By Joshua Langley
In March 2002, a revival of a forgotten relationship occurred between Square and Nintendo. It was announced that Nintendo would loan Square money from Yamauchi's Q Fund to start a new development house called Game Designer's Studio. In return, the new studio would develop an exclusive Final Fantasy title for GameCube and Game Boy Advance.
Fast forward to E3 2003, and the American public had its first opportunity to try the game. The following is an examination - pictures included - of the Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles E3 demo.
The "Orb" (or crystal) must be carried by a character. The orb generates a large "force field", clearly marked by a big red circle. The orb acts as the nucleus of a cell and a provider of life. If a player steps outside of this red circle, the player slowly loses life. As a result, the players must remain within the boundary.
To progress in the level, one player must carry the orb with him through the entire level. This player will not be able to fight. The other players must follow him and stay in the red circle. If enemies appear, the other 3 people either need to protect the player carrying the orb, or he or she should drop the orb and help the others fight.
The menu that the Game Boy Advance begins with, shows a map (if available) and character stats. STR and DEF are obvious, however it is not clear what INT is for. I've found out that the higher your INT is, the faster you can use your magic. For example, the Character on (Screen Two) has 10 INT, while the character on (Screen Three) has 7 INT. When you use magic - fire for example - you hold down A and a cursor will appear. Move the cursor around the screen and let go of A, and that's where the fire will go. The person with 10 INT holds A less time for the cursor to appear than the character with 7 INT.
At the start of the game, each Game Boy Advance screen displays your character's stats as well as a level map.
The game randomly chooses one player to carry the map, as shown above. That way, the person carrying the map should communicate with the others about where to go. A good strategy would be to let the person with the map carry the orb, so the others could follow him/her.
This icon is shown on the bottom right of the Game Boy Advance screen. It indicates that the GBA is controlling the GameCube screen at the moment. However, by pressing select, the icon changes to a GBA as seen in (Screen Five). This indicates that you are now controlling the Game Boy Advance menu screens. Use R and L to scroll through the different menus. As pictured in (Screen Six), a GBA is displayed on your character's icon on the television to indicate to other players that you are not currently in control of your character.
Pressing R from the status screen brings up a kind of "hot key" system. If you look back at (Screen Six), there are 3 green boxes, 3 grey
boxes, and 1 large green box. The large green box represents your current
selected Action. The picture to the right shows what
actions you have equipped. There are three empty spaces in the menu, which show
up as the grey boxes on the television. (note the prior intelligence was 7
and now it is 15. We started a new game for the other pictures, so it
seems that starting stats are randomly generated in the E3 demo). I'll come back to
equipping actions later.
Pressing R from the status menu brings you to the inventory menu as shown in (Screen 8). It shows your current magic, current items, and current equipment.
An E is placed next to certain things in the list to show that they are equipped. The Screen 8 character started the game with all of the magic in the demo. The other three characters all had cure, and either fire, blizzard, or thunder. The character in Screen 8 was the only one with fire, blizzard, and thunder. Also in the demo, one of the enemies is randomly carrying a "globe device". When you kill that creature and pick up the globe, your character learns "Life" magic. "Life" was the only additional magic in the E3 demo.
Pressing R from the inventory menu brings you to the Equipment Menu as shown below. This menu allows you to change current weapon, armor, and helmet.
Pressing R from the Equipment Menu brings you back to the Action Menu. Now we will equip actions. Move the cursor to an empty slot, and press A as shown in (Screen 10). The cursor is on an item, in this case a Phoenix Down.
By equipping Phoenix Down as an action, your character is automatically brought back to life when you die. We don't want to equip that though, so press down on the control pad as shown in (Screen 11), and you will see that there is something called "Rune Hammer".
Press A again to select Rune Hammer as shown in (Screen 12). This is a special attack. The name and function of the special attack varies from character to character, but all do pretty much the same thing.
By holding A until the cursor appears, you can target an enemy, and lunge at him with your weapon. This obviously hurts more than simply attacking the enemy with the "Attack" action, but takes longer to execute since you need to charge it. Notice in (Screen 13) that there are now only two grey boxes since one was taken up with the special action. The special action is now selected (the last green box should be big, however it pulsates from big to small to indicate that it's selected).
You can also combine magic.
Above is what a Normal Action Cursor looks like. When you touch two action cursors together (from different players), it quickly expands, and then contracts to show that it has been combined. I didn't get a picture of that effect. (Screen 15) however shows two "Fire" cursors combined. If you release the magic at the time when the cursor is touching, you can produce greatly improved effects. Here are some more examples:
The screen above shows what normal "Cure" looks like, while (Screen 17) shows what combined cure looks like (very nice). The combined "Cures" heals all characters (unless they are dead).
Screen 18 above shows normal "Blizzard", and (Screen 19) shows combined "Blizzard". Notice the HUGE difference? I wasn't able to get pictures of the other magics combining, but it looks equally impressive. We also combined Blizzard, Fire, and Thunder, and a large black sphere appeared and then shrunk. We think it was Demi.
When a character dies, your body falls to the ground and turns into a ghost. You can control the ghost, but you can't do anything. You can also press A, and the little ghost Waves (with his hand). It's kind of hard to see, and seems pointless. Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of that.
Some interesting notes about the Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles E3 Demo.
- They only got the demo the week before E3
- Players can use a GameCube controller. The Game Boy Advance was not mandatory. It wasn't fully implemented in the E3 demo, however a tiny menu would pop up in a small section of the screen.
Keep your Game Boy Advance and GameCube warm, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is scheduled for a North American release on November 3rd.
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