Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time - Nintendo DS

So here is my updated review after delving about halfway into the game. This is a remarkable little action RPG and a worthy Final Fantasy title. It often brings back memories of Secret of Mana (the music really does it), and Kingdom Hearts (fighting style).You are a young, nameless (you do get to pick a name), voiceless hero. You have to save the world, starting with saving a friend in need. The story starts kind of silly and sluggish, but definitely picks up pace quite a bit. The story, while not to the epic levels of a main numbered Final Fantasy, is enough to keep one interested, and is pretty serious stuff (unlike FF Tactics A2).Controls take a bit of getting used to. The stylus is really unnecessary. You control the player with the D-pad and can execute attacks, jump, cast magic, and pick up objects with the ABXY buttons. The L and R are for swapping magic and characters, but this is more easily done by tapping the player or magic you want on the bottom screen with your thumb. Once you get used to it, the controls are quite nice. Just be careful opening the menu. Hit start, not the reset button on the left! (I did once... glad I save often!)Difficulty is medium at first but definitely builds up. Puzzles can be challenging (especially the timing puzzles), easy, or just infuriating (the really lame easy yet time consuming ones). There are tons of interesting and challenging side quests to accept from a town moogle. They are very fun and can be played solo with just your main hero or multiplayer (separate quests for each). The rewards are okay, but the challenge makes them fun and worth doing.Equipment is kind of a toss up. While I love the customization (synthesis) style, It seems that too often you customize a weapon or armor and then the next is ready. You never really have to spend time hunting down the items needed for a particular good because the next batch will be ready to order soon and require different loot. One other thing I like is that you level up the weapons and armors and then can have them made into a crystal which can be fused to a different weapon or armor with a cool effect (such as HP Boost, Attack Boost, etc...). It makes for an interesting system, I just wish they had actually put in less weapons and armor within each category, therefore making it a necessity to get the new gear and forcing you to go hunting for some loot!Magic system is nice. It takes getting used to but works well. You only have 6 spells: Fire, Ice, Thunder, Cure, Revive, Esuna (Clear). You can stack attack magic for higher level spells (fira, firaga). I like that each attack spell has an effect (burn, freeze, paralyze). This makes using magic a bit more fun and often a necessity. Some enemies will do nasty things if you don't zap them with freeze or paralyze status first! Magic is also used in some of the puzzle solving.Graphics are slick and pretty. Often the camera can be a nuisance, but other then that, the graphics are stellar. Characters actually change appearance with new gear. Spell effects look nice, enemies are well drawn. Music is rather nice, catchy, but the songs and styles are rather similar to one another. They are really nice and you do get drawn into the setting.I can foresee the replay value being an issue. Mainly because of the nature of the puzzle solving. I believe there will be higher difficulty settings for New Game + (according to what one NPC said). I will update later.The most glaring issue is the one player teammate AI. Often it gets annoying when they continually jump off cliffs into fire, therefore taking damage. They often don't seem to want to attack the enemy, while other times they go berserk. And they rarely hit a cure spell unless someone is on the verge of death. So while I gripe, this does add to the difficulty. It is more like having three backups. You will be the main attacker and can switch to the other players with the touch of the bottom screen. This helps, but in the heat of battle you really can't swap out.Another issue is that drops and gil must be actively picked up to go into inventory. I would have liked to have you just walk over it and collect it. But it's a minor thing. Another minor beef is that when going into the menu to view status or equip, you cannot change characters. You must back out of the menu then actively select a new party leader. At least you can hit -select- while in the shop to switch characters.Despite the few issues with the game, this is one of the best and most fun DS RPGs I have played. I would highly recommend it to any action RPG fan! A must own for the DS.

I bought two copies of Final Fantasy; Echoes of Time for Wii and the D.S. I bought the D.S. copy for my brother, and the Wii version for me, mainly because I enjoy playing on a bigger screen, and hearing better sound quality. As soon as the title screen came into view, I was dissapointed. The two screens were adjustable in thier size, but not by much. As a Magic user, I had to adjust the right screen frequently so I could press the spell I wanted to cast, and this did get in the way of my efficiency as a Yuke. I ended up killing my brother sometimes because I could not Cure him in time... eheh.However, I did become used to adjusting the screens and casting quicker; but the background behind the screens annoyed me to no end. It became a distraction sometimes. Square Enix did not bother to incorerate a new screen for the game. For instance, the map could have beeen on the top right or left of the screen, and under the map could be the spells; both of which could be toggled on and off. The D.S. has more pixelated graphics,of course, but that is not noticable unless the compare the D.S. and the Wii versions side by side. The Wii had much smoother edges. Besides that, playing on the D.S. is much more user-friendly.Besides that annoyance, the storyline was... not too bad. I became a little bored with it somewhere close to the end, and I consider myslef open-minded. Overall, it is not very engaging or intriguing. It could be considered a little drawn out. I found that characters were constantly repeating lines that other characters were saying. It did have a lot of humor, if you talked to the townspeople after Sherlotta joins your group. Otherwise, I did not find characters very memorable, execpt for Sherlotta. The villian is a creepy old man who lives in a Library. Hmm... He was also too easy to beat, even on very hard.The quests, the ones that the little Moogle gives you, were fun to play with others. People you knew, anyway. People online can be jerks. They ususally hinder you for the fun of it, and me and my brother just really played with each other.There was a basic "crafting" system. I found that it was usually not worth it unless you found high level schematics from Mimics. ( The evil treasure chest thingies.) Otherwise, all it did was save you gold.Combat is fun, but can be repettitive sometimes. I like that you can combine spells to make new ones, like Bio and Ultima. That was interesting, and melee combat was simple. A button, A button, A button, Victory Fanfare!I had no idea what the Magic Orbs did at first, but they affect how effective your spells are overall. I found that Thunder to be the weakest spell for me, maybe because it was my lowest level on my Magic Atribute sheet, although not by much.There is a lot of platforming. A lot of it! It gets boring sometimes, and on the Wii version, there is not really a camera, so seeing important objects is difficult. My brother pointed out what we had to do just by looking at his D.S., which annouyed me. I'm usually the problem solver...I also thought that there were little places to visit during and after the game. This kind of annoyed me, I was hoping that there would be a bigger map or something.In general, the game needs work. It could improve; it could be bigger. This game is really not for playing solo; rather, play with your friends. However, beware, for there is a great lagging in the game when you are playing online with friends.I would buy this game if I wanted a Final Fantasy game to play with friends, and it would be even more fun if I had more people to play with... who are not jerks, like you ALWAYS find online. I just take those jerks to the high level places and laugh as they die, get frustrated, and eventually leave. Yes, I know that;s not a nice thing to do, and I don't usually do that sort of thing, but they got themselves into that. :] Thank you for readin a review from a sixteen year old boy named Christopher ( Who loves Final Fantasy to no end! )

no me esperaba que fuese la versión americana, pero funciona en dsi/xl, así que ha funcionado perfectamente!!, tenía muchas ganas de comprar este juego y seguir con la cronología del ring of fates, que me dejó con muy buen sabor de boca. Está también en español/ castellano, y me asusté en un principio ya que no sabía que iba a estar en ingles siendo así la versión american, pero al final ha resultado ser perfecto, tal y como yo lo quería.

Game came as cartridge only and no casing. This was purchased to be a gift for someone and nothing was noted of not having packaging. Disappointed.

I bought this because i remember playing it along time ago as a child, it's graphics still look amazing today, i played it on my 2DS recently. Fun rpg best played on co-op with a friend.

been looking for this one

Good