Once upon a time, Nintendo decided “hey lets make a cable that could connect the Game Boy Advance to the Gamecube” and everyone was like “okay but why?” and their reason was basically that having two screens might be a cool thing. And then that idea never ever took off in any sort of way. But, for a time, we had this ridiculous system that if they bothered to make games that used it, had stuff on the TV screen AND on the controller in your hands. Ridiculous, right?
At any rate, thus was made Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, a very weird multiplayer game that is still playable single player without using the Game Boy Advance link cable thing. An odd ball for Final Fantasy, it’s an action RPG/dungeon crawler sort of thing, where you walk around bopping people in the face and picking up things. At the end of each dungeon you fight a boss, etc etc it’s all very basic. What drew peoples attention to this game is that one, it’s super beautiful. I’d argue this is the best looking game on the Gamecube, and two it’s a goofy and weird multiplayer game with an interesting story.
So, how’s the LP going to work? Well, because I don’t have any way at all to actually play the game multiplayer, I’ll be going through it in singles mode. I’ll be doing my best to get as much done in game as possible, but I can’t promise I’ll get 100% of every memory in the game because that basically requires delaying the game by a lot, and as I’ve noticed with other games (cough Four Swords cough) no one really cares about something taking forever. So I figure I’ll be doing a round at each dungeon and then doing what needs to be done to beat the game and then doing that (It’s…complicated, and I’ve never actually beaten the game before!). I’ll be doing some off screen grinding to get stronger, but I’ll elaborate more on how that works in the thread proper. So without further rambling, let us begin our road trip to save the world.
Zodi Plays: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles [1] A Calm River
Video Length: 35:49
And so we begin, starting with the song Sound of the Wind, one of the best songs I’ve ever heard in a video game. This is the English version, here is one in Japanese if that’s more your style. It’s a beautiful song, that really touches on the themes of the game, which we’ll be exploring as we play. In this game you’re a member of HOME TOWN, a caravaner who’s going to save the village from it’s yearly threat of destruction by journeying to get the magic crystal juice known as Myrrh from fancy trees, three drops per year, that recharge the super crystal keeping the deadly Miasma from killing everyone and making someone’s house sapient. We call our town Malta at the request of my art friend in search of a joke that’s not actually going to work in this game. Ooops. And then we’re faced with our first mechanical decision: creating a character.
So, let’s talk mechanics. There are four races, the Clavat, Lility, Yuke, and Selkie. Clavats are hardy human type boys, wielding sword and shield, with well rounded stats that have a priority on defense. Lilities are the defacto main race of the game lore wise, a group of violent onion esque short people who will just tear your face off. Their stats are focused on strength, and they fight with spears. The Yuke are these mysterious bird robot/golem things with feathery arms that are wearing/a spirit animating armour and clothing. These odd magical beings are of course focused more on Magic then any other stat, and they use hammers to fight with. Then we have the Selkie, aka elf roma in the flavor. They are vagabounds that steal stuff and generally don’t make sense at all for the setting because how does a race of nomadic blue haired Kender exist in a universe where society is super closed off and insular due to magical crystals saving everyone’s life. Regardless of the sort of vague feelings of impossibility this race gives, they’re well rounded stat wise but with more of a focus on attack strength, and are best at charging up their attacks to do a Focus Attack. Each race has their specific tastes for food (the main healing item in the game beyond just casting Cure) and while that’s just a minor thing, It’s something pretty cool.
For the LP we will be maining a Selkie, mostly because that’s just one of the races I like the most and since this is a Patreon choice I let the person who suggested this game decide what I play (it was either this or a Yuke). I’ll be showing off the other races as well, don’t worry, we’re just going to be focusing on our Selkie, Ayah, and her adventures to save the world so that she can go back to stealing everything. After picking our race we then can pick our parents, and each one has some benefits worth going off. Miller, Farmer, Rancher, and Fisherman are all family trades that will send you various foods to help you on your journey. As a result they’re not super useful! The other family trades are far more useful, setting up shops in your home town. Except for Alchemist, which I’ve picked. It creates scrolls for weaponry and armour and stuff that you can use to craft stuff at a Blacksmiths. The Merchant is a store, selling all sorts of things you might need, and the Tailor makes accessories which might be super useful too actually, though of these Alchemist is “the best” choice.
With all that done, we can FINALLY set off on our adventure. Whereupon we are immediately interrupted by an event. Events basically happen at random, no idea when you’ll get what and so on, except for like the first one. We meet the Caravan of of the Lilty fort city Alfitaria, and among them we find the knowledgable moogle Stiltzkin, and some random moogle named Mog that opts to help us out since we’re in Single Player. But what does he help us with? Let’s go over that! So, as stated above, the world’s covered in a deadly Miasma that kills everyone almost immediately. Only crystals can protect against it, and our chalice that’ll be holding the Myrrh has a small crystal on it that protects us. Someone has to lug that thing around, and Mog’ll be doing that. He also allows for some degree of Multiplayer esque Spell Fusing, ie casting our spells over each other to make them stronger. This isn’t required in Single Player since you can just smush Materia together but I digress, it’s a neat mechanic that they have. Other than asking Stiltzkin about the world’s lore there really isn’t much else I want him to tutorial at us, so we leave after this, getting another Diary entry, and with it a memory.
But, a thing to note that I actually like…we have to actively ask about the lore of the world. In a fairly easy to skip tutorial, too, though you can go talk to him in game later to hear it again. It’s fascinating that this game, which is effectively a story driven RPG, requires your direct actual intervention to make the plot happen. You can just completely ignore the information you get about it and just play the game however and it’s fine. You need to actively seek the conclusion to get it. It fits into the themes of the game, and that’ll be fun to talk about as we go on. But enough prattling let’s…you know, actually play the game? We head off to the first dungeon, the River Belle Path!
As dungeons go this is a fairly basic one. It’s full of goblins (in a variety of sizes), which will try to stab you or throw a rock at you. Mu, these weird squirrel creatures that are actually a standard Final Fantasy enemy I suddenly realize, that run around trying to scratch you, and Hedgehog Pies, which cast fire spells at you and try to do a spike drop on you with their spiked butt. Overall, not that difficult, and it’s a good place to shake off the rust if you haven’t played this game in a decade like I have. Gameplay wise you have a three hit combo (which requires timing, not mashing) that can also be charged to do a Focus Attack (which attack you get changes depending on the weapon, and the Selkies charge faster and have longer range). You can also do a guard, though in the case of the Selkie they have the worst guard in the game, a half second flip of complete invincibility. Super hard to time, and given how you need to switch off of Attack to get to Defend, hard to actually use in combat. Magic is cast through the same basic principle of the Focus Attack (get to the relevant action, hold attack) and as you fuse spells to make stronger versions, you get a larger casting charge time but a longer range (it just looks smaller due to the AOE marker being larger, this is a mistake I hadn’t realized at the time). All in all it’s a good action-y combat system.
Now let’s take a look at progression, since this isn’t your standard Final Fantasy experience. You don’t level up in this game. Instead, in little nooks and crannies and enemies of the land, you’ll find Artifacts. They give you bonuses, ranging from +1 to a stat to having an extra Heart or command slot. Each Artifact you pick up in a dungeon gives you it’s effect for the dungeon, though at the end of the dungeon you can only pick a single artifact to take with you forever. Of course since redoing dungeons is completely free you can expect me to do some off screen grinding to get stronger. Single player isn’t hard, but it’s also shockingly unforgiving if you’re not careful. So we’re gonna need to be at our best.
At the end of the River Belle, we find the Myrrh tree. But before us is a beautiful pond and waterfall…and behind the waterfall, a giant crab! The first boss fight is actually a little tricky, not lest of which because uh oh turns out he’s a little resistant to ice and I didn’t know that oops. The Giant Crab has a couple attacks, swiping with it’s claw arm, smashing it’s shield arm down, generating electricity by scratching itself allowing it to shoot a laser of electricity, and spitting out Slow spell bubbles. As you damage the crab, it’s arms eventually break off, and once it’s down to no arms it starts hoping around crazily (for no damage, shockingly) and casting Thundara a bunch. Not the hardest boss in the world, even with the Mu occasionally coming in to help it. We take the crab down, and get our drop of Myrrh. We then get a letter from the villager elder saying “hey by the way do a good job” and that’s nice. We pick the Moogle Pocket artifact because command slots are super important, and thus ends our first dungeon (and, after some faffing about with Moogle Nests, this video).
Hoo…that’s a lot of text huh? This game has a lot of it’s mechanics super frontloaded, so I’m not surprised we’ve got this much to discuss. Don’t worry, future posts won’t be as heavy. For now though, this has been the first video, so I’ll see you guys Monday for more of this. Hope you enjoyed!
