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New Final Fantasy Game Coming To Wii and DS

Posted by Soulskill on from the sharing-fantasies dept.

Eurogamer reports on some good news for fans of the Final Fantasy series: a new game is in development for the Nintendo Wii and DS systems. "It's said to be titled Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. ... the game will apparently be playable on both machines at once, thanks to the spiffing new Pollux engine. So, while whoever is the best negotiator/fighter/Wii owner is playing on the big screen, another lucky adventurer can wade in on the DS, presumably following around and summoning Ifrit on their elder siblings. This harks back to the series' origins on DS, with the first CC game enjoying the relative splendour of Gamecube/GBA link-up play."

13 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No more by Sabz5150 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Crystal Chronicles was good *IF* you had the necessary hardware to play the game the way it was meant to be played. This meant 4 GBAs and 4 link cables... not something the average gamer owned (even finding three friends with link cables was a task).

    Nintendo at times has this thing for insanely ridiculous hardware requirements for their console games, but if you manage to gather the hardware, it's definitely a worthy gaming experience.

    --
    "Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
  2. What can I say? by Pollux · · Score: 5, Funny

    The game will apparently be playable on both machines at once, thanks to the spiffing new Pollux engine.

    What can I say? I strive to make the very best.

  3. Re:No more by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This meant 4 GBAs and 4 link cables... not something the average gamer owned (even finding three friends with link cables was a task).

    So, it's a lot like Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, then? Well, save for the fact that Adventures required four GameBoy Advances, four GameCube/GBA link cables, AND a copy of the GameCube game.

    Methinks the current (Nintendo DS) solution of downloading stubs of games over WiFi works a lot better than the hardware-junkie scheme Nintendo tried to sell before. One would have thought that after the four player cabling for the original GameBoy failed to take off, Nintendo would have learned about all this extra hardware. Guess not.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  4. Not that I want to offend anyone... by loupgarou21 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yay!!! Beat that fucking horse, it might actually crawl an extra foot or two.

    loupgarou21 bought a wii on speculation that the new controller would bring new, innovative games.

    loupgarou21 is disappointed that the new games that take advantage of the new controller are crap, and all halfway decent games for the wii are just rehashing the same nintendo big sellers that have come out for the last 30 years, only they make you shake the the damned controller to do simple things that shouldn't require shaking a controller.

    1. Re:Not that I want to offend anyone... by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      loupgarou21 has not played Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

      --
      "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
    2. Re:Not that I want to offend anyone... by RogueyWon · · Score: 2, Informative

      But I have.

      And what loupgarou21 says holds perfectly true for it. It's not doing anything you couldn't do on a mouse and keyboard and if you play for more than 30 minutes at a time, it gets very uncomfortable. Plus the Metroid Prime gameplay has now been through 3 iterations with almost no changes (or significant graphical uplifts) and is now feeling very, very dated.

      To date, the only first party game for the Wii I've found that I actually genuinely like is Super Smash Bros Brawl, which has decent production values and doesn't actually use the motion sensing functions of the controller. The rest seem to have ranged from the fair-to-middling (Zelda, Mario Galaxy) to the downright awful (Mario Kart Wii - probably the worst "big title" game of 2008 so far on any platform, due to some really dodgy design decisions).

      Elsewhere, with a couple of notable exceptions (such as the decent ports of Okami and Resident Evil 4), the system does seem to be drowning under a tide of low-budget shovelware. I didn't pick up the Wii version myself, but from what I understand, the Wii version of Force Unleashed was even more disappointing than the 360 and PS3 versions (another good contender for biggest let-down of the year, on any of its many platforms), as it combined early-PS2 quality graphics with lightsabre mechanics that fell well short of the actual lightsabre control that people had been hoping for.

      Now, I freely admit I've not been a fan of the Wii concept from the very beginning. It does, however, feel like over the last 6 months or so, even some of the Nintendo faithful have become increasingly disillusioned by Nintendo's apparent acceptance of the popular concept that "casual" games are effectively "rushed, low quality" games. The novelty of the controller has worn off now and the Wii won't be the hot, trendy main-stream ticket this coming Christmas that it was last year. Decent games are desperately needed, whether or not they make use of motion sensing.

      Now, what's the article about?

      Oh yes, Crystal Chronicles. Didn't like the first one on the Gamecube, thought the recent DS version was kinda fun but not Earth-shattering, can't say I'll be camping out in line to pick up the new one. I used to be (and to some degree still am) a huge Square-Enix fanboy, but I've been getting a little worried of late. Final Fantasy XIII looks great, but it's taking a hell of a long time to appear. The Kingdom Hearts series appears to be stuck in some kind of limbo of uninspiring hand-held and mobile phone games. Infinite Undiscovery on the 360 is not even close to being as good as Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey from Mistwalker. The lone bright spot among their recent releases has been Crisis Core, which was, I admit, very good indeed. Besides that, it appears that they've allowed too many side-projects and spin-off franchises to distract them from their core strengths.

    3. Re:Not that I want to offend anyone... by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      the only first party game for the Wii I've found that I actually genuinely like is Super Smash Bros Brawl, which has decent production values

      Really? My impression from playing SSBB was "the Smash Bros. gameplay has now been through 3 iterations with almost no changes (or significant graphical uplifts) and is now feeling very, very dated."

      (Mario Kart Wii - probably the worst "big title" game of 2008 so far on any platform, due to some really dodgy design decisions).

      And such as? I don't think the game is perfect -- course designs tend to be a little too much "on rails", rather than freely explorable like the N64 edition, and the Wii Wheel is uncomfortable to use -- but I find it to be one of the best games in the Mario Kart series, and one of the best games released for the Wii thus far.

      popular concept that "casual" games are effectively "rushed, low quality" games. The novelty of the controller has worn off now and the Wii won't be the hot, trendy main-stream ticket this coming Christmas that it was last year.

      People were saying that a year ago, too, and the Wii was still the hot item of the season.

      I will grant you that some circumstances have changed since this time last year -- more and more people who want Wiis have already found and bought them, and there is now an Xbox 360 model that costs even less than the Wii -- but I'm confident that the "novelty" of the system has not "worn off", and that it will likely still be the best-selling console this Christmas.

    4. Re:Not that I want to offend anyone... by RogueyWon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The big problem I have with Mario Kart is that they have surgically excised both skill and fun from the game. There are too many racers on the track at once now... too many weapons being fired off constantly on every side. Moreover, the way the game penalises players for driving well by giving players behind them super-powered weapons that are impossible to evade means that the only way to win on 100cc setting is to deliberately drive badly until the second half of the final lap.

      Not my idea of fun. Double Dash wasn't perfect, but it was vastly better than this.

      Super Smash Brothers, on the other hand, added a fairly engaging storyline mode (which is a first for the series) and looked and sounded better than pretty much anything else on the Wii. Yes, some of the game mechanics feel a bit dated and the platforming sections occasionally feel rushed, but there is still the nucleus of a very good game in there.

  5. Square and Nintendo together again. by Skrapion · · Score: 3, Funny

    Not that I'm a Final Fantasy fan anymore -- I grew out of that phase during Final Fantasy III/6j -- but I still feel obliged to say...

    SUCK IT.

    --
    The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
    1. Re:Square and Nintendo together again. by Renaissance+2K · · Score: 2, Informative

      That comic is old, and it's referencing the long period between the release of FF7 and FF10 where Nintendo vowed that Square would never release another game on their consoles.

      They took it rather personally when Square jumped ship to Sony for the release of Final Fantasy VII and then launched a massive anti-cartridge marketing campaign. Wouldn't you?

      As far as Xbox 360 games, Square-Enix has already released Project Sylpheed and Infinite Undiscovery on the console; both exclusives. The future releases of Last Remnant and Final Fantasy XIII share a release with the PS3. Yes, Final Fantasy XIII.

  6. Re:Image from the shonen jump by pokerdad · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't think those are Miis. I think they are in-game creations loosely based on Miis. That's probably why they look so funky, (Blue hair and all.)

    The fact the word Mii is written right on top of them makes me suspicious that at least one is a Mii.

  7. Re:No more by blahplusplus · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Nintendo at times has this thing for insanely ridiculous hardware requirements for their console games, but if you manage to gather the hardware, it's definitely a worthy gaming experience."

    As an owner of crystal chronicles, it was a complete letdown even with mutiplayer. The game was too simplified and it wasn't final fantasy at all, not in the slightest. Everything about FF: CC was disjoint and disconnected. They had some wonderful graphics but the world did not cohere well at all, FF: CC is probably one of the craziest projects square has ever green lighted, I can't understand how they would make a different game for the gamecube and not a true final fantasy.

    FF: CC was originally some other game whom they grafted into the fold, I wish they had not named it FF:CC but they wanted free money and a lot of stupid people bought it on the name (as they knew)

    It was a dishonest thing IMHO. I thought they were seriously releasing an FF, when I played FF:CC I was like : WTF IS THIS?? that's what my reaction was... a crappy overly simplistic button mashing action game.

  8. Re:No more by Valacosa · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm glad I'm not alone.

    I bought Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, Ring of Fates and had the same "WTF is THIS?" reaction.

    The real-time combat isn't entirely unprecedented, Final Fantasy Adventure for the original Game Boy was like that. But FFA didn't have three companions with piss-poor AI, a broken magic system, bad voice acting, and an expectation that I use the stylus and control pad at the same time.

    I wish someone would port Final Fantasy 7 to the DS, rather than making another crappy FF:CC game.

    --
    "Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.