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Usually I try to do these review and commentary round-ups right as a game hits, and Crystal Chronicles hit while I was still hip deep in Mana Khemia. I'm playing catch-up on Ring of Fates since it sounds incredibly interesting. I'll probably start co-oping my way through once my Shiren addiction cools off for a bit.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates is at heart a Final Fantasy-flavored Diablo-style dungeon hack. It's designed to be played multiplayer, but the multi campaign can be soloed and there's also a solo story mode. The localization got good buzz and I was impressed with a preview copy I saw, but it does have the spectre of the mediocre GameCube Crystal Chronicles to shake off.

So, what does the wide internet think of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates? Let's go find out.

When you play in single-player mode, you're escorted by a suite of AI buddies that, according to Stephen Totilo at MTV Multiplayer, are of highly dubious intelligence.

Each party member in Ring of Fates has his or her own unique ability and weapon set, but everyone shares the same magic pool. If someone casts a cure or fire spell on their own, it comes out of the partys total magic availability. The A.I. partners like to do that  often. To combat this, I simply made their default magic the equivalent of a phoenix down.

Take that, poorly coded A.I.!

The upswing is the game doesnt force you to baby-sit the party. So long as youve done an adequate job of outfitting your own character with the best weapons and equipment, its entirely possible to solo through Ring of Fates roughly 10 hours of gameplay.

It's interesting to note that you can play the multiplayer solo if you like, which offsets the shortness of Ring of Fates's story mode. James Mielke at 1up.com has the review that is probably most important to folks like me, who are primarily interested in picking the game up for its multiplayer potential, and interestingly, he gives the game one of its absolute highest scores, an A on the new Ziff-Davis letter scale.

The real enjoyment here is found in multiplayer, in case you couldn't tell. While the story mode is a cute tour through the game's many levels (some of which are exclusive to the North American version), you can't take your loot with you, meaning that the real investment is found only in multiplayer. Level your character up, solo or with friends, and the progress is reflected in your armor and weapons. Wireless play is easily activated and endlessly amusing, although one side effect is significant slowdown of the graphics in some areas, especially when four players are connected. Beyond the sheer joy of multiplayer, Ring of Fates has a surprisingly deep crafting feature, as monsters drop scrolls (recipes) for armor and weapons. By farming levels, monsters, and bosses for materials, you're able to craft better equipment (although one hang-up is that you can't identify whether a piece of armor is better or worse than what you're already wearing, since scrolls don't indicate statistics). The deeper you forge into the game is also reflected in how many townspeople move back into your hometown, opening up additional options at the weapon, armor, and magicite (the material used to cast magic) shops.

Most reactions to the game were more moderate than Mielke's near-undiluted praise, but generally positive. This is the range the GamePro score fell into, a solid 7.5. Mike Spitalieri's text praises the game's sense of design and solid action RPG gameplay basics while abhorring some of its camera and interface issues. It doesn't go in to the intricacies of multiplayer versus solo at all, instead speaking about the title in general terms.

The core gameplay of the original Gamecube title remains largely intact, offering a dungeon crawling, action RPG style more common to games like Diablo or Baldur's gate than anything in the main FF series. Essentially, you use the D-pad to run around the upper screen (which often runs afoul of poorly placed camera angles) and mash the A button to melee your enemies. As you level up, your characters gain various abilities including multishot arrows, charged attacks, double jumps, and rolling and airborne attacks. While most of the core combat takes place on the upper screen, the game does make ample use of the DS touchscreen, which at times can be completely novel and refreshing, but also maddeningly over-complicated.

The coverage from GameSpy takes an interesting tack, focusing on the quality of the storyline and writing in the solo mode. This is something that is of extreme interesting to most players, and the GamePro review is dismissive of the subject while the 1up review is simply disinterested. Patrick Joynt seemed impressed.

The story's (and combat systems') simplicity seems deliberate, an outreach to younger and more casual players whom Square Enix doesn't want to scare off with Lifestreams and Junctions and the like. The simplicity is clearly not from lack of writing talent, because hidden in the game's script are some comedic gems that cater to an older crowd. Early in the game, your character's pride in his growing ability leads him to proclaim to his father, "We're nearly adulterous!" It's not quite Pixar's all-ages appeal, but there is some very sharp humor here for people who aren't just skipping the talky parts.

The lowest scores and most negative reactions to Crystal Chronicles ended up sitting in the dread 6.0 range. Nintendo World Report's review is typical of the negative reaction to Ring of Fates. Mike Gamin's most extensive complaints are about that A.I. with little said about multiplayer.

The simple act of walking around isn't the only task that computer-controlled characters have problems with. Getting them to actually help you out in a fight is nearly impossible as well. If they happen to be right next to an enemy they may actually attack them, but they will never cast a spell or use an item. This means that if you want your magic user to cast Fire on an end boss, you have to switch control over to him so you can do it yourself. Ring of Fates would have benefitted from a setup similar to the gambit system used in Final Fantasy XII; it would have been nice to set up some simple conditional statements (e.g. if a party member has less than 100 hit points, cast Cure on him) instead of being forced to manually control characters in this manner. Hopefully they'll use a similarly ingenious system in future sequels.

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