Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, or so they say, and you certainly have plenty on your mind in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King for the Nintendo Wii. Your father is missing, your loyal subjects need a place to live, and you're the only one with the power to rebuild the kingdom. You're also only 10 years old, and people keep mentioning how small you are. It's enough to make any monarch a bit tense.
King begins with you and your two advisors stumbling across an abandoned castle and deciding that it's the ideal place for your new home. Your old kingdom was wrecked by the Miasma and you've been searching ever since for a lovely spot where your loyal subjects can start anew. Smack in the middle of your new digs is an enormous blue crystal that not only talks, but also bestows upon you the magical power of "architek," which allows you to create buildings out of thin air and memories. The crystal also drops a few hints that it may or may not know your dad, King Epitav, but worry about that later. You have a town to build!


Although it bears the Final Fantasy name, King has more in common with Viva Pi?ata or The Sims than it does with that famous line of RPGs. You'll spend your time laying out your town, arranging homes, parks, and shops in the hopes of attracting new townsfolk and keeping them happy. It'll take more than the power of architek and a flair for design, however. Creating buildings requires Elementite, a crystal that can be found in nearby dungeons. Your royal hide is far too precious to risk the dangers of dungeon crawling, but your townsfolk are more than happy to take on the role of adventurer and do the digging for you. Each day, you can set a "behest" in the town square that will send the willing out into the world to explore one of the game's 38 dungeons. At first, having the dungeon exploration take place off-screen and entirely beyond your influence is a bit disconcerting, but eventually you get so caught up in the development of your kingdom that you're kind of happy you don't have to deal with it.


Your adventurers aren't braving the monsters of the world beyond the walls out of sheer love for you, however. They expect to be paid for their efforts. Your royal pockets contain nothing but lint and perhaps a few Gummi Bears, so you'll have to rely on tithes from the rest of the townspeople to help pay the bills. The more people you have in town, the more gold you add to your coffers on a daily basis, but to attract people, you need homes, and to build homes, you need Elementite. Lather, rinse, repeat as needed.


Placing a building is as easy as walking up to an available parcel of land, clearly indicated as a glowing green square; shaking the Wii remote to summon your advisor, Chime; and telling her exactly what you'd like to build. At first you can only build small homes and one or two kinds of shops, but as your kingdom grows and your population increases you gain access to new kinds of parks and buildings and are able to upgrade current structures. Investing gold in weapons research improves the level and variety of weapons a store can offer, for example, while building a gaming hall for your adventurers gives them the chance to win a bit of extra cash. Raiding dungeons will frequently result in the ability to add a new kind of building to your town, or increase the limit of buildings you can have. You'll need to keep expanding your town with better homes and shops if you want your people to stay happy and your population to increase.


King is one of those games that's nearly impossible to stop playing once you pick it up. Planning your town is simple and relaxing as you scout locations for your new bakery or place a park for maximum morale-boosting effect. Each new day seems to bring new abilities and surprises, including hints about your father and rumors of a ghost that shows up in the middle of the night. A day in your kingdom lasts about ten real-world minutes, making it incredibly easy to fall into the "just one more day" trap that will keep you playing until the wee hours of the morning.


Once you do manage to stop, however, you're probably not going to feel overwhelmingly driven to start up again. Although My Life as a King is pleasant and enjoyable, it's not particularly compelling. The story, such as it is, isn't something about which you're likely to care much, and your townspeople are so bland that you're unlikely to grow attached to them. In a way, that works in King's favor. Even if you put it down and ignore it for weeks, its simple design and relatively shallow characters mean that you shouldn't face any trouble picking up right where you left off. In other words, it's a classic casual game.


My Life as a King is one of the first games on Nintendo's WiiWare, a download service that, unlike the Virtual Console, is dedicated entirely to new games. It's also one of the first games to have downloadable content right out of the gate including extra dungeons, new costumes for the king and Chime and new homes. Downloading all the extras will cost you an additional $25 on top of the $15 core game cost. You certainly don't need everything to enjoy King -- I'm perfectly happy to let my little kinglet run around in the same clothes every day -- but if you play for long enough, you're probably going to want the extra dungeons and the packs that add new kinds of houses to your roster. Square Enix has promised more downloadable content for King in the future.


Fans of sandbox games like Animal Crossing or Viva Pi?ata will take to My Life as a King immediately and have a grand old time with it, but just about everyone else will play it once or twice, never to touch it again. Figuring out which group you belong to will tell you whether or not you should spend your $15.


This review is based on a retail copy of the game purchased by Crispy Gamer.