Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles - Ring of Fates reviews

This is a very good game. The graphics are beautiful, the voice acting is very well done and the storyline is superb!

I enjoyed this game a lot, it has a lot of features and it has New Game+ which includes a Hard mode and Very Hard mode. I've been hooked on this game since it came out and I recommend it to any Final Fantasy.. no scratch that. Any RPG fan out there. It's a great game that I can tell you will definitely like!

One of my favourites from this year!

I didn't really expect that much from this game beyond a simple action rpg, and really, that's what this game is. But I was sucked in by this game's music, it's attention to detail in the visual aspects, and most importantly, the story.

The story surprised me in being much more deep and mature than I expected. There were a couple of themes carried through that I found interesting and somewhat insightful, and the game does not shy away from death and grief. The ending of this game is one of the most poignant and beautiful I have ever experienced. In short, it was not the kiddy story I expected.

However I wouldn't exactly call it epic. There are definitely cliches and a number of cheesy moments. There were also a number of lines which I couldn't understand at all, which I put down to lost-in-translation cultural gaps, but are possibly just bad writing.

The voice acting I felt added overall to the experience, and there is a lot of it. Most of the acting is pretty good, some of it great, and some of it really quite bad, but never unbearable.

Those parts not voice-acted are given emotion by the little face illustrations of the character beside their written dialogue. This works well for the most part, though since there is no facial animation, it is strange to see a close up of a character yelling something angry with a placid smile on their face during the cutscenes.

All the characters are interesting and loveable (excepting the villains, obviously), and even the most minor of npcs are given interesting little mini-stories that you can follow throughout the game. It makes the world (or at least the little of it that you can explore, because this is not a game where you travel very far) feel alive, and you care about the inhabitants of the city you set out to save.

All this and I haven't even mentioned the core gameplay yet.

This is really because the gameplay is fun enough, but the story is what kept me coming back to play this game. I really enjoyed it, and if a good, simple story is all you need to enjoy a game, you can stop reading here and go buy it.

For everyone else:

The battles are somewhat interesting, but frustrating in that they were clearly designed with co-op play in mind. Your companion's AI is fairly terrible, with people constantly falling off of cliffs, hitting the enemy about twice a minute, and never using magic. And as the enemies get harder, you have to kill them quick because your allies refuse to move out of the way of enemy attacks.

Still, this is not a hard game, and I had fun chopping up enemies with the different attacks of the four characters (you can swap between them easily at any time). It helps that just about every enemy drops loot, and the loot system is kind of cool in this game. I'll go into that later.

The level design is overall pretty good, although it's pretty easy to get stuck and not know where to go next in the bigger dungeons, as the map is less than helpful. There are plenty of simple puzzles that are usually pretty easy to figure out, and keep the game going at a good pace.

The music is great, catchy and pleasant, and always matches the mood well.

The graphics are good, the game is pretty and the environments are detailed and fun to explore. I especially like that each new outfit you equip on your characters changes the character sprite, and there's even a little pedestal next to the armoury where you can get a close up 360 degree view of the new gear.

The best way to get new armour and weapons is to get them made at the armoury, which uses scrolls and materials, both of which drop as loot from enemies. It's a fun way to get cool gear, and the game provides a ton of different gear for which to collect the necessary materials and then make. It is a bit annoying that you cannot tell the stats of gear before you pay to get it made, but you can pretty much tell the quality from the cost of making it anyway.

Like I said at the beginning, this game is really, at it's core, a simple action rpg. However despite it's gameplay flaws, this is an original, beautiful game with a compelling story, and I can recommend it to anyone with an interest in the genre and 10–20 hours to spare.

My daughter who is a Pokemon fan bought this as a test of a new type of game, and she LOVES it! She can't wait to get more in this series, and will confidently purchase all Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles games

This is a seriously addictive game with good graphis a good story line and cool cut scenes. It is a must have for all RPG fans out there. If your have played Final Fantasy before you will notice the one difference that sets this game apart from from the other Final Fantasy titles, but I wont spoil it for you – you must buy this game to find out!