It's so cute.
Really. I've never been much afraid of losing my masculine image, so
let me say this with all the gleeful abandon of a high school girl: Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Rings of Fate is as cute as a button, darn it, and it's a pretty decent game, too.
With Ring of Fates, developer Square Enix has crafted an addicting action RPG that throws me back to the days of Diablo 2. Ring of Fates
is notably more cheerful than Blizzard's epic, of course, but whether
I'm clicking frantically or feeling my hands cramp from holding the DS,
both games possess that addicting quality I've come to fear. Realizing
that I've been playing my DS for three hours straight is more than a
little depressing at times.
The Crystal Chronicles series started back on the Gamecube in
2004. I've never played the original title, I'll admit, mostly because
of the difficulty in doing so. Getting a game going with friends
required multiple Game Boy Advances, a luxury I had neither the friends
nor the patience for. Ring of Fates effectively eliminates that
difficulty by moving the franchise to the DS, opening up the wide world
of Wi-Fi for all sorts of co-op or party gaming. Unfortunately, the
multiplayer aspect of Rings of Fate is surprisingly limited, forcing players to use the local wireless between systems in order to feed the addiction.
It's a strange move on Square Enix's part, in my opinion. The idea
of being able to create a character and venture out on quests with
friends in another part of the country is very appealing, particularly
with the DS's inherent portability. By limiting the multiplayer to
local wireless, however, I would be forced to gather my friends
together and have us all game in the same room, a picture which is so
dorky I don't dare think of it.
This left me with no choice but to play the single player portion of
the game. Thankfully, Square Enix has crafted an adventure entertaining
enough to last me through the game's ten or so hours, with character
dialogue occasionally hilarious and never tedious. The
hacking-and-slashing to go with it is enjoyable, as it must be, seeing
as how there are only a few things you'll do during the adventure:
kill, loot, and forge equipment.
It's a simple setup. I'd take my character to a new dungeon, murder
a new set of monsters, steal items from their still-quivering corpses,
and dash off to town with every intention of making a new weapon to do
the exact same thing somewhere new. The process is made interesting by
the fact that every item - hat, armor, or weapon - is individually
modeled and displayed on your character, tapping into my vain desire to
have the most stylish mass murderer ever.
