Play time: 6 hours
Progress: Main character – Lv. 25, Area – Sinner’s Isle
Well, to preface this review, I have to say that I don’t like Final Fantasy games. I think that they’re too slow with their really turn-basedness, even XII, which tries to be sort of real time. But, I did enjoy FFCC on the GameCube quite a bit. It had beautiful graphics, awesome music, the cutest Moogles ever, and a realtime battle system. Luckily for me, so does Ring of Fates (RoF).
Graphics:
This is probably the best-looking DS game that I own. Not just because of the poly-count, but also because the art direction is as solid as you would expect from Square Enix (Squeenix). Luckily for everyone, Squeenix took this game very seriously and delivered a great visual experience. Environments are colourful when they need to be, (relatively) realistic otherwise. The characters have a decent level of expression, especially considering that this is a DS game. Overall, I give these graphics a “sweet”.
Sound:
The sound isn’t quite as awesome as the graphics. When there is voice acting, it’s always okay, but rarely awesome. I particularly like the Yuke named Alhanalem whose voice sounds like Mickey Mouse sometimes, but he always ends his sentences with “Al”. Well, words ending in “al”. For example, “I have tended to your injuries physical” (he puts more emphasis on the “al” part). Otherwise, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Some of the sound effects are borrowed from the GCN Crystal Chronicles, and other Final Fantasy games. Just enough to make it feel comfortable as opposed to derivative. I’d give the sound a “pretty good”.
Controls:
Okay, this is pretty much the only part of the game that I find flawed. I don’t normally enjoy games that force you to use your thumbs on the touchscreen (ala Jump Ultimate Stars). If your movements and attacks are controlled primarily through buttons, then so should everything else. The touchscreen should just be used for menus. Well, that’s not the case in RoF. On the left side of the screen, you have your character selection, which you have to do with your thumb. And that basically sucks. It’s not fast enough in battle, or if one of your party has wandered off (I’ll cover that in Gameplay) and you need to save them before they die and become all transparent and even more useless. The Select button isn’t used at all when you’re on the battlefield, and would have been fine for optionally cycling through your characters. Similarly with items like magicites (from FFCC, the magic orbs that contain the equivalents of things like Phoenix Downs, various attacks, and potions), ether bottles (that restore SP) and potions (HP, duh). There are ten of these guys and they’re in two columns of buttons on the right side of your bottom screen. There’s no way to switch which of these you have equipped, or drop them, without the use of the touch screen. Even though you can utilize them by pressing X. Tribe Abilities, which will also be discussed shortly, also make use of the touch screen, and are therefore mostly useless in battle. I usually just find myself hitting junk with the A button and healing myself with the X button, with either Potions or Cure Magicites selected. And that’s the game for me. There’s no time to switch magicities and use them when fighting bosses, and you never really need them for the little guys, so that is that. I give the controls a “grr…”.
Gameplay:
Even with the lacking controls, gameplay ends up being pretty enjoyable. As characters come and join your party, you will gain abilities (Tribal ones, even) that allow you to reach different parts of levels. Yukes can use magical totem thingies to make things like blocks and vines appear, Clavats can whack stuff with their weapons, Lilties can roll around in a pot over things like spikes and lava (they can also use these pots to float and fly depending upon the circumstances — pretty cool pots), Selkies can jump like Sonic the Hedgehog (which is very useful, I wish the Clavats could do that) and shoot arrows. These will have you switching characters often to reach items, or new parts of the map. If you can make it somewhere with one of the characters in your party, everyone can go there too through the magic of the L button. You hit that guy and all of your minions (the party characters that you’re not currently controlling) will Star Trek-warp behind you, seemingly to help, but more often to just stand there. The friendly AI in this game straight up sucks. They pretty much don’t attack enemies unless they’re standing on top of them (which you can do, incidentally. You can grab on to most enemies and even huck them around, but you rarely have the time to do this whilst fumbling with the touchscreen and hating your teammates), and then they pretty much act like the game’s turn-based and only attack every now and then.
Magicite combination is also an issue. The enemy that you’re fighting pretty much has to be standing still and not attacking at all for you to combine magicites. This was a big thing in the GCN FFCC, where whenever you used a magicite, your Moogle carrying the crystal to keep away the miasma would use a complimentary one as well. While this action is technically possible in the game, in practice, it never happens. This is because you, yourself, have to switch between the characters one by one and point all of their respective magicite reticules at the same spot. Meanwhile, you’ve died because that fireball thingy isn’t going to sit around while you conjure crap.
One major, MAJOR improvement in this game is the lack of miasma. There is no crystal bearer like in FFCC that everyone has to stay around and who can kill anyone at any time by randomly stopping, or running the wrong way. Early demo videos of the game showed characters carrying around a “crystal-bucket” and essentially having to follow that person around in much the same manner as FFCC. So far, this hasn’t been the case. I’m unsure if they’ll bring this up eventually, but so far I’m enjoying the freedom.
Equipment buying, crafting and equipping works pretty much the same as FFCC, but you can’t carry around food anymore. When you pick up that Star Carrot, your gluttonous self automatically stuffs it down his/her face as though they haven’t eaten. Ever. So, they’re basically pick-me-ups as opposed to viable health sources most of the time. All equipment that you put on directly effects the appearance of your character, and you’ll often find yourself wearing really ugly clothes, or ones that clash horribly, (like a pointy metal helmet with horns and what looks like a yellow dress) just because it ups your attack by 2. Overall, gameplay gets a “nice”.
Storyline:
No spoilers, but I have to say that, unlike FFCC, the storyline exists! Albiet it has you controlling a Clavat most of the time (didn’t bug me, because they’re my favourite, but it might bug you), but having characters with proper personality and development instead of wandering around and running across random cutscenes. The cutscenes are all real-time rendered, so don’t expect any Crisis Core or Brawl kinda stuff going down, but they’re enjoyable and serve their purpose well. Overall, the storyline gets a “cool”.
Overall:
Pros:
+ No more miasma!
+ Great graphics and sound
+ Actual storyline
+ Moogles are awesome
+ Lots of equipment and stuff
Cons:
– Random touchscreen use
– General controls
– Blatantly dumb friendly AI
– Recycling of boss battles
– Not enough save points!
Therefore, this game has earned a:
8.8/10
