"Okay game, but swamped with flaws."

Let's get something straight here: I was a fan of the first Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. It was a charming game with not so many puzzles but fantastic game play and okay lines. When Ring of Fates came out, I was just as excited as the next guy, and wasn't too let down. But now that I've played Echoes of Time, I'm thinking that Nintendo had better think hard about releasing a new FFCC. Not to say that this game is awful, just not worth the money Nintendo wants for it.

Game play
There really are only two main aspects to the game play for FFCC: EoT, and those are puzzles and enemies. Other than that, running around isn't hard to grasp and jumping is broken by either having a Selkie in your party (the only race out of the four that can double-jump) or using a special ability from scratch cards that allows everyone to double-jump regardless of race.

Enemies in Echoes of Time are pretty dumb. In fact, every AI in this game is kind of dumb. Enemies are your typical stand-still-for-a-second-before-attacking kind of things, and seem to be as perfectly content lashing out at thin air as they would be actually landing a blow on your characters. Magic in this game is completely broken, as enemies have no limit to the amount they can cast and it's practically impossible to avoid. At first, I thought I would try to run away from the magic as my allies beat on the caster, but no. Regardless of the fact that I changed all of my allies AI scripts to 'aggresive', they launched about one meaningless attack every few minutes.

Not to say that the enemies aren't adorable, which they are, but I'm going to move on to the allies. There is a function which lets you tell the computer 'have x ally cast more magic, have y ally attack more'. This is brilliant, in theory. Unfortunately, the game does not deliver. Despite my best efforts, I could hardly get my allies to cast cure on themselves when they were an attack away from the grave, let alone cast 'fire' on an enemy. Another problem was that they were all too willing to throw themselves mercilessly at every boss. After they landed next to (every) boss, they proceed to stand still. They hardly even attack! Thus, I started just letting them die and re-spawning them as soon as the boss died to get the EXP.

Now on to puzzles. The puzzles actually had a really good range of easy to difficult, which I was impressed with. What I was not impressed with was the ordering of such puzzles. Every dungeon had both easy and difficult puzzles, in seemingly random order. One puzzle involved pushing a box across ice and melting the ice, where another 'puzzle' involved pushing three boxes around the bottom of a sewer. Each box took at least five minutes. By the time fifteen minutes were up and I had toggled all three switches, I was able to open a door and leave the room. Without a reward.

Some puzzles involved jumping. In the original FFCC, you couldn't jump at all. I'm not going to tell you that I hate the jumping, but every jumper puzzle can be easily beaten, like I mentioned before, with a double jumping character. You don't even have to do any extra work for one, you either start as one or recruit one. Neither endeavor is a hassle. Puzzles in Echoes of Time are very tedious. Even the simple ones. In the end, they don't even turn out to be very satisfying! Another problem is that the AI allies are no help and will not stand still when you want them to, but if you can connect with a Wii or another DS, you can just get a friend to stand in all the places you need them to, thus breaking the puzzle mechanics.

One thing that FFCC was really good for was the different races. In the beginning, there were the magic-casting yukes, the Physically strong Lilties, and the balanced Clavats and Selkies. Clavats were a little better with the sword, Selkies a little better with magic. This was good. In FFCC: Ring of Fates, these races were pretty much disassembled, with the exception of giving Selkies a bow and a double-jump. This was bad, because your party always involved having one member of each race. Every character was basically the same, but they each attacked slightly differently. Thank goodness that Nintendo realized this, and re-balanced the four tribes. You're able to select any party members you want, having any number of each tribe as you desire in Echoes of Time, thus is the terrible mistake corrected. Personally, I always take one member of each tribe, but the game lets you do whatever you want.

One more thing to mention is the overwhelming blandness of the game. The village is called 'Village', the town is called 'Town', the ice an fire mountains are called 'Ice Mountain' and 'Fire Mountain', etc. In Crystal Chronicles, naming was beautiful. Everything had its own name, and every name was really well written. In Ring of Fates, naming was okay. They borrowed many names from FFCC, but what can you do? Echoes of time is so bland that the story is hardly about your character. Sure, they do everything, but the story is really about an evil librarian. Since your character's name isn't predetermined, the voice acting and cutscenes don't mention you at all.

Graphics/Sound
The sound for this game is just terrible. The voice acting is bearable, but not when it comes to your character. All the characters look like children, but have voices (display when jumping, dying, etc) that suggest that they are at least forty. But what really breaks the game is the music. The music is really simple, often only a couple of instruments. And the music never fits what's going on. Whether it's the fast-paced harpsichord in the library or the weird beat in the first dungeon, nothing works about the music in this game at all.

One thing I will say, though, is that the cutscenes are actually pretty nice. There are many shots of a crystal regaining it's original shape, and the graphics were good quality. The in game graphics aren't very bad either, with some enemies like the giant eye actually coming out quite well. A big problem with Ring of Fates was that in battles with multiple enemies, the game would slow down a bit. That problem was remedied in Echoes of Time, meaning game play overall was pretty smooth.

Play Time/Replayability
Many factors work into the play time of this game. What characters you take, whether or not you power-level (which isn't needed in this game), how long it takes you to grasp the puzzle mechanics, etc. The game only took me a few hours to beat, but I missed a few items and quests. As soon as I beat the game, I put it down for good, because I just do not want to replay it at all. I hardly want to think about replaying it, especially looking back on some of the puzzles!

Final Recommendation
I did not like this game very much at all. But, the game play is alright and it's better than many other DS games. If you're looking for a few hours to kill, this might be the game for you. A few of the dungeons can be done in a matter of minutes. If you can pick this game up for a really good price, maybe consider it. But if you're not a Crystal Chronicles fan, do not let this game influence your opinion on the series.

~dokdan

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/09, Updated 08/14/09

Game Release: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (US, 03/24/09)