ohhh baby one my fav games (maybe my favourite game ever?) is getting a remaster! after all this time it’s finally here!
i love crystal chronicles with all of my heart. i think it’s maybe the only game i have finished more than once, and definitely the game i have started the most times. i have the strategy guide, the soundtrack, 5 gba-to-gamecube adapters and two gamecubes almost exclusively for this game.
i am ready to be hugely conflicted abt this remaster; delicious HD grafix on the one hand, and the totally unnecessary addition of voice-acting and action-chirps on the other. no local multiplayer, but only one player needs to own the game for a party of four to play the whole campaign! across multiple platforms! wow! (how is this going to run on a phone???)
midnight has struck. the download has commenced. 5 gigabytes (and 8 hours of sleep) later and i will finally have my hands on the game i have dreamed of for so long. are there any other selectbutts who have loved this game in the past or are interested in it now? please join me in this journey that is sure to leave me feeling some kind of way.
I went through all the effort of wrangling up a full house of GBAs and link cables for this back in the day and we ended up putting it down, disappointed, after only an hour or so. Ever since I chalked it up to a failed gimmick and nothing more.
i’ve been really looking forward to this too! i’ve placed my preorder!!! i heard you can turn the voice acting off!!!
there’s some troubling news about multiplayer, though-- it sounds like you group up for the actual dungeon run and then split up after, and only the host gets the myyrrhh drop progression… so if you were going to play through the whole game with a group, it sounds like you’d have to trade off hosts and do each dungeon x times as you go. don’t really understand how that interacts with the free version, either. or hey, maybe i’m just missing some details, i don’t know
I was in favor of this, but I was hoping the release was still a few months away. Switch is also the only platform I’m subscribed to the multiplayer service for, but my Switch storage is overloaded… probably gonna have to hold off on this for at least a little bit.
I’ve still got the original game, my GameCube, my original flavor non-backlit GBA, and probably the memory card, but I haven’t seen my link cables in ages. Getting four GBA Lites was one of those idle “might be nice someday” plans that kind of fell by the wayside over the years.
When we were first playing this at my friend’s house, we switched off between FFCC and Zelda Four Swords. I preferred Zelda at the time, but in retrospect, there’s no question that FFCC is both the deeper game and more appropriate to the local multiplayer format. I’m kind of dreading how the remake will change the atmosphere just from its different structure.
Interesting, I’d love to hear the case for this. It’s clearly the more expensive and lush game, but I think Four Swords is a lot more clever and has a better understanding of co-op mischief.
I find it interesting that everyone’s talking about the multi. My knowledge of this game comes entirely from having lived with Dogs and watching them play it a bunch. It seems like a great, complete single player game to me!
it happens like .01% of the time but I see and start yelling madly that this semi-modern piece of hardware cannot properly recreate a 17 year old game
on the other hand, since they kept the controls the same (side note: they kept the controls the same?!), you can plug in a Gamecube controller and it maps as it did in the original
I have a weird relationship with this game, seeing as I’ve only ever played it solo
objectively speaking, I don’t think it’s all that great and, honestly, the lack of quality-of-life improvements in the remaster bring my mind back to all the little things I hate
but I really like the game? I mean, I own two copies of it already (JP and NA) and playing it, the pacing is
it’s like sitting down on a sleepy Sunday morning and savoring a bowl of oatmeal. it’s very lackadaisical and relaxing. I don’t want to rush through it, I just want to chill out in it
it is still very good when played solo, but it’s kinda hard to compare it to the co-op experience because you really can’t beat that feeling of accomplishing something with someone else. one of my warmest memories is of beating the marsh level w my ex. we fought and died to the boss abt 5 or 6 times before we beat it. and it required so much coordination of spells and attention to do so (we were deliberately taking on that level a little too early in the game) and we were both so tired but hyped at our own success when we finally did it, and u just can’t get that from solo play. but that hasn’t stopped me from beating the game twice in solo, and it felt good and satisfying each time.
oh yeah anyone who wants to play online just drop your profile number (there’s like, a 12-digit number in the online menu?) and your region and i’ll plonk u in the OP. (i have work now but i’ll add mine once i’m done w that)
i’ll share my stuff when i’m back home, but yeah, i’m curious about this game. this modern update feels like it may be the version of the game i’d always wanted.
i’ve never actually played this but i’m wondering if i should now. diggin the music and costume designs. always down to play an ff. esp if it’s the kind of game where i can explore, go at my own pace, and play alone for long periods if i need to. i have a friend who played the original version and liked it a lot. he also has gripes ab that lack of multi-player. i think the only reason i got scrapped according to what i read in an article was that it’s on so many platforms.
it might be awhile before i can play because i’m decadent with media purchases enough as it is and anticipate being strapped for cash next month too but i don’t mind adding sb pple to my switch friend list!
Four Swordsis a beautiful chaos engine, and I respect the way they remixed The Zelda Formula in service of the tug-of-war between cooperation and competition that plays out in each stage. I may have some lingering frustration that I was unconsciously voicing with that “there’s no question” above. Monaco felt similarly—these games say “Explore for secrets!” but also “Unleash a wave of mayhem which you’ll need to race to the end of the level!”, and there’s not a great way to advance toward one those goals without deliberately failing at the other. I’ve never been able reconcile the games’ charms with my discomfort due to this tension. Both games offer multiplayer modes that make me want to play single-player instead (and vice versa).
Crystal Chronicle wants to be multiplayer foremost. Bucket duties, sharing loot, combo attacks, GBA integration: all this stuff is designed to support that decision. Several of those features can be used for mischief or abuse—“You always make me carry the bucket,” etc.—but I’d argue that such behaviors are a soft fail state for the game, like collecting as many lives as you can in a Mario game just so that you can run him into every koopa you encounter. You’re here to work together, and in order for that to be meaningful, you have to be able to fail at working together as well.
Did Square Enix go to a lot of trouble to reinvent a lopsided wheel? Is this just Baby’s First Diablo, or something of that sort? The deliberate pacing (making it harder to grind) and emphasis on repeating dungeons gives weight to that kind of argument. I’ve gone back and forth on this point, but I think it is a difference of kind rather than a difference of degree. I can’t fault someone for disagreeing, but I think such resemblances are ultimately superficial.
