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Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
Back to reviewsGame Reviewed: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Game Designers Studio
Reviewer: Clint West
Platform: Wii
Category: Action/RPG
ESRB Rating: T
Game Description
The
game starts with a simple escort mission.
Layle, our hero, and Keiss are on an escort mission for the airship
Alexis. It appears it will be a simple,
boring mission, when suddenly dragons attack the airship. Layle quickly grabs a giant gun and leaps off
of his escort craft, blasting dragons, until he lands on the Alexis. There he meets up with Jegran, the military
commander of the Lilty kingdom, the main ruling party of the world, and Belle,
a member of the Selkie race. Belle is a photographer who has apparently just
taken some photos she should not have taken.
After
some banter, a portal opens on the deck of the Alexis and a hand pokes
out. Layle uses his powers, the ability
to pick up and move objects, to pull the hand and what is behind it out of the portal. A Yuke, a race long thought to be extinct,
drops to the deck of the Alexis. Layle
and the Yuke battle, neither getting the upper hand and the Yuke escapes on the
back of a dragon.
What
follows is a story that exposes the longstanding prejudices and hate between
the four main races of the world. It is
a tale of corruption within the ruling kingdom and of those who are willing to
fight for the rights of others no matter the consequences.
What Parents Should Know
Violence
-
This game is played from a third person point of view; there is lots of
punching, kicking, and swordplay combat.
- Layle's
main form of attacking enemies is levitating objects and throwing them. He can also levitate enemies and thrown them
at other enemies. Some enemies explode
in a fireball when defeated.
-
Other forms of violence in the game include: A floating platform that is
destroyed by a dragon. An airship
crashes, other airships collide, and one is destroyed by a laser blast. A dragon is speared. An enemy shoots fire, burns trees and parts
of a building. A man is
disintegrated. A monster is conjured and
dropped on a man. A non-human character’s
head is knocked off and then reattached without the character dying. Several people are turned to crystal and
shattered in that form. A couple of
scenes have a person being punched, but the punch going through them without
being hurt because a portal opened in their body.
- All
combat is bloodless.
Language
I
encountered the word hell once and damn a small handful of times during the game's
story scenes. The main character Layle will also often say damn when in combat.
Sexual Content
Belle
wears a short skirt for most of the game.
A scene occurs in a women’s changing room, but nothing is seen besides
clothes dropping to the floor. There is a sequence at a beach themed area that
shows a number of women in bikinis with lots of cleavage. These women have a contest to knock each
other off of a floating platform by bumping their butts.
Spiritual Content
Crystal
bearers are said by some to use magic.
Resurrection of crystals is a theme.
A creation story is shared of the races of the world being created in
the image of crystals. There is an area
that is patterned after a monastery. A
letter received from a monastery speaks of all people being born in sin.
Reviewer’s Thoughts
Final
Fantasy Crystal Bearers definitely has some good food for thought in it. The game deals a lot with the issue of
racism. Also of positive note is that there are multiple characters that appear
at first glance to be very self-centered, but in the end are willing to
sacrifice things or even themselves for others.
Crystals,
however, play a prominent theme in the game as mentioned in the spiritual
content section. Also, the scene at the beach with the bikini clad women having
the butt bumping contest seemed a bit strange to me for a game of this nature as it was a bit out of place in
the flow of the game.