Since I cannot purchase anything on the PS3 thanks to the incompatibility between the Playstation Store and the Banque Nationale du Canada, I decided I would support the new WiiWare channels. So I purchased by first big WiiWare game, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as King. The game costs a little bit short of USD$40 with all options included. Not too shabby for a FF game, and you sincerely can get away with much less.
Many reviewers declared this game a lemon, others were more friendly. I give it a relatively good note personally. How does it precisely fare? I will give you my score immediately: 6/10. 8/10 for the idea, 9/10 for the general quality, and 2/10 for the game design, balancing and A.I. Why? Devil's in the details baby.
Square Enix is going in a different direction with this game, exacerbating the Tactics idea by making us sending out adventurers not seeing or participating in any combat whatsover, anyways we are having our hands full with building and managing the city, and sending out these lucky adventurers to the butcher stall.
There's some storyline you follow, you are first taken by the hand and you need to build things as required. First a house in the only available shiny spot, then a few more, and finally the first bakery. During these first levels, you have to tightly manage your budget, and have a lot of hard choices to do. Fun times, really. Then the details start to hit the fan (or the brick wall, depending.)
You start by getting a weapon shop. That's cool. Then, there's an armor shop. That's great… But then you see the adventurers going to both shop nearly everyday. Finally, there's the item shop… and at that point, it becomes painfully clear all characters are going to the Weapon, then the Armor, then the Items, no matter where they are located in the city.
Throughout that time, you are starting to get people asking for a holiday. They say I need to order people to have a holiday, but at that point, I could not do it to save my life. They also started to become annoying since one in eight are mentioning this.
Eventually you get a gambling hall, that's so sweet, I can order people to become thieves (if they want to). I am being recommended to create this near houses so that adventurers living nearby can get extra points. The problem with that is you have problems determining who is a thief and not, also you cannot order adventurers to become thieves, only the ones wanting to do it gets that thief mention. Finally, the gambling hall cannot be close to everything, and you painfully discover adventurers want to go there everyday before going to the armor shop. Whoopie-doo.
You also get another billboard, making it possible to order two events instead of one. Why oh why are they going there randomly? I start having more adventurers so I create a level 3 event and a level 10 event for the higher-leveled people. Of course I get a mix of low and high levels wanting to participate to both events.
Then, you get a white mage church. Yay! Now folks will be able to cure themselves, probably leading to less deaths… But… All your white mages are dieing! What the?! This is where you understand even if you order 5 people to do a job, they will do it individually! And can you tell me something more useless than some alone white mage? They will cure themselves, but will not be able to attack a level 1 foe!
It will hit you that you need a tavern and you get the tavern only after you get the possibility to make black mages (good luck if half your folks are now white mages!), and only after you (reluctantly) create at least one, to attack the big magic attack only foe. Oh that's so intuitive. And of course, adventurers will usually do most of these in approximate order:
- Go to the park
- Go to one of the posts to accept a quest
- Go to their hall/church
- Go to the weapon shop
- Go to the armor shop
- Go to the items shop
- Go to the tavern
At that point, my whole city was in a standstill, most adventurers going away when most of the day is done, not having time to do whatever they needed to do. All white mages are mostly coming together in the tavern, making them go in mission together, same for black mages, same for thieves, same for warriors. And you can finally do that stupid holiday! The joys.
You need experience to know adventurers need to reliably go to their training centre, while they do not need to go to the guild hall (that you cannot obtain anytime near, even if you are told you need to upgrade your hall as soon as you get more than 5 adventurers near the start of the game). You need to know they will do things in a precise order. You need to know you can only have as many adventurers as the game allows you, making many finer details totally moot. You need to know the Inn is not useful near the posts.
The last straw for this game is the second tavern. Of course, you conveniently put the first tavern at the end of the line near the most useful city door, and once you get the second tavern, you conveniently put it near the second door, wishfully thinking people will go to the closest tavern for their job. Oh you couldn't be so lucky, can you? Nope, adventurers like their tavern, no matter where they need to go later, so you only end up segregating your people in multiple nonfunctional groups, instead of larger nonfunctional groups.
Yes I know, you can create one balanced group per tavern by yourself, but why would this not be automatic and do the "good thing" eludes me.
Add up a Pavlov that you simply end up clicking randomly while chasing these stupid adventurers to give them a vitality boost (and get the morale points out of them), enough money and crystals to do whatever you may ever wish to do, getting more suggestions of events you can order but don't know how (like the white mages wanting some materials), a few other annoyances, and you get the picture: a very good game that's really poorly balanced, with a random generator instead of an A.I., and a requirement to read the manual to get a chance of understanding how things work. Oh, and purchase all 3 supplemental characters first if you want to have a chance to get at least one in your adventurers, as once you get adventurers, it's for life. Oh, and Chime is cool, but every time she appears, I am getting near 2FPS now! Sad. Very sad.
I'm still playing the game, am at day 80, had to start the game back again after a white mage debacle at start, am getting less and less happy with these details, but I'm still playing the game. It's as fun this game would've been with a better balance.
You want my opinion? As a game developer myself, I think the WiiWare launch deadline meant the game was rushed and no one really took the time to balance it properly. Focus groups, anyone? Hence the 6/10.
Intéressés à m'aider? 
