Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates
 

Alright, so I've been playing the Japanese version of this DS game (Don't ask questions.) and I thought I would share my thoughts to you good people. I'll start off with the Graphics. They're very similar to Final Fantasy III on the DS, but they seem to make a better use of colours in this game. The opening Cinematic is fantastic. If you thought the FFIII opening Cinematic was awesome, wait until you see this one.

Now on to Gameplay. The battles are very similar to Kingdom Hearts, in the way that you see the enemies on the screen, and you hack and slash at them without entering an ATB battle. You have all the basic FF stats, HP, MP, Str, etc. and get new weapons and such. (Although I haven't gotten too far in the game because I want to wait for the English release so I can understand the storyline.)

Up to the point I've gotten (After the first boss.) they have made little use of the Touch Screen, other then for menus, and a special attack in which you press the R button and then click and enemy on the screen to do a powerful slash attack.

That is about all I can tell you so far, since I don't read Japanese and therefore can't tell you about the storyline, HOWEVER I can tell you that there is a very good chance that there will be voice acting for some of the dialog, since they use voices in the Japanese version.

If you have any questions feel free to ask them, but don't expect answers. :P

Does this mean that we're not getting characters wearing leotards in this one? :p

So the combat system is basically the same as it was, but fleshed out?

To be honest, I don't see the touch screen being incredibly useful, save for a secondary screen (Like playing FF:CC with 4 people).

Any sign of online multiplayer?

Question 1: You might, however the main character seems to be wearing Parachute Pants. Classy.

Question 2: Well I didn't play the GC CC, however I have heard that the combat is similar. You can do a few cool things like Jump on Enemies and stomp them to death (If they don't throw you off first.) and even jump up and grab onto flying enemies and slashing them to shit while dangling from their feet, or you can jump up and slash them as well. So to answer your question, yes.

Question 3: According to Gamespot there WILL be a Wifi co-op mode, however I've heard of Gamespot making errors on stuff like that before, like when they said Resident Evil Ds would be WiFi Multiplayer, but there were wrong about that. However, if it is Multiplayer, I'll be all over that like Fat on Lard.

I may be one of the few people who actually enjoyed the original Crystal Chronicles, so I will say FUCK YEAH!!!

Any idea as to when is this coming on this side of the pond?

According to Gamespot its due for Quarter 2 of 2008, so around Summer I guess that would be, so a long wait to go on this, but it will be worth it, I promise you that.

is it really 7 hours long?

I couldn't tell you, but I hope its not. Besides, after an hour not too much has really happened, so I don't think so, unless maybe you are a Final Fantasy God.

about the wifi mode there is one but it's not the same as the regular multiplayer thanks to the guys behind it deciding that this game wouldn't work well online

...are you kidding me.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!

This would be a perfect game for online play with the mic; yeah, that handy feature that's barely ever used! VoiP + WiFi play = fucking amazing. But nooooooooo, that can't be done.

Yeah, they'll probably turn it into something useless, like the WiFi Shopping in Castlevania. That was lame. But I really hope they don't completely fuck this game over with the English version, because it has a lot going for it right now.

But the fact that they're not going to have WiFi Questing (If true.) would really twist my balls off and let a Buffalo take a dump on them.