The remaster of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles will be released on August 27. MeinMMO author Irina Moritz was able to test it in advance and finds that you should try the multiplayer of the J-RPG classic with your friends.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles originally released nearly 17 years ago for Nintendo GameCube and is considered one of the games regarded by many gamers as a “classic of the J-RPG genre”. Therefore, it is somewhat embarrassing for me to admit that CC is one of the few FF games I have never played.
I know, shocking. But back in the early 2000s, I was still a student who didn’t have money for two consoles. It was either the Cube or the PS2. You can guess what I chose.
Accordingly, I only knew about Crystal Chronicles from hearsay from forum peers. The remaster for Switch, PS4, and mobile platforms offered me the opportunity to close this terrible educational gap and discover FF Crystal Chronicles as a new player.
What is Crystal Chronicles about? CC is a relatively classic J-RPG with an action combat system. It takes place in a world constantly threatened by the decaying Miasma. It envelops the world and ensures that all life gradually perishes.
The inhabitants of the world can only protect themselves from the Miasma with the help of glowing crystals. Each town and village has its own crystal, which they guard and protect. But the power of the crystals fades over time. And this is where you come into play.
In CC you play as an adventurer who sets out with a caravan to collect the valuable drops of Myrrh dew and strengthen the crystal of your village. Along the way, you must fight through monster-infested dungeons, at the end of which special crystal trees await you, providing Myrrh dew.
A Final Fantasy game, yet not quite
What is different from regular FF? At first glance, this sounds like a relatively typical J-RPG plot, and fans of the FF series will immediately feel at home in the game. There are, for example, the traditional enemies like Bombs and Tonberries and also Moogles.
However, Crystal Chronicles differs drastically from classic single-player Final Fantasy games. At the beginning, you first create a character.
You can choose from the 4 different races in Crystal Chronicles, distinguished by their stats, attacks, and armor:
- Clavat are basically the typical all-rounder humans
- Lilty are the strongest physical fighters with high attack values
- Yuke are classic mages and can cast spells faster
- Selkie may look human, but tend towards rogue-like stats
Once you have created your character, you set off into the vast world after a brief introduction to collect Myrrh dew for your village. You travel with your caravan from one location on the world map to another, experiencing various events along the way.
The story of Crystal Chronicles is mostly told through these events. You randomly encounter another caravan or hear rumors about an evil Black Knight. And thus learn more about the world, its inhabitants, and dangers.
However, you must always keep your eyes open and revisit some places multiple times. The game doesn’t provide you with a quest log or hints about where events will occur. You need to pay attention yourself.
This indirect way of advancing the story distinguishes CC quite dramatically from its FF siblings with direct and linear storytelling.
So, something is missing here…
I must honestly say: Crystal Chronicles did not catch my attention in the first hours of my test play. I dragged myself from one location on the world map to another in search of a reason to keep playing.
The dungeon crawling for Myrrh dew simply wasn’t fun.
The gameplay of Crystal Chronicles is very simple. Hence, I quickly fell into a routine, spamming the same attacks that I knew were effective. This quickly became monotonous and made me focus more on the new episode of Critical Role than on the game.
The enemies were no challenge, and boss fights are designed so that they can be comfortably defeated as a solo player.
The story, the usual reason why I typically play J-RPGs, is structured completely differently. It feels more like a skeleton for gameplay than the central point of the game. If you’re looking for interesting characters and an exciting storyline, you will likely be disappointed here.
At every corner, it felt like something was missing. And it was. Other players were missing. Once I managed to get into a multiplayer group, a completely new perspective opened up for me.
The multiplayer in Crystal Chronicles is limited to the dungeons; that is, on the world map, you still move alone. It works in the traditional way:
– You can form a party of up to 4 players withyour friends
– search for one that matches your progress in the party overview.
– Alternatively, you can simply leave your gameplay session in a dungeon open for others, whether they are random adventurers or your friends
The transition between single-player and multiplayer is seamless, and there is unrestricted crossplay. However, you do need a subscription with Sony or Nintendo to play online.
A dungeon crawler straight out of the picture book
Crystal Chronicles is a dungeon crawler centered around a yearly cycle tied to collecting Myrrh dew. The principle is simple:
- You set off with your caravan, which can consist of up to 4 players
- Collect 3 drops of Myrrh dew from 3 different dungeons
- Return it to your village, and the year ends
However, you cannot visit the same 3 dungeons every year. The Myrrh trees need time to recover for a year. This means you must travel to different dungeons the following year.
This creates a nice gameplay loop that forces you to continually venture out into the world and seek out new dungeons with your co-op partners.
When a tree has recovered and there are new Myrrh dew in the dungeon, some gameplay elements change as well:
- New enemies are added
- old enemies become stronger
- Bosses gain new skills
- sometimes new paths open up
- there are new treasures
Thus, it’s definitely worth revisiting old dungeons. Over time, the dungeons also become more complex, incorporating puzzles you will need to solve.
Here’s how it goes in a group: However, you cannot stroll through the dungeons at will. To avoid being killed by the Miasma, you must always stay close to your chalice, where Myrrh dew is collected.
The shield of the chalice has a specific effective radius that you should not leave. In multiplayer, it creates a funny dynamic where one player carries the chalice around, effectively leading the way while the rest of the group follows and protects him from monsters.
This relatively simple mechanic also ensures that players stay close to each other in the dungeon and don’t run off elsewhere.
During my multiplayer session, it resulted in me hopping around with my fellow players on Discord, coordinating which direction we should go next and which corners we wanted to explore more closely.
Simple combat system you can quickly get into
This is how combat unfolds: The combat system is action-oriented, and I would best compare it to the classic “Legend of Zelda” games. You can attack normally with your weapon and execute simple combos or alternatively charge an attack to deal more damage.
The magic system revolves around the items you find in the dungeons. As you slice through crowds of enemies, they often leave behind crystals that allow you to cast spells. This includes the classic Final Fantasy spells like Fire, Ice, or Thunder for elemental attacks, or Life and Angel for healing and resurrection.
Usually, each group member receives their own loot in the dungeon, meaning you don’t have to compete with others for Gil or Phoenix Down. However, the spell crystals are only dropped once for the whole group. So it makes a significant difference who collects them.
For example, if you have a player who is one of the magic-capable Yukes, it’s sensible for that person to collect the attack spells. Yukes are relatively weak in physical close combat but have reduced casting time for spells.
- Similarly, you can assign a group member to heal the group with Life
- Another player might specifically deal with smaller enemies that keep appearing and causing trouble in boss fights
The spell crystals only work in the respective dungeon where they were found. When you and your troupe visit the next location, you have to start collecting again. But that’s not tragic, as the drop rates are quite high.
Additionally, you can also fuse your spells to enhance or change their effects. For this, players must cooperate and overlap the effect circles of their spells. For example, if you stack 2 Fire spells together, the stronger version, Fira, comes out.
The multiplayer wiped the monotony off the table
What was funny about the multiplayer: The co-op multiplayer felt like a breath of fresh air. The gameplay focus shifted from monotonous attack spamming to the shared experience of the game, teamwork, and everything took on a completely different dynamic.
I found myself not only paying attention to myself in combat and spamming my usual effective moves, but also watching my teammates:
- Are there small add monsters on the field?
- Does the chalice need to be moved?
- Oh god! Our mage just went down!
In a group, the gameplay experience gave me an adventure feeling similar to the “pen and paper” game Dungeons and Dragons. Just in anime style. We wandered together through the dungeons, searched for treasures, defeated monsters, and laughed about silly situations and mistakes.
To provide a small example: One of the group mechanics in Crystal Chronicles consists of each player receiving a small “task” upon entering the dungeon, granting them bonus points.
- Collect items
- Open chests
- Kill enemies with magic
Such things. So we coordinated who had which tasks and kept an eye on it. Thus, during our dungeon exploration, it went: “Hey, better collect the items; that gives you bonus points” or “I left the enemy alive here; you can take him out for points with magic.”
It is evident that the developers designed the game with multiplayer as the focus. Without it, Crystal Chronicles feels empty to me.
Here’s the catch: If you want to play Crystal Chronicles with complete strangers, you may encounter problems during multiplayer. On one hand, communication in the game is limited to pre-set phrases; there is no chat available.
Another issue arises from progress differences. Crystal Chronicles doesn’t feature matchmaking based on “level.” This means you will eventually end up in a group with either too strong or too weak players.
This is just as fun as it sounds. Overpowered players will tear through everything that isn’t nailed down, and you’ll just be trailing behind without being able to participate in the action. And vice versa.
Potential: Really fun when you’re out with friends
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was one of Square Enix’s first cautious attempts to venture into true multiplayer games.
The game is kept very simple and offers neither cool build options for tinkers nor complex mechanics to master that pose a great challenge. But I believe it doesn’t need that at all.
Crystal Chronicles has charm, and I found exploring dungeons together with friends surprisingly entertaining. Especially when you consider that I was crawling on the ground in the solo mode, wondering when it would finally start to be fun.
If the cute anime look of the game doesn’t bother you, I would definitely recommend trying Crystal Chronicles. It’s a sweet game, the lite version can be downloaded for free and offers the first 3 dungeons you can play. Give it a try.
In any case, I’ve already made plans for next week to explore dungeons together with some adventurers.
Irina Moritz
Community Manager at MeinMMO
