"Addicting game, despite niche audience appeal"

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as King is a unique blend of city-building, fantasy, and role playing genres in a tight, downloadable package from Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel.

A note of caution before the main points: What makes the game special, and what attention must be called to, is how it blends elements of different genres together in a cohesive experience- Looking at it and expecting a pure RPG as in past Final Fantasy games, or for a realistic castle/city-building simulator, is a set-up for disappointment. It is a fantasy game that uses RPG and simulation genre game-play devices to advance an (albeit short) story. If it were a through-and-through simulation, there wouldn't be any magic spells, races with birdlike arms and legs, or any of the stuff that is part of the Final Fantasy and Crystal Chronicles universe. You wouldn't be 10 years old, and then they would have to introduce more micromanaging elements to make it more worthy of being a true simulation. If you're looking for a real castle sim, try Stronghold. If you're looking for a unique game that uses elements from everyone's favorite fantasy world, you're in the right place. This is why I say it has a niche audience appeal.

That warning out of the way, the gist of how the game works is like this: You are the 10-year-old king thrust into power by the disappearance of your father and the original kingdom you came from. You, escorted by your up-bringer and chancellor Chime, and former captain of the guard Sir Hugh Yurg, finally arrive at the site of the lost kingdom, now just an empty castle and grounds. Given a magic power by the crystal that once protected the kingdom, you must construct houses and buildings to rebuild the kingdom, commission adventurers to work for you, and issue royal behests to them to rid the region of monsters and determine what happened to your father and the old kingdom and prevent a repeat of history. Day by day, gathering resources and collecting taxes from the adventurers, you will restore the lost kingdom to its former glory.

My Life as a King's strengths come from its quick, pick-up-and-play pacing. While a game from beginning to end can last anywhere from 10-30 hours (or more), one "day" in the game doesn't take very long, and yet - particularly later in your kingdom's development - you have many things to do. Then, at the end of the day, the game is saved automatically, and you can just power off or gear up for the next day. Chances are, you'll want to do the latter, however. The game can become very addicting as you prepare your adventurers for that big boss or unlock that new building you need to improve your city's services.

There is just enough of every genre to make the game interesting. You still have traditional RPG battles, but this time around, you are the one telling people to go on quests, instead of being the ones that are told to do so, and thus you only have their account of what happened. Continuing in the RPG vein, an important task you have as king is to keep the spirits of the people high. You do this by talking to them in traditional RPG dialog. In the process of talking to them, you'll both raise their morale, and learn more about the people's past, the kingdom's history, and your adventurer's activities. There is a surprising amount of dialog, and while after a while some things get repeated, it takes a while for the talking to get old.

The city-building, while not especially complex, has a fair number of things the player must consider. Each house you build will recall a prospective adventurer. Depending on what other buildings are nearby, such as a warrior's training hall or a school for black mages, the adventurer's stats will be influenced, lending them to act better in specific roles. Shops and other services must be placed strategically to minimize the amount of time adventurers spend equipping themselves and preparing for an outing. There are a variety of strategies the player can employ to build a successful city.

The game does have a few noticeable problems, however. These fall into two main areas, performance issues, and things players may have been expecting to see that are not there. I'll go over the main gripes now:

1. Regardless of the difficulty level, the game is extremely forgiving. You can't truly fail, although you can create a situation that will cause you to take extra days to get out of, thus lowering your overall rating at the end. This isn't completely a bad thing, but people are used to S-E games being fairly difficult. In other words, there isn't a wide enough gap between what happens when you're doing well and what happens when you're not.

2. Other than being surrounded by dungeons full of monsters, there seem to be few other problems in the world. Everyone is totally 100% loyal to you unless you are a total slave driver in which case they still listen to you but always fail to complete the task. There is a minimum of things such as crime (Your adventurers can steal stuff from people's houses when searching for things, but despite this they include their actions in their report and get off without a hitch; There is a traveling merchant that can appear when you build the inn that supposedly pick-pockets her customers, but it is unclear if she actually steals money from anyone- and you can't kick her out short of tearing down the inn). To make a long paragraph short, the world seems a little too "perfect" at times.

3. At the height of the day, when your city is almost fully developed, the frame-rate can get rather low at times, especially with the birds-eye-view function.

The story, while brief, is touching, and it makes sense to players of the other two games. People bored of walking into towns in RPGs and being told by some NPC "Go fetch this for me" or "Go kill that monster that killed my family" will almost surely feel some smug satisfaction in the turning of the tables, ordering adventurers to do your bidding.

That leaves the sensory elements. The game's sound track, while consisting of very short tracks to save space (You have to give some credit here- They definitely crammed a lot into a game that apparently takes less than 50MB of space in your Wii System Memory), are very nicely done. The main town theme, starts out slow and serene when you start out, and then instruments are added and the mood grows more upbeat as your town grows from a settlement to a town, to a city, to a kingdom, an empire, and beyond- Much in the same fashion as the music changes in the SNES version of Sim City. The cut-scenes are well done and effective. The graphics, while not especially complex are well done and fit the Crystal Chronicles visual style. Important events all have distinct audio cues.

The DLC: The DLC content, while not necessary to enjoy the game, adds some more depth and variety to your town, and also potentially extends the length of time any one play-through will take. If you enjoy the game at all, you will probably find it worthwhile to download. People considering gifting the game to a friend should take note that it appears the DLC content can't be gifted.

So I rate the game as follows:

Game-play: 8.5/10 There are a few things that could have been added to improve the simulation aspect of the game; however their absence does not heavily detract from the game, as it is still very fun if you like to be the guy in charge.

Graphics and sound: 8.5/10 The music selections are brief but high-quality, all sound effects effectively convey the in-game goings-on. Nice graphics (for the wii) that fit the Crystal Chronicles theme.

Technical: 7.5/10 Game is virtually bug-free. Only problems are noticeable frame-rate decline late in the city's development (Especially on bird's-eye view) and inability to gift DLC content. The frame-rate problems are the bulk of what takes away from this score.

Replay value: 9/10 As long as you enjoyed the first time, you'll keep coming back. This game is almost as addictive as Tetris.

My overall impressions are that it's not a perfect game, but as long as you can appreciate the way the game blends different genres, you'll find more fun and replay-ability in this game than you will in many games costing 2-3 times as much. It's definitely a great value. Genre-blending games generally appeal to a niche audience. That applies to this game too, but I think this game is capable of reaching outside of whom you'd expect. You're either going to love this game or hate it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/22/08