Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles – My Life As A King (WiiWare) Review
Ahhhh, where would a system be without its token Final Fantasy iteration to go with it? With the recent release of WiiWare, Square Enix has seen a definite opportunity to put out yet another Final Fantasy title and rake in the big ones. However, with Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles – My Life as a King, several notable features, although not at all similar to conventional Final Fantasy titles, make a welcome debut. That being said, My Life as a King definitely isn’t for everyone.
My Life as a King takes place some time after the events of the original Crystal Chronicles title, released on the Gamecube back in 2004. The Crystal Caravans have delivered what they promised and created a brand new, peaceful world. My Life as a King takes place in a remote area in which the King Leo and his assistants come across on their journey. Since losing his previous kingdom to the Miasma, Leo decides to start anew in this new, remote area, which has an unusual blue crystal placed right in the center of Leo’s prospective kingdom. Upon inspecting the crystal, it bestows Leo with the power of “Architek”, which allows Leo to rebuild his kingdom using Elementite; a material dropped both by fiends and discovered in far away dungeons.
As with other WiiWare titles, My Life As A King looks much better than several retail titles available to Wii owners. The environments are typical Final Fantasy style, several things can happen at once on screen and the models all animated realistically (at least in the context of the game itself). Most of the time My Life as a King runs at a smooth and solid frame rate and it will rarely drop below 60fps. There are two key criticisms of My Life as a King, however. The first is the fact that there is hardly any variation between the models. Facial expressions all remain the same, regardless of what is currently going on, as well as all faces themselves look almost identical. The best explanation to offer for this is the fact that the WiiWare service doesn’t provide enough space to load several different looking models into the game, but the reason for lack of variety in the models is one that is unacceptable, but also one we’ll touch upon later. Secondly, there is some notable slowdown especially during construction sequences, but nothing too game breaking.
Players control Leo himself, moving him with the Nunchuck around his kingdom. Shaking the Wiimote calls Chime, Leo’s assistant, who will assist him in building structures around his kingdom. My Life as a King takes a daily approach, meaning that each segment of the game takes place from the beginning of an in-game day and ends at the end of the day. Each day lasts for approximately ten minutes in real time. At the beginning of each day, Chime informs Leo how much money and magicite has been made, as well as allowing Leo to post “bequests”, which are requests for adventurers to embark on quests in order to gain magicite or money. Here’s where My Life as a King is different to previous Final Fantasy games. Leo and consequently, the player, never embark or go on quests, instead staying in the kingdom and awaiting the outcome from adventurers employed by the king himself.
Upon first starting to play My Life as a King, Chime will instruct Leo on how to build houses, which consequently leads to an increase in the kingdom’s population. Upon increasing the population, more and more residents will want to become adventurers in order to foster growth in their own kingdom, and Leo (the player) is able to inspect their statistics and hire them if required. Upon being hired, adventurers will show interest in quests posted by Leo every morning, and Leo can authorize them to go on the quest. When choosing a quest to post as Leo, players can choose several areas and then choose which task to perform. The first task is usually to explore the area, while the end of each area culminates in a boss battle. While an adventurer is on a quest, live updates are provided in an almost teasingly manner, updating Leo and the player on how their adventurers are doing. Before each quest, Leo can run around the kingdom and speak to adventurers before they depart, raising morale and subsequently raising the potential for completion of the quest. Adventurers can also have their jobs changed into black or white mages, warriors and the thief class. Also, certain buildings can be unlocked, adding a bit of variety to the mix. Each adventurer also has detailed statistics similar to what is expected from characters in other Final Fantasy games, so that if adventurers are failing a quest in a certain area, their stats can be compared with the recommended stats for the area. Although the statistics provided are excessive, it can seem a bit redundant at times.
The soundtrack for My Life as a King is great. It’s just like a typical Final Fantasy game, with appropriate tunes for appropriate turning points in the storyline. Although there aren’t as many as your standard Final Fantasy game, there is a good selection / mix considering the medium My Life as a King is delivered on.
Although My Life as a King is a great game, there are several extremely glaring factors that make it far from perfect. The first is the online capability. My Life as a King offers several pieces of downloadable content, a first for the Nintendo WiFi Connection. Included in the downloadable content are several new races, new buildings and costumes for the characters. Outside of the available costumes, almost all of the downloadable content is what really should be included in the game. New races add variety to the game, expanding outside of the boring human only models provided in the base package, as mentioned earlier in this review. It is really inexcusable as the game doesn’t feel incomplete, but rather feels as though the game included all the downloadable content and then was cut up in order to yield a greater profit. Secondly, My Life as a King is definitely an acquired taste, with many people not realising that it is no where near a traditional Final Fantasy game, but rather a city building simulation akin to Dark Cloud for the Playstation 2.
Criticisms aside, it certainly is rewarding after putting a lot of time into the game to discover that you’ve put together a gigantic kingdom with a small army to secure supplies and a vibrant social lifestyle. That being said, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles – My Life As A King may not be for everyone, particularly those without any time to play games, let alone build a kingdom of their own.
