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Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord
Nintendo Network
Kind of Fun, but Poorly Balanced
3/5 stars
“Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord” (“MLaaDL”) is the third and final WiiWare exclusive game released by the conglomerate of two one-time RPG titans, Square Enix. While Square Enix’s other game development endeavors this-gen have been met with near-universal criticism and panning from critics and gamers alike, their first two WiiWare entries (“Final Fantasy 4: The After Years,” and “Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King”) were their two strongest releases. Having played a demo of “MLaaDL,” I was expecting this third game to round-out a nice trinity of simple, low-budget games that forego all of the nonsense that has been dragging down the main series ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘Dragon Quest’ games this-gen. Unfortunately, “MLaaDL” instead demonstrated to me how misleading demos can be as well as how desperate and grasping Square Enix has become with respect to DLC.
Presentation
“MLaaDL” looks pretty good for a Wii game. While there are a few jaggies, they aren’t blindingly obtrusive. The character, monster, and architectural designs are stylistically good, which would be expected, since the game recycles the graphics engine and at least half of its graphical assets from “My Life as a King.”
The game’s audio is significantly worse than the graphics, as the game features a god-awful annoying siren sound effect that goes off when enemies get too close to the top of the Darklord’s Tower or when the player runs low on Negative Power (NP). There is little voiceacting to speak of, and what there is merely consists of grunts and groans, which are mostly suitable, except for the fact that the main character yells, “Saaaaaah!” a lot (What does that even mean?!).
To make up for the annoying siren and “Saaaaaah!” the game features some really great background music. Unfortunately, there are only about two different tracks in the entire game, making the entire experience kind of monotonous.
Story
As a direct sequel to “Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King,” “MLaaDL” stars the daughter of the previous game’s ultimate villain. This girl is Mira, a half demon/half clavat (the ‘Crystal Chronicles’ universe’s version of generic blonde Caucasian). Having inherited the mantle of Darklord from her father, Mira is set on the goal of striking terror into people everywhere and earning monsters the respect they deserve. She aims to accomplish her goals by piloting a giant, heart-shaped airship around the world and using the power of the Dark Crystal at the heart of the ship to create a series of deadly, trap-filled towers to torment adventurers.
This entire premise is fairly weak. Since Mira’s forces never leave her towers and her towers don’t pose any imminent threat to nearby settlements, there is little reason for adventurers to attack them, aside from the blunt assertion that ‘that’s what adventurers do.’ Regardless, as Mira spreads terror across the land, she comes face to face with a variety of cameo characters from other ‘Crystal Chronicles’ games. I was especially impressed by the fact that the game will read an existing “Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King” save and import the name of the King and his kingdom for Mira’s eventual confrontation with him.
“MLaaDL” plays out over five chapters, each of which reveals more and more of Mira’s personality and the internal conflict between her clavat and demon natures. While she remains somewhat insane and brash throughout the entire game, she does experience personal growth in her relationships with both people and monsters, which leads the game’s quirky narrative to a satisfying conclusion.
Gameplay
“MLaaDL” is a unique take on the Tower Defense sub-genre, which has only been around in full force for a single hardware generation. Like other Tower Defense games, the player, as Mira, is tasked with defending something – in this case, the Dark Crystal at the heart of Mira’s airship – from waves of enemies. If a single enemy hits the crystal, it’s Game Over. However, unlike other Tower Defense games, there is only one tower and the enemies must make their way through its various floors. The tower starts with no floors, and the player must spend Negative Points (NP) in order to build floors and populate them with monsters. Each floor has an artifact, which is part of the floor and does something specific, like attacking, healing, or inflicting a status ailment on that particular floor. Each floor also has a number of slots which can be filled with monsters to either complement an artifact or make-up for a floor’s particular weakness. If a monster dies, it can be replaced, but if an artifact dies, the entire floor collapses, killing any monsters that might still be in it (but leaving enemy adventurers unharmed). It’s possible to upgrade monsters by spending Karma (which is gained by winning stages) to unlock additional levels for them, which must be applied to each individual monster in a stage via the Power Up option (which costs NP).
Each stage in “MLaaDL” is represented by a point on a typical-looking world map. Upon hovering over a stage, it’s possible to see how many enemies (adventurers) will assault the tower in that stage, as well as what types the enemies will be. As is common in this type of strategy game, enemies and defenses come in a variety of types, which have advantage over each other in a circular (rock-paper-scissors-style) fashion: Melee is strong against Ranged, which is strong against Magic, which is strong against Melee. “MLaaDL” also throws in two other types that don’t fit into the circle of advantage: Generic and Healer. Determining the number of enemies of each type that will assault the tower in a stage allows the player to plan which defenses to use, but isn’t overly useful, as each adventurer type includes a number of different adventurer classes (for example, Magic includes standard Yuke Black Mages who attack with black magic as well as awful Clavat Black Mages who attack with sleep magic, Ranged includes Clavat Bandits who attack the monsters in the tower as well as awful Selkie Thieves who attack the artifacts in the tower, Melee includes a variety of different warriors who deal varying amounts of damage, Generic includes weak Trainees as well as awful Red Mages who cast Gravity Slash to cut their target’s health in half, and Healer consists entirely of White Mages who never attack, but just heal themselves over and over). Each variety of enemy also has a particular amount of time they will spend on each floor battling that floor’s defenses before they move onto the next floor. There are ways to get around most enemy advantages, such as using a monster with the Block special ability to protect artifacts from selkies. However the game’s biggest flaw is how stingy it is with providing defenses for Mira to use.
Past Chapter 2, the starting amount of 500 NP for each stage starts to feel confining, while the lack of variety in the monster roster leaves the player with only a single Magic-type monster with the Block ability (and since Magic is weak to Ranged, those selkies just mow through them like they aren’t even there). And throughout the entirety of the main game, Mira only gains access to two monsters of each type (one weak-but-fast monster and one strong-but-slow monster). Thus it becomes almost essential to buy all of the DLC, which provides access to over 12 more monsters (including Melee and Ranged Blockers) and over 5 new floors, as well as a bunch of accessories for Mira to wear that increase her starting NP from 500 to 800. The ridiculous thing is that the DLC brings the grand total cost of the game to OVER $60, which is utterly insane for a little downloadable title that would be just as at home on a handheld (or, God forbid, a smartphone) as on WiiWare. Aside from providing necessary stat boosts and roster improvements, the DLC also offers two additional mission packs. The first mission pack is a 6th Chapter that acts as a silly epilogue for the main game. The second mission pack drops a bunch of ‘challenging’ stages all over the main game’s maps. Of course, the DLC missions enjoy making the game ‘challenging’ by spitting out high-level adventurers (LV 20-30, when the player’s monsters max-out at LV 5) faster than anyone could hope to kill them.
Where Square Enix really demonstrates its evil is in the fact that the demo is significantly easier than the regular game, providing a false representation of how fun/playable/impossible the regular game actually is. While the game does start out innocent and fun, it soon becomes just as tedious and frustrating as most other Tower Defense games.
Overall
“Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord” is easily the worst of the WiiWare trinity. However, it’s still not entirely horrible, and more enjoyable than the three ‘Final Fantasy 13’ games Square Enix has insisted on cramming down gamers’ throats this-gen. While “MLaaDL” is just as cute and simple as “My Life as a King,” the balance issues, content that was skimmed to make DLC, and the extremely high cost makes it something I can’t recommend. If this game cost $15 for the main game and all the DLC, it would be more worthwhile, but in a time when WiiWare games must compete with $3 Indie games on Steam, there is just not $60+ worth of enjoyment to be found here.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
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