Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, first impressions and lack of second impressions

As many of you know we have been awaiting the arrival of a game titled “Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles” and as of yesterday we have had it in our possession. We started playing the game yesterday, and I want to give some impressions. First off, there are four races of people living together in a village. The world you live in is run over by this evil fog thing and you have to have a crystal to protect your city from being over run by the fog stuff. The catch is that each year you have to find this stuff to help keep the crystal from cracking. So a party from your town sets out to find this sap stuff from special trees.

OK, so that is the set-up for what is going on, but the reason we are so stoked about this game is that it is an RPG (role playing game) combined with a multi-player action game. Specifically you are a single player who has his own inventory, objectives, and spells, and you have to use them, and manage them in real time. Now most people who have played an RPG know that it is usually semi-turn based, which means the enemy takes a shot at you, then you take a shot at the enemy, which means you have time to plan what to do, arrange your spell to work well, heal people, and things like that. Well, not with this game. This game you have real time whoop ass, which means, while you are trying to switch between fire and cure spells so you can heal yourself or someone around you, the bad guy is beating you down in the name of jebuz while your character stands there with his thumb up his butt. So this makes team-work very very important, as well as verbal communication….which makes the game fun.
The big kicker with this game is that in order to play multi-player, you must own a gameboy advanced and a link cable to connect it to the gamecube. To me this seemed like an awful ploy to whore out the accessories that Nintendo will often do, but for this game it makes sense. There is no way I could scroll through a personal menu on the screen to change my inventory around, or assign new spells to slots I have available, so you have to go to your gameboy to mess around with the menu. This also lets you talk to people and buy things independent of the other players which is nice.

This game also features some neat stuff with casting spells and the timing it and combo type of things. This is pretty cool, but kinda hard to pull off, so we are still working that out, I’m sure we’ll get better at using the cool combo spells as time goes by.

!Read on for a rant about the skinny Kid!


Now, I would have more to say on this BUT, a certain member of our party decided to not come home until after 11 pm, when the rest of us were very tired. It even turns out that the squirrel boy bought a GBA sp today just to play the game with us, and poor squirrel boy didn’t get to play, he has to wait. I arrived home from my lab class at approximately 6pm with the new extension cable so I can play sitting on the couch (which is a good thing, because I don’t know how four people were going to play without at least two of them sitting back from the screen) and when I got home I saw Squirrels box for his GBA laying on the chair. So I messaged Dirk, assuming that he was hibernating in his room, being generally anti-social, as he usually is at this time of night, awaiting my return for the four player action. But alas, there is no answer, so no Dirk is home. So I think to myself, “hmm, where could he be, especially with Valerie taking that class on Tuesdays.” So I figure, either 1) her class is over, or 2) he is working late at the office and had dinner at his department or something like that. So I wait, past the 7pm time when video gaming must stop for television and dinner, and past Lauren coming over to watch Gilmore Girls (her TV gets bad reception for the WB, so don’t make fun of me), and on into the 8pm hour. So at this point I’m thinking, he forgot we were going to play today, so I called him. And of course he is at Valerie’s and he says “I’m just about to eat dinner”. And I’m all like “This game takes commitment man” and he is all “well I’m just about to eat dinner, so I can’t be done till like 9” and I’m like “this is bogus, you need to give me an hour at least, I mean squirrel boy bought a GBA” and I’m thinking “where the hell has he been all afternoon and evening if he is just eating dinner after 8pm” (which is late for Dirk) and he says he’ll be home between 10 and 11 and we can play then. Also he said something about his research and how he wouldn’t have time since he has space again in the green-house, and I referred back to my statement about the game taking commitment. And he makes some comment about playing Saturdays, and how we are breaking his balls by trying to get him to player during the week or some crap like that (again, I refer to my statement about this game taking commitment) knowing full well that he has the three most compulsive video game players in the house waiting for him, and I believe we had all stated something about playing on Tuesday earlier since it was the first night we really were supposed to have the game (it came early which is why we played a little on Monday. So at any rate, he finally shows up a good bit after 11, and Rob has already been upstairs and showered, and came back down cuz he figured he could give dirk a little hell before actually going to sleep. So we raz Dirk a little, not enough in my opinion which is why I’m blogging extensively about it. Then Rob makes a comment about photoshopping something like Dirks head with a caption under it that reads “not a team player” which of course gives us a good laugh and we go to bed (or to blog in my case). Now that was a silly joke at first, but I got to thinking that this reminded me of some old stories of my best friend.

Dirk and I have been good friends for quite a while, we’ve lived together for over 4 years now, and he is about to be the best man at my wedding. So this gives me license to poke fun at him for stupid stuff like not playing this game with us tonight. I have endured the hours and hours of controller tossing at his hands, especially while playing Rogue Squadron, Jedi Power Battles, and Devil May Cry. I’ve been sworn at for making comments on how he could improve his gameplay, or being a smartass while he was playing. Now sometimes he is a good guy to play video games with, or to watch play games. For example, I’m sure we’ll have a great time playing Crystal Chronicles if we ever get a chance to play it, and he is fun to play Mario Kart with. But this is one of those times where if the game were worth squat without the multi-player, so we were screwed this time. Also, Dirk would like to come on here excusing this terrible atrocity by saying we could have played without him. But, this is a problem. Simply because we (meaning Stinky, Squirrel and I) would say we were going to play one level, and before you know it, the sun would be coming up, we would be on the last boss, or at least half way through the game….far enough along that Dirk would not be sufficiently powered up to keep up against the harder monsters, and he would complain about not getting to play a game he purchased and he would be right, and that would be a sucky thing to do. So in all fairness it would be much more mean, and thoughtless for us to even consider playing without him, because it would only end bad. For Dirk to not put the commitment in just makes us bitchy and means he has to suffer more verbal abuse and taunting at our hands, but in the end we still all get to play which is what is important. So if you aren’t amused by my ranting about the skinny kid, then tough, don’t read it, but if you are then it served my purpose. Because I seriously doubt Dirk would ever take some stupid blog personally about a silly video game (except maybe the part I didn’ write about him cock-blocking us on the video game like he used to do to me in the bars and at parties, which is why I didn’t write it….that and it could be an entire blog by itself telling all those old stories) so as long as someone got a chuckle out of me hassling Dirk then I’m happy. Also, I got a chuckle out of writing it, so I probably don’t even care if someone else laughed.

Anyway, on that note, I will say
Thank you, and Goodnight.