A lot of Cube gamers were pleasantly surprised when Square Enix announced a GameCube exclusive Final Fantasy game. But the surprises didn't end there. Next came the first screenshots. The style of the shots was a far cry from the realistic futuristic Final Fantasy games on the PS and PS2, Crystal Chronicles has deformed cute characters like the old Final Fantasy games. After that, it was announced that Crystal Chronicles was going to be a real-time action RPG, supporting up to four players. People immediately thought of Secret of Mana on the SNES and hoped Square would bring that title's gameplay back to a Nintendo console. Lately though, the surprises have stopped coming and other game announcements occupied RPG gamers, so the Final Fantasy craze died down a little. But for us gaming press people, Square Enix had another surprise coming. We got to play Crystal Chronicles at the E3 Games Preview day, and a pleasant surprise it was…

Let's start of by saying Crystal Chronicles does not play exactly like Secret of Mana. The Mana games are a lot less real-time compared to Crystal Chronicles, because of all the menus you have to use for spells, equipment and stats. Mana fans don't have to weep now though; Square Enix will also release a nice little game called Sword of Mana on the GBA. Crystal Chronicles is geared towards multiplayer cooperation, and in multiplayer games it's pretty frustrating to wait while one of your buddies is checking his experience points and magic levels. Square Enix solved this by having everybody use a GBA as a controller and moving all the menus to the GBA screen. When you're going through the menus, your character automatically walks along with the rest of the group. The downside to this is that everybody needs a GBA to play along, but the idea of keeping the TV menu less works very good and keeps the game's pace at the same speed all the time.

The story of Crystal Chronicles is kept simple compared to the epic Final Fantasy stories on the PS and PS2. The world is troubled by a terrible plague, which can only be kept at distance by a blessed crystal. This crystal has to be fed with Mirula droplets or it loses its power. Every year the Crystal Caravan sets out to get new droplets and as you probably already guessed, you and your teammates are that caravan this year. By carrying along a crystal, your party can travel unharmed by the plague. You have to stay close to the crystal though (in the same screen), and the crystal doesn't move by itself, one of the players has to carry it. This works really well, the party automatically has a leader who decides the path, so there's no running ahead of the rest to get all the gold like in Diablo-like multiplayer RPG games. When you encounter monsters, the crystal carrier can drop it on the ground to fight along with the rest, so you don't have to worry about getting the boring crystal carrying job in your party.

The four player version we played at the preview day didn't require a GBA to play yet, we had to play it using regular Cube controllers. The controls are extremely simple, since you will play it on a GBA. With the B button you pick up and drop things (the crystal for instance) and the A button is the action button. With L and R you can choose what action A performs. This means attacks and spells all done by pressing A. Most of the A-button actions have to be charged. You just hold A until you get a circle around you, move the circle to where you want the action to be performed and release A. If you want to do a heal spell, charge and aim the circle over yourself or a teammate, if you want a thunder spell, charge and aim it over an enemy. If you get attacked before you release A, the charging stops, giving the spell casting a tactical element. Attacks don't have to be charged, but can be for more effective hits. This brings back memories to Secret of Mana, where bashing the attack button also was a very bad way of getting through the game. Every enemy you kill leaves orbs, which you can pick up and use to create new spells, but we couldn't test this feature since the spell making is done on your GBA screen. The charging system takes a little time to get used to but works great, it really sets the game apart from Gauntlet-like RPG-ish fighting games. Just like in Secret of Mana, the best strategy is to avoid enemies while charging and attacking them with charged combos.

The short three level demo we played looked very nice. The cute manga style really comes out great on the Cube (yeah yeah I know, kiddy, whatever), your characters and the enemies look nice and detailed. What's best about the graphics is that everything really fits together. The enemies never look out of place in the colourful surroundings and there are no menus distracting you from the fantasy world. We hope this game will be as good as it looks to be now. With the European release date set in time for Christmas, this would be a great game to play beside the fireplace (now possible thanks to the GBA SP) with a few friends.