![]() It’s a little reminiscent of Zelda puzzles, with some puzzles requiring you melt ice, freeze water or electrify something with lightning, which is a nice touch – elemental magic rarely plays a role outside of combat in Final Fantasy. Magic returns, but now plays a much bigger role, with the elements you can command actually having an effect on the environment. Combat is real-time and requires you to get in close and hack at your enemies rather than select items from a menu. The founding ideas behind the Crystal Chronicles series are still firmly in place in this title, though. We however believe it was a wide decision, avoiding the shared-screen madness that damaged the original Crystal Chronicles title’s playability. There’s no local multiplayer on the Wii which could be construed as a bad thing. On the Wii the game’s two screens are spread out next to each other and can be quickly and easily sized and scaled so if you want one screen bigger than the other so you can focus it’s easily done with a few button presses. Despite that, multiplayer in Echoes of Time is very, very addictive and great fun if you can get a full party of four together to play, even more-so than the Gamecube original. The idea behind this is to create safe, fun online multiplayer without the need for voice chat, though we still feel voice chat (or true free-form text chat) does a lot to make games like this a whole lot more fun. The game also is Nintendo Wi-Fi connection enabled and has support for chat in a style reminiscent of Phantasy Star Online – you’re given access to many preset text options, and selecting one will send it to all players in whatever their home language is. This allows for four players in the room a little easier, with the Wii acting as a ‘hub’ for the other systems. ![]() One player can play on the Wii’s big screen and 3 more players with a DS and the game can hook in and play. The reasoning for this becomes clear when you see the multiplayer manifesto for the game, though. Transparency actually looks good, some textures are slightly smoother and models a little less jaggy, but on the whole scaling a game from the size and resolution of a DS screen all the way up to the size of a TV is clearly a mistake. On the Wii there are a few small improvements. On the DS the visuals are reminiscent of Square Enix’s other rather pretty attempts on the console like FF4 DS and Ring of Fates – sharp, nice textures, decent looking models and some really nice looking environments. Graphically the game is the same on both systems, which is good for the DS and not so good for the Wii. The art style and direction will look familiar for fans of the previous FF:CC games, and this is no bad thing, as the previous games - even Ring of Fates on the DS - have all been quite pretty. Presumably taking place in the same universe as the other FF: CC titles, the four races fans will now be familiar with return, all once again hosting a selection of unique abilities that players can choose to use. The crystals are wreaking havoc again, this time making people ill with what’s being called the "crystal sickness ". To its credit though, Echoes is the first wifi game i ever tried playing and it was a fun experience and a new one for me.Echoes of Time sees you play as another new character who has just celebrated his sixteenth birthday. I'm a single player guy though in general. The best way to progress is to work as a team. Dungeon design in Echoes is built for multiplayer though IMO. There's very little difference between the two besides a few tweaks here and there. Gameplay wise, they feel very much the same. I found Echoes less story driven overall and having better voices, but it was a far less interesting story since there was less to it. I just wish the characters weren't as annoying. The voice acting is horrible, but i did quite like the plot and how things unfold. Personally, i like the story in Ring of Fates much more. And if you have both options, just play both and decide which one appeals to you more. If you have friends locally or over wifi, Echoes of Time is the better game. If you're going solo in single player, Ring of Fates is better. Both are better in their own ways depending on how you're playing.
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