Final Fantasy CC: The Crystal Bearers!

[Hero-of-Time]

Famitsu review scores:

Final Fantasy CCCB - 7/8/7/8

Dragon Ball Raging Blast(PS360) 9/8/8/8

Need for Speed: Shift(PS360) 9/8/8/8

Sengoku Hime(PS2) 6/5/5/5

(PSP) Hexyr Force - Atlus/Sting - 8/8/8/7

 

This doesn't look good when Need for Speed outscores a Final Fantasy game in Famitsu! Any translations of the review yet, Dante? Im quite eager to see what they have to say about this.

[killer kirby]

Famitsu review scores:

Final Fantasy CCCB - 7/8/7/8

 

Square didn't give famitsu the money, instead it's going all into the review of FFXIII so famitsu will give the first score ever of 41/40

[Hero-of-Time]

Ive been enjoying reading people's reactions to the score across the net with many now dumping on Famitsu. These people havent even played the game yet and are already kicking off. I imagine if Famitsu scored it highly these same people would declare it an awesome mag and a fair review. Fanboys, you gotta love'em

[D_prOdigy]

I think it's all Bon Jovi's fault.

[Dante]

This doesn't look good when Need for Speed outscores a Final Fantasy game in Famitsu! Any translations of the review yet, Dante? Im quite eager to see what they have to say about this.

 

1UP - Crystal Bearers Shot Through The Heart, Famitsu's to Blame

 

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers -- a Wii game that we thought "truly [stood] out both on its choice of platform and within its series" back at TGS in September -- may instead be following in the footsteps of FFCC: Echoes of Time, a game that received lackluster reviews and can now be found for heavily discounted prices in Japan.

 

The latest title in Square Enix's Crystal Chronicles series, whose Japanese TV ad campaign features music from Jersey rock band Bon Jovi, received scores of 7, 8, 7 and 8 from Famitsu magazine this week for a total of 30 points, very low for an outlet that's usually quick to lavish praise on any Final Fantasy title.

 

"The story, woven by a cast of colorful characters, is extremely fascinating," one reviewer wrote. "The way the story develops, along with the unique characters and world setting, is brilliant. There are lots of little details to everything."

 

On the other hand, according to Famitsu, The Crystal Bearers has a fair amount of annoying niggles. "The telekinesis setup is fun -- you get to perform a lot of actions in the playable events, but I wish people gave more of a response to getting moved around," one writer said.

 

"The levels are well-made and full of gimmicks," wrote another, "but the map doesn't give you much info, making it hard to figure out where you are at times. It's hard to get a grip on your surroundings, and the game feels a bit like a long fetch quest, But the playable events and wide variety of minigames ensure that players never get bored."

 

The Crystal Bearers is due out December in the US and February 2010 in Europe.

[Hero-of-Time]

Thanks for that, Dante.

[darksnowman]

Hmm, lower than we were expecting but I know I'll still be buying. I'll be looking out for other reviews that will be popping up to get a more indepth analysis of how the title has ended up.

[marcel]

looking at the transcription of the famitsu review, i feel that the scores dont really match the summaries of all 4 reviewers.

[Hero-of-Time]

First day sales from Japan

 

[WII] Crystal Bearers - 26,000 (34%)

[killer kirby]

First day sales from Japan

 

[WII] Crystal Bearers - 26,000 (34%)

 

GOD DAMMIT JAPAN WTF!?

 

Tis sad to see stuff like this sell so little.

[Hero-of-Time]

A guy over at Gaf has been kind enough to post his impressions as he plays.

 

First of all, when I got it yesterday I only played maybe 2 and 1/2 hours. So these are just early impressions. I'm busy with school though and with NSMB this week, I dunno when I'll play some more FFCC. Very possibly next weekend for a bit and then maybe a large chunk over thanksgiving. So don't expect updates and I can only answer questions to the beginning of the game.

 

The first 2-3 hours is running down a straight path with cutscenes, mini-games and battles along the way. On the plus side this means the pacing is really good and fast paced. Since there is no xp or levels, there's no grinding (I can see some later on if you want drops to make accessories); this means go, go, go pace like an action game; not "I'm at a dungeon and the game just STOPS for an hour" rpg pace. Same with towns. Since you can't talk to NPCs, getting to a town means you're in & out really quick. No lingering around like normal rpgs talking to everyone and shopping (there's a tiny bit of shopping, but not much so far).

 

I didn't follow any of the previews so if this game is supposed to be non-linear like GTA, maybe it gets that way later on? I dunno. I heard the game is like 15 hours and at the fast linear pace the beginning goes it would make sense.

 

Somone asked about how bad the in game camera was.

 

KH1 bad. Even though you can snap the camera, it's not super easy to look at an enemy you want to throw something at or look quickly at something you want to grab. Especially if that's vertically up/down and snapping won't be enough and you gotta use the d-pad camera to adjust a bit.

 

Controls are a bit iffy when it comes to the grab and pick up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just kinda tosses when you wanted to hold on. And then there's just dumb stuff like in the chocobo mini-game at the start where you have your pointer on the enemy, are holding the button and filling the meter to lift him and then suddenly before it's filled the camera JERKS TO THE SIDE and you lose your hold and have to start over. Kinda annoying, and later on if the mini-games actually get deadly I can see stuff like that being frustrating.

 

Someone then asked about any dungeons he's encountered.

 

Hmmm, depends on what you consider dungeon. I mean the game is mainly chases and stuff through dungeon-like environments and fields. You could say I've done 3 dungeons, or 2 or maybe you wouldn't call them dungeons at all. I dunno. It's hard to classify. If it's anything that's not a town or connecting field than there have been like 3.

 

Thinking about it, I guess you could call this a Zelda-ish game. There is an overworld and there are some secrets and some subquests and when you beat stuff you get a heart piece that gives you one more lifebar. It's like Zelda except instead of a dungeon you explore with puzzles it's a straightforward room -> room -> room sequence while doing chase sequence platforming or battling or sometimes a mini-game until you get to the boss fight. Speaking of boss fights, I've only done 1 but man does the camera suck at them. In the first boss you have to manually aim at the boss's heart, but the boss is BIG and the heart is above so you have to be moving the camera around with the d-pad and then pointing while moving around and not getting hit. I couldn't even see half the stuff the boss was doing because he was out of the screen using the auto-correct on the camera.

 

The last thing he posted was.

 

Played a few more hours. A few battles, a few new mini-games, a decent amount of backtracking across the zelda-ish overworld (boo; would have preferred warps or point n' click map to avoid this). I'm guessing the 15 hour marks are exaggerated and it's probably 20ish. Then again who knows.

 

Game is pretty funny and silly. People who take games too seriously will hate it, but so far it's the best game in the FF:CC series imo. It's kind of like FFX-2 except without the battle system/stats/dungeons and just the story/action/mini-games.

[darksnowman]

Thanks for scavenging around and getting us some impressions. With the US release getting closer and closer I'm sure some websites will soon be putting their reviews up. Interesting comments about the camera but tbh, I kind of got that feeling from the footage I've seen. Not being able to talk to NPCs in town reminds me of what Castle Town was like in Twilight Princess.

[Dante]

Famitsu Top 10 for Nov. 09 - 15:

 

01. [PSP] J-League Pro Soccer Club wo Tsukurou! 6: Pride of J (Sega) - 90,000

02. [PS3] Dragon Ball: Raging Blast (Bandai Namco Games) - 64,000

03. [NDS] Tomodachi Collection (Nintendo)

04. [WII] Wii Fit Plus (Nintendo)

05. [NDS] Pokemon Heart Gold / Soul Silver (Pokemon)

06. [PS3]　World Soccer Winning Eleven 2010 (Konami)

07. [WII] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers (Square Enix) - 35,000

08. [NDS] Inazuma Eleven 2: Kyoui no Shinryakusha - Fire / Blizzard (Level 5)

09. [NDS] Rockman EXE Operate Shooting Star (Capcom) - 31,000

10. [WII]　Mario & Sonic at Vancouver Olympics　(Nintendo)

 

Other numbers:

 

... [PSP] Hexyz Force (Atlus) - 12,000

... [PSP] Lunar: Harmony of Silver Star (GungHo Works) - 12,000

... [PSP] Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Jan (AQ Interactive) - 10,000

... [PS3] Need For Speed: Shift (Electronic Arts) - 10,000

... [360] Dragon Ball: Raging Blast (Bandai Namco Games) - 7,000

 

PSP go - 6,600 [hasn't sold the first shipment sales (150k)]

[Hero-of-Time]

Release date time!

 

Friday 20th November/...Square Enix Ltd., the publisher of Square Enix® interactive entertainment products in Europe and other PAL territories, today announces that FINAL FANTASY® CRYSTAL CHRONICLES®: The Crystal Bearers™ will be available exclusively on Wii™ from 5th February 2010.

 

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: The Crystal Bearers opens up a whole new style of game design never experienced in previous FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES games. Set in a huge and beautifully created open-world universe, players will be treated to a magnificent story of adventure, exploration and puzzle solving.

 

A thousand years have passed since the events of the original FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES. The destruction of the Yuke Crystal during the Great War had at once brought the victorious Lilty Tribe prosperity, the defeated Yuke Tribe apparent annihilation, and the world a new age of science and reason. In this new era exists a rare breed of powerful beings called “crystal bearersâ€, whose seemingly magical abilities have led them to be feared and scorned by the public.

[James McGeachie]

I thought the new IGN preview for this looked pretty decent. It seemed the mechanics work a lot better than they did a while back, going by how jittery past footage was.

 

It does seem a little offputting that it almost seems more like straight up action adventure than an RPG though. I mean I don't think "RPG=GREATNESS" or anything like that, but this is the big FF title for the Wii.

[darksnowman]

Out 5th Feb? I'll have to get snooping around and get it pre-ordered.

[Dante]

NeoGaf User Review:

 

Traditional boss count is 1 for the entire game. Which is good because the intro dungeon boss fight sucks so I'm glad there aren't more. The end boss is more a puzzle boss and all the end stuff has multiple checkpoints and unlimited restarts.

 

The story was good. In fact, because it's actually good from start to finish with cool cutscenes, a great lead character, some good NPCs, no filler; it's better than the story of any jrpg this gen since they are all terribly bad or just very bland with filler (Vesperia).

 

The graphics are AMAZING. Best on Wii. The final battle is so graphically impressive at a locked 30fps that I had to go to photomode to make sure this was all realtime. If you've seen what Square has done with the PSP with Crisis Core, Dissidia, and soon Birth by Sleep; then you've seen how they take low-tech and make amazing visuals. They do the same thing with Wii tech here.

 

The audio is good too. The voice acting for the lead and the yuuke are really good. Everyone else is kind of anime. The music is good. Mainly non-memorable stuff, but there are a few strong dramatic tracks.

 

Gameplay is like I've said before. I'll just call it an "interactive adventure". Of the 9 hour main game, I would guess 5-6 hours are cutscenes. You just play the bits between. Hell about an hour or more of that time is me being lost because one of the few negatives of the game is it says "GO TO THIS NEW PLACE" and ummm, doesn't tell you how to get there other than point in the general area of the map! So you waste time here and there trying to figure out where the heck to go. I'm sure this is what Famitsu complained about when wanting a map. So really I'd say the main game is about 8 hours with 5-6 being cutscenes and the other 2-3 being the "events" in between.

 

These events can be normal battles (I would say I fought maybe...10 the entire game), they can be easy fun platforming, they can be mini-games, or other quirky stuff. The gameplay side is never particularly good. So it's a good thing there isn't much gameplay in the game IMO. The camera sucks, the controls are average, sometimes the events aren't really well designed. Thankfully the game is easy and it autosaves every 10 mins and most places have auto-retry at the same spot if you die.

 

Now if you want you can explore around the world and find things to keep yourself amused. I'm guessing this is where the 15 hour time comes from. There's A LOT of achievements in this game to unlock by doing all kinds of things. I only unlocked about 50%.

 

But if you are a gamer who feels the filler sidestuff in games these days is annoying and wastes your time than this is the game for you. Tbh this game really feels like it was made for me. It says "here's all the stuff we would normally use to pad this game and bring down the pacing of the main story. it's all OPTIONAL and out of the way and you don't have to do any of it!. If you're gripped by the main story and you want to see what happens next, you just go to the next event starting spot! The story always advances and lots of stuff happens. There's really no filler.

 

It feels like a 20-30 real FF game with all the gameplay removed and the rest turned into an 8-9 hour interactive movie adventure.

 

The game feels like it has TONS of budget, especially compared to most Wii efforts. But it feels like they spent it all on making the cutscenes first, and then on making the world and all the locations and then they didn't have any money left to make much of a game in it. So you just get a short but satisfying rpg story that's extremely well presented.

 

Plus I don't think they could have made the game any longer without making the lead become lame. He's really likable from start to finish and never loses his cool or gets emotional and always knows what's up. Definitely too good of lead to do a full rpg with.

 

I really enjoyed the game. I'd put it up with No More Heroes and both Marios as my favorite Wii games. It's better than DQ Swords imo. I'd give it an 8.5 personally.

[Falcon_BlizZACK]

Really mixed feelings for this... I hate short adventure games. Always wanted something with the length and scale of Grandia 2. This almost doesn't seem worth the amount of time spent on it.

[Retro_Link]

GT Preview:

 

[LostOverThere]

Two more reviews are up.

 

Games Rader awarded the title a 7/10 whilst Game Informer gave it 55%.

 

Not looking to flash I must say :\

[darksnowman]

 

Story: 8.8

Design: 7.8

Gameplay: 6.4

Presentation: 8.2

 

Overall: 7.7

[Dante]

GTV -

The Pros

 

* Non-whiny main character

* Some clever applications of the mechanics

 

The Cons

 

* No real challenge

* Terrible map

* Gameplay is not meaningful

 

IGN - 6.2

[darksnowman]

Reviews are very "meh." Which is actually an overstatement.

 

RPGamer being the latest to completely ripped Crystal Bearers to shreds.

 

The only time that combat is mandatory is during a handful of boss encounters. These are few and far between, and mostly involve dodging around an area and tossing items at the boss. The game does offer up some variety in the use of telekinesis, but in the end all fights come down to the same tactics.

 

[...]

 

The story also does the game no favors. It's nothing unusual to find a cliché story in an RPG these days, but the plot here just feels phoned in. None of the characters have any kind of backstory to them, nor do they have clear motivations for anything they do. Layle fights because he's an uncaring mercenary with extraordinary powers, but decides at some times to help because he's nice, then shifts back to his aloof self the next moment with an equal lack of explanation. Other characters just hate each other for no apparent reason, and since you cannot even talk to NPCs outside of cutscenes, it's impossible to dig any deeper.

 

[...]

 

Where Crystal Bearers is lacking in combat and story, it features mini-games in an attempt to redeem itself. The majority of this title feels like a collection of these mini-games, and while that wouldn't be all bad if they were fun, most are not.

 

[...]

 

The game's visuals are easily the highlight of the game, but even the graphics are marred by lots of screen jarring in some areas. Character artwork is decent and most of the cast is fairly diverse, but there is an overabundance of recycled NPCs and enemies.

 

[...]

 

There is nothing to recommend about The Crystal Bearers, a shallow embarrassment of a game that takes any progress the Crystal Chronicles series has made and undoes it.

 

- Combat is shallow, almost non-existent

- Controls are awkward

- Story is phoned in

+ Cutscenes look pretty good

+ Some of the music is enjoyable

+ It's short and autosaves

 

1.0/5 (Abominable)

 

 

Personally, I find RPGamer are pretty harsh but a score of 1/5 speaks for itself really.

 

I'm still buying! Its £35 at Game right now, which is bound to drop before release.

[darksnowman]

Right! Crystal Bearers is finally out in here in Europe this week. Who's gonna be picking it up and taking it for a whirl? Myself, H-o-T and... anyone else immune to the bad reviews?

 

Its going for £25 on Game which is a great price for a new release.

[killer kirby]

Personally, I find RPGamer are pretty harsh but a score of 1/5 speaks for itself really.

 

They used to be good, until some of the people on that site who had good taste left, I don't think any of them are back. But yeah, it's been all downhill from there with that site.

 

I still remember how they gave a harsh review for both Dragon Quest remakes with the only reason is that you have to save at a church.

 

I look forward to seeing the high score they are going to give to FFXIII