Final Fantasy crystal chronicles remastered review ps4

Well then fellow crystal caravanners let us begin this review. First let me tell you about this game, it originally came out on GameCube in 2003 and now it was remastered for the ps4,switch and mobile devices. This game is a spin-off of the final fantasy series, the game features many new gameplay elements previously unseen in Final fantasy games like real time fighting, as well as being the first RPG to incorporate GameCube-Game Boy Advance compatibility. However the problem with the multiplayer was that back in GameCube you could only play multiplayer using up to 4 game boy advance with link cables and each Gameboy would have a specific feature like a map, treasure radar, enemy radar and enemy info. Now instead you can play online and cross-play with all 3 versions. Back then me and my brother used to play this all the time and it is a really unique game.

The setting of the game is in a world filled with miasma, were only a few places are livable thanks to a crystal that purifies the miasma. Unfortunately, the crystal loses its power after a year so each village or town sets out a group of people called the crystal caravanners. The role of these caravanners is to look for a tree that provides a drop of “myrth” that they will carry in a chalice that has a tiny bit of the crystal to protect them. This Myrth is what keeps the crystal power shinning and without it, it would lose its power and be lost forever. Now this game has a lot of lore which are hidden within the various random cutscene you get in the game as well as info inside the dungeons you venture into. You will learn what causes the miasma, what the drops of myrthactually are and the reason why they give the crystal power.As you continue your journey and see many cutscene you collect memories which are very important to the story so I wont spoil to much, for every dungeon and every cutscene you gain a memory which is then written down in your journal, which is essential the title of the game the chronicle.

The way the game work is you will be going into dungeons and fight monster and a boss in order to get to the myrth tree in order to get a drop of myrth, for every 3 drops you get a year passes in the game. As the year progress more events unlock, and new dungeons become available as well as more options for crafting equipment. Now when you begin the game you first need to make your character, this games as 4 different tribes, the clavats that have even stats in attack power, defense and magic, however they are the only clan that can use shields to block physical attacks so they tend to have more def. The selkies are agile and are more focused on short-mid range attacks and while they cannot block then can do an evade flip backwards, they do have similar magic power as clavats. The lilties are a tribe of warrior they excel in attack power and are mostly short range but they can attack quicker, they also have fair amount of def but lack a lot in magical power. The last tribe are the yukes, this tribe excels in magic power and can cast magic much faster than the rest of the tribes however they are more used for long range or support due to their poor defense.

In this game you can make up to 8 characters the reason for this is because in the village you start in there are 8 different professions or jobs. 4 of them have a main purpose but the other 4 are not as important. Lets start with the important one.

#1 merchant

As you progress in the game because your family is merchants the more the family is happy the more discounts you get at their shop which is essential for rare materials for end game gear that only they can sell that normally would be very expensive.

#2 tailor

The tailor family is the one that helps you craft accessory such as a ring to protect you from poison or certain elements etc. As the years progress, they become able to craft even better accessories.

#3 blacksmith

The blacksmith family as you can imagine helps you make weapons and armors for your characters and like the others as game progresses, they will be able to craft better gear.

#4 alchemist

The alchemist family is one of the most important jobs. You see the alchemist provides you 1 scroll each year. The scroll are what you use in order to craft weapons armors and accessories, while you can still get scrolls in dungeons there are some scrolls only the alchemist can give you, like the invincibility ring that requires at least 12 years to pass in the game for the family to provide you with the scroll.



The other 4 jobs:

Now the other 4 jobs that are not as usefull are the ranch, farmer, fisher and miller. The reason why these 4 are not as useful is because the only thing they provide is just food that you may not get in dungeons. The food is used to recover health fast without the use of magic but there so many food dungeons drops they really don’t make much difference.



Now as for how magic work in this game, unlike your typical final fantasy game this one does not use MP. It uses orb called magicites that drop within every dungeon. The magic they provide are fire, ice, thunder, cure, clear and raise. Now this magicite disappear after each dungeon however there are rings you can obtain in this game that lets you use their magic at any time by equipping them. There also fusion magic like curaga, haste, slow, gravity, holy, fira, firaga, blizara, blizzaga, thundera and thundaga. If you are playing in single player mode you can combine these magicites or rings to create these fusion spells however if you are playing in multiplayer mode you can only fuse them by making other character combine their magic using the casting circle and overlapping one another.

Now there are ways to use gravity, holy and meteor without having to fuse magic. But it can only be done after getting the rings in post content because these 3 rings were not in the original game.

Now as for the progression of your character unlike normal final fantasy games there is no lvl up system in this game. Instead you collect artifacts from dungeons that permanently boost your stats. So in order to get stronger you have to repeat dungeons and collect the artifacts to power up as well to get materials to make stronger gear. There are a total of 79 artifacts which are divided between attack power, defense power, magic power, extra heart, extra item slot and the rings to perform magic at any time.



Now that we have covered the most basic details lets get to the new contents added in the remastered, aside from graphics looking more clear and beautiful they have added voice acting to all the cutscenes and to some npc in the town as well as your own characters. Originally the only voice acting was the narration you get of every dungeon when you entered it. The voice is actually quite nice and I think gave the game more passion for it. Another new content that was added were the mimic system which allows you character to transform into one of the npc’s of the game however you need to be the same gender and tribe of that npc in order to transform. There are also dlc of different crystal chronicles npc that you can purchase as well but make sure your character can use it before buying.

Another thing they added for single player is a storage in the main village, originally you could not trade items to your other characters unless you had someone else to assist you. But now you can use storage to trade items between your characters. They have also added 13 hard dungeons. Now the game originally has 13 dungeon and the hard dungeons are the same 13 dungeons however they are much harder and look different for example there’s a dessert map and its during the day, in the hard dungeon its during the night and the monster are different and much stronger, not to mention more of them at once and they can cast spells like slowaga, stop, thundaga etc. needles to say it’s quite the challenge.



Ok now lets address the online feature, which is the main reason why I’m making this review because I’ve seen way to many people give poor reviews for this amazing game all because they only look for the bad things in the game.

Now in the original game as I’ve said before you could play up to 4 players and they would journey with you to dungeons towns and cutscenes however in the remastered sadly due to the developers deciding to make the game cross-play they removed the feature of you being together all the time in the game and instead only allowing multiplayers within dungeons. Now while I feel this was a bad decision is really not as bad as everyone is making it out to be.

The way the multiplayer was set up was that only the host would progress, meaning that only the host would get the drop of myrth and the letters. Here is where most of the complains have come, they are upset that only the host progress in story however what people seem to forget is that while in the original everyone progressed, it was because there was only 1 host, the person who actually owned the game. Because the GameCube version there was two ways to play multiplayer you could create a character from scratch or load saved character from another memory card into the already made game. However nowadays that is no longer possible because one, home consoles don’t have memory card slots and save files are account locked meaning you can’t add a character from a different acc into another.

Another thing that people are forgetting is that this is a dungeon crawler type game meaning that even if they have to host 4 times one for each person( assuming you have 4 friends playing, I couldn’t convince anyone to play with me so I went solo) to progress story, you lose nothing by doing those multiple host, because in order to get the artifact to strengthen your character you have to do dungeons multiple times so really you aren’t really losing anything by doing host 4 times, also the story for this game is not even that long you could pass it in 2 or 3 days if you played whole day and only did dungeon once or twice. It be hard but it possible to pass the game even alone with bare minimum if you have lots of phoenix down.

Now another feature of the online is how matchmaking works. There’s 3 ways to do it first is hosting, you choose what dungeon you want to do and you can either invite a friend or wait for randoms to enter. The second option is to look for someone hosting a specific map or all map. And the 3rd option is to enter fast matchmaking which enter any random map of anyone hosting. Now in order to add a friend there is two ways, one is to click on “follow” on a player after you finish a dungeon and if both follow each other they get added to friend list, or you can manually provide a FC to someone and they can add you but the friend code changes every 30 minutes however after following someone you no longer need the friend code, when hosting you just look for friend in friend list and invite them and they get an invite. People misunderstood this feature and think you need a friend code every 30 min to play as a group.



Pro:

1. Single player was improved a lot and even has a storage to change items between your character so if have strong armor and want to start a new character you can give him your main characters armor as long as it’s not a tribe only gear and u using a different tribe

2. Multiplayer is cross platform so you can play with switch, ios, android and ps4 users.

3. It has a free lite version that can play about 85% of the game if you join someone who has the full game you only cant do final dungeon or access to post game content.

4. Has 13 more dungeons than the original.

5. Added voice acting

6. Has amazing music, one of the best music in a final fantasy game.

7. Can join any dungeon at anytime.

8. You can join any dungeon of any cycle as long as you have progressed the necessary amount in the story.

Cons:

1. Only host can progress in story ( but again it really not a big deal)

2. Can only join someone in dungeons not in the world map like original

3. Cannot enter moogle house in multiplayer ( its not a big deal but a rather silly thing to do)

4. Have to change host to progress story if you are progressing along side friends. ( but again its not a big deal you need multiple entries on same dungeon anyway.)



I rate this game an 8.5 out of 10. It would have been a 10 out of 10 if they didn’t limit groups to just dungeon and that only host gets progression even for just the mail part of the game.