Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles has pretty much become the brand for anything that Square feels is a bit too experimental to be Final Fantasy, but knows they’ll sell 10 times as many copies if it’s called Final Fantasy. The “My Life as a …” series starts with this game, and continues with the upcoming “My Life as a Darklord”. The game came out shortly after the launch of Nintendo’s WiiWare service, and as far I as know is the first to offer downloadable content for the service.
The game revolves around a young king and his two advisors who have been on a long journey after their kingdom was destroyed. They end up in a deserted kingdom and decide to take up residence there and rebuild. As the king your job is to build up to town and keep the citizens happy.
My Life as a King is a simulation game. You simply build the town and manage the kingdoms resources, and send out your citizens to do the hard work. What’s interesting about it is the interface. You move around the town like a standard game and choose where to build stuff by stepping onto the build site and bringing up the build menu. You also increase moral by going around and talking to the citizens and seeing what you can do to make their lives better. It’s a more intimate interface than the typical birds eye view that most sim games go with.
To build buildings you need materials that can only be found in dungeons outside the town. To get these materials you have to hire adventurers to go out explore the dungeons and defeat the bosses. To hire adventures you need currency, which is provided from your citizens through taxes. It’s a careful balance of getting enough citizens in town to pay for your resource collecting. You can also build weapon and armor shops to outfit your adventurers. You can invest in these shops so that they can produce better weapons/armor.
The game is also not very difficult. Most sim games if you don’t micromanage well enough, you lose within an hour. This game is much more forgiving. It moves at a slower pace and allows you to take your time. If a dungeon is too difficult for your heroes to clear, you can simply take a couple days to have them gain experience and level up.
Finally the game is incredibly addictive, once you get going it’s tough to stop. The fact that there’s no good place to stop and save only adds to this. The days go by very fast, and the game auto saves after every day, so you can quit at any time and start off at the beginning of the current day. But that’s not a great time to quit. The best time would be in the middle of a day after you’ve done your typical morning duties. After each day, you’ll be eager to spend the new resources that came in so quitting isn’t easy.
I recommend this game to fans of the other Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle games, only because it’s similar in feel. And to any gamer who likes sim games, but find them too tough and want a slower paced one.
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