice the whole way, as it’s the only way to carry myrrh. Atop the chalice is a small crystal that protects travelers from miasma.

This whole dynamic means two things for gameplay: positioning and teamwork. The chalice’s protective field shows up as a circle. Players take constant damage outside of the circle, so battles are about keeping enemies in the circle or moving the chalice around to stay in the fight. Also important is the magic system, which allows players to fuse two spells together to create stronger attacks or even brand new effects. The end result is dependent on how close the two casters activate their spells, and Crystal Chronicles Remastered provides a helpful new timer to eliminate guesswork. Single players get an A.I. moogle helper.

Despite the emergence of co-op live service games since its initial release, Crystal Chronicles’ dungeon crawls still have a certain novelty. Teaming up to cast spells and (hopefully) share chalice duty fosters cooperation in a way few other games do. Environmental puzzles are also easier with more players. This does have the unfortunate side effect of making things more tedious for solo players. That moogle helper casts spells at random or only casts one type of spell, making it hard to set up great combos. The single-player solution to those environmental puzzles is often to just wait for a trigger. Speaking of waiting, much of the design revolves around waiting for menus and loading screens. Some streamlining there would have been appreciated.

Multiplayer In The 21st Century

I can sadly (or maybe gratefully?) report that neither the Nintendo Switch or PS4 version of Crystal Chronicles Remastered supports GBA multiplayer. In fact, there is no local multiplayer at all. The only way to team up in this version is to play online. The good of that? It’s cross-platform. It also has a mobile version called “Crystal Chronicles Lite” that can be started for free. The bad? Pretty much everything else.

The worst offense is that only the session host can actually progress their story. The other players keep their items, sure, but they don’t get myrrh. Nor do they even get credit for beating the dungeon. Essentially, multiplayer is only good for grinding gear. Also, voice chat isn’t supported in-game. A team of PS4 players can party up, but cross-platform groups must rely on a series of emotes. Which, when it comes to precise tasks like timing spells, are not too helpful. In trying to update Crystal Chronicles multiplayer for the modern day, Square Enix tarnished the whole shared experience that made it such a unique game.

Sweet Memory

Even though I spent so little time actually playing it, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles remains one of my favorite childhood games. There’s something to be said for the experience, that it creates memories that powerful. But memory is all-too-often unreliable, often building things up to be better than they ever were. In this second trip with the crystal caravan, I did still delight to discover the cheerful tales and chipper tunes of days gone by. Less welcome were the dated systems for item management. Not welcome at all was the modern update to multiplayer. Turns out cross-platform is not always the answer. I’ll take my beat-up old GBA as a traveling companion any day.

A PlayStation 4 copy of the game was provided by Square Enix for this review. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition is available now on PS4 and Nintendo Switch.

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/final-fantasy-crystal-chronicles-remastered-review/