Games for Lunch: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord
In a nutshell: Cuteness is not an excuse for starting out slow and boring.
8/12/2009 4:55 PM | 4 Comments | Page 1 of 3
Kyle Orland
Status: "You can't get quality video game editorial from a value menu!" "No, really, you can't."
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Release Date: July 20, 2009
System: Wii
ESRB Rating: E-10+
Official Web site
0:00 I tend to like tower defense games, and I've heard a lot of praise for this one, so away we go!
0:01 You hold the Remote horizontally. That surprises me. I figured they'd use the pointer for more accurate placement. The title appears on a starry background with cutesy, standard Square music. Reminds me of the
Final Fantasy VII Chocobo Racing music. My options are "New Game" and "Purchase Add-On Content." Er, I'm pretty sure I want the former... On to the Tutorial Stage!
0:02 "In a world free of miasma ... the monsters of the land, finding themselves in a dire state, holed themselves up inside their Darklord's massive Tower. Craydall, the Darklord, was kind and handsome, but then he offered his life to protect the castle from the do-gooders. He's sealed inside a crystal and his daughter Mira was crowned on her 16th birthday.
0:03 Mira is introduced with over-the-top spotlights and drum rolls: "The Messenger from the Inferno! The Great Cursed Sorceress! The Devious Demon of Death. Or perhaps ... The Diabolical Hideous Princess of Doom." Heh. Someone did a good job on the translation.
0:04 Mira wears a hideous half-black, half-pink bustier/dress combo. "Cower in fear, adventurers! From this day forward, I am the new ruler of darkness." Sorry, if you want people to cower, you need a better outfit...
0:05 "Chapter 1: The War Begins." The tower is a small thing with a huge metallic heart atop. "Tonberries! Teach me how to do all this stuff!" says Mira. The little green robed guys rush in to do just that. So CUTE!
0:06 The screen fills with overlapping word balloons from the Tonberries. She knocks them over. "This is too haarrrd!" That's what she said! "All this busywork is so boring! I wanna go beat up some people already." That's what I'm talking about! But a Tonberry with a bow (named Tonbetty. CUTE) tells me I can't just rush in ... I need to learn how to defend my castle. Phoo.
0:07 And away we go. A countdown clock precedes a lone soldier appearing and running into my castle. As the tutorial suggests, I bring up the menu and "Build Floor" using my 50 of my 500 "Negative Power" (NP). The floor comes preloaded with an Iron Ball artifact that trades attacks with the soldier. Then he climbs up to the next floor. If he reaches the top, I lose, so I build four more floors to stop him. He dies on Floor 4 with a cute little scream.
0:12 More soldiers march in, all destroyed on Floor 4 in the exact same way. They manage to take out a few of the Iron Balls, but I rebuild them with my NP. This is WAY too slow paced for me.
GET ON WITH IT!
0:13 Victory! I acquired a Goblin, somehow. Earned 45 "Karma" for my trouble, too. The cheapest Goblin upgrade costs 300 Karma, though. Oh well.
0:15 Now I can summon up to three Goblins per floor for 50 NP each. Instead of just trading single blows, they battle the soldiers for a set amount of time before letting them move on. Most of my time is just watching their battle timers fill up, then watching their attacks. Nice and boring. At least the interface makes it easy to tell what's going on at a glance.
