Xbox 360
Even though the only things they have in common are Moogles, Chocobos and characters called Cid dozens of games bear the Final Fantasy name. It is one of the biggest brands in videogames. The Crystal Chronicles games are a spin-off series in a more action-RPG style and Echos of Time is SquareEnix's response to the phenomenal success of the Monster Hunter games.
The concept is that the game can be played solo or with three friends, but this isn't multiplayer over the internet, this is you and your friends, each with a copy of the game and handheld to play it on, sitting in the same room. This simple change to the well worn multiplayer formula was enough to shift millions of copies of Monster Hunter in Japan alone.
It is certainly a nice idea, Square have released Echos of Time on both Wii and DS making wireless multiplayer possible between up to four players using any mix of the two consoles. Not so nice is the way they have managed this. The Wii game is a straight port of the DS game which means that it has to pretend it has two screens by boxing off two areas of your television, one for each screen of the DS. All the action, talking, and exploring takes place in one of these boxes while the other is used for your menu.
You can alter the sizes by expanding one box and shrinking the other which is handy since even on a decent sized TV the text is illegible unless the window is at full size. It gets worse though, extensive inventory management is required. Items are selected in the pretend touch screen and then the details of those items are displayed in the other pretend screen, after pressing the zoom button five times to make it legible. Of course then you have to press the other zoom button five times to be able to read your inventory again!
There are other problems. Magic is targeted using a slowly moving a cursor around with the analogue stick when you have a pointer in your other hand that could do the job so much better. One of the triggers is the jump button which doesn't feel right. The music is repetitive and annoying. The story is unimaginative. The DS quality graphics would probably look fine on a handheld, the screen is small and you don't expect any better, in a little box on your TV screen though it looks like a twelve year old PSone game!
The gameplay fits that era too, the annoying fixed camera rarely gives a good view of what is going on and in the single player mode you have a few fellow adventurers who end up doing all of the work. By the time I had picked up the masses of stuff dropped by one baddie my buddies had already dispatched the next one. This isn't adventuring, this is Sim Fantasy Janitor!
Echoes of Time was obviously built for multiplayer, one of the in-game characters even tells you that his missions are no fun if you are on your own, so even with half-decent controls it has little value as a solo experience. There probably is a mediocre RPG hiding in there somewhere as the controls all make sense on a DS when you actually have two screens and the text is easier to read. It is actually playable on the Wii if you persevere but with such an unwieldy control system I am doubtful that even the biggest Final Fantasy nut will truly enjoy it.
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Want another opinion?
TestFreaks: 7.4/10 (http://www.testfreaks.co.uk/wii-games/final-fantasy-crystal-chronicles-echoes-of-time/ )
IGN: 6.5/10 ( http://wii.ign.com/articles/965/965695p1.html )
1UP: A ( http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3173330&p=44&sec=REVIEWS )
Eurogamer: 8/10 (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/final-fantasy-crystal-chronicles-echoes-of-time-review)