E3 2009: Hands-on: Final Fantasy CC: The Crystal Bearers - News

by VGChartz Staff , posted on 03 July 2009 / 4,685 Views

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, besides being too long a title to fit in the headline, is also the somewhat mysterious Wii game from Square Enix which has been announced for a few years without much information or playing time to go along with it. The game has been kept in the dark for such long stretches of time that there were some rumors it had been outright canceled. It was surprising, then, that at E3 2009 Square Enix not only brought the title and had it shown off in trailer form at Nintendo's Media Briefing, but also had it available for a lengthy playable demo on the show floor at both their own booth and at Nintendo's booth.

Unlike previous entries in the Crystal Chronicles spin-off franchise, The Crystal Bearers is more focused on single-player action, though Square Enix still fancies it to be more of an "Action-Adventure" than a traditional RPG. The story takes place a full thousand years after previous entries in the series, where the Yuke's have been wiped out and the Lilties have led the world in technological advancement and now hold all the power.

You play Layle, one of the Crystal Bearers from which the game's title gets its name. The Crystal within Layle gives him special magical powers, a no-no in a world now based on technology, and like all Crystal Bearers he is shunned and ostracized by most of society.

The demo starts with Layle playing the mercenary and guarding a Lilty passenger airship, The Alexis - the foremost symbol of the race's current dominance. Of course, the airship is soon attacked by a horde of flying vulture-like monsters and the airship's power source is stolen, leading into the first action sequence while the airship goes into free-fall. Layle can use the crystal as a kind of energy manipulator, creating forcefields and pulling objects to or away from him, so he immediately jumps off the airship and falls through the sky. He'll grab a machine gun with his powers and you then use the Wii Remote's pointer to shoot down the monsters with it - simple, but fun.

Eventually the monsters are gone and you're left with a confrontation with a character whom Layle refers to as "Goldenrod", though it's actually a member of the thought-to-be-extinct race, the Yukes. Eventually Goldenrod gets away, though Layle ends up with some kind of crystal and behind the wheel of the airship as he attempts to steer it to a "safe" crash landing while using his powers to hold it aloft. Thus starts the second action sequence, with the player using the Nunchuk's analog stick to steer through a twisting canyon. The airship is a bit slow to respond, and I was crashing into the walls plenty early on, but you do get used to it after a little while. The decision to use the analog stick to steer instead of the motion controls is a bit of an odd one, however, particularly with how frequently they're used elsewhere.

Soon you find yourself in a city, offered a reward to go hunt down Goldenrod, and given your first opportunity to fully control Layle yourself as you run around. The city is pretty large, with lots of characters milling about, but there's not much interaction in the demo - characters will have little dialogue bubbles appear over their head sometimes, but they won't talk to you directly. You can, however, point at them, lock onto them with the A button to encase them in an energy bubble, and throw them around or pick them up and carry them. It's silly fun but this power does have a puzzle-solving purpose later on, manipulating some environmental elements to get a train running and catching a little girl's cat, and the physics involved is suprisingly realistic.

Progress the demo far enough and you'll get chased out of the city by a bunch of soldiers, and eventually onto a wagon hitched to a Chocobo, leading to the third action sequence. Here Layle is sitting in the back of the wagon while your Selkie companion drives, and you'll use your powers to fend off the Chocobo Knights chasing you down. As with the townspeople, you can point, lock on after a few seconds, and fling them away. You can also use some parts of the environment to your advantage, bringing down trees, pillars, and bridges to hamper the soldiers. If you let one of the soldiers catch up to you, Layle will grab onto its spear and you'll enter a waggle contest to throw the soldier off his chocobo.

The demo ends rather dramatically, as just after you've gotten away from the soldiers you come rather suddenly upon a cliff. Of course, intent on getting away, you're now moving too quickly to stop in time. Fortunately Layle is rather handy and uses his powers to stop the wagon's fall - but not his own. And there the demo fades to black.

The gameplay is a fun mix of different activities, even if there wasn't any real combat or much character interaction to show off yet. The presentation itself was pretty stellar, with high-quality in-game graphics (particularly the character models and the large, open environments), well-scripted in-game cut scenes, and some of the best English-language voice acting I've heard on the system to date. Layle himself looks a bit like the main character from Final Fantasy X, and while he has the arrogance he loses the whininess (thankfully).

The fact sheet claims that the player will be free to explore anywhere you can see, including swimming and climbing. There's also a second-player "assist" mode, which (and I can only guess) I assume is similar to the second-player mode in Super Mario Galaxy, with someone picking up another Wii Remote for extra help with the IR pointer.

The Crystal Bearers is, according to the PR rep, nearing completion and tentatively set to release in late 2009/early 2010 (most likely the latter outside of Japan). If the rest of game is as fun and high-quality as the 20-minute demo, then it will definitely be worth the wait for Wii owners.

Check out the E3 trailer:

15 Comments

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fatbot2112 (on 11 July 2009)

I wish I was a bearer.

TX109 (on 06 July 2009)

sooooooo when does this release?

NeoStar9 (on 06 July 2009)

I hope you are able to attack some other way then the bubble encasing powers or that's going to get boring really quick I think.

Mad55 (on 05 July 2009)

cool, cant wait.

thekitchensink (on 04 July 2009)

@Onimusha: Um... Capcom? Seriously? This is Final Fantasy we're talking about here...

This preview actually makes me very excited for the game--I want more Japanese adventures that focus on the action instead of leveling up, grinding, etc.

outlawauron (on 04 July 2009)

This isn't Capcom Onimusha.

Onimusha12 (on 04 July 2009)

I can't say I'm a huge Crystal Chronicles fan but I'm glad to see the nature of the franchise allows for Capcom to do alot more experimentation with the series.