It's not that FFCCR is a bad remaster at all. Although superficial, it certainly adds a lot of things, like new rearranged music, new re-skinned harder dungeons, and a few other things. The fact is that even without these new additions, I would still get the game regardless. Still, I'm grateful that we get this game with all this new stuff. However, as they say, the devil is in theIt's not that FFCCR is a bad remaster at all. Although superficial, it certainly adds a lot of things, like new rearranged music, new re-skinned harder dungeons, and a few other things. The fact is that even without these new additions, I would still get the game regardless. Still, I'm grateful that we get this game with all this new stuff. However, as they say, the devil is in the details, and with the precision of an ice pick that pierces a big chunk of solid ice, little details are the demise of these chronicles. But let's not get too ahead, and let's talk about the new stuff before we get there.
The first thing you'll notice about this remaster is the HD graphics. The work fo the developers did in the Game Cube was outstanding in regards to art direction and visuals, and to find that they still hold up pretty well to this day is remarkable.
Back in the day when the original launched, I didn't have a sound system to enjoy the music as it should, but now that I have one, it was like falling in love with the same person all over again. As far as new music goes, I could only recall two new songs, and also every new dungeon has a rearranged song with different instruments or vocals. In some cases, I even prefer the new rearranged work. Usually, a remastered game doesn't have the luxury of having new songs but the fact that they went extra with one of the strong points of the original game it's pretty amazing.
When Square Enix first announced this game, they hinted that it will feature voice acting. I was hoping that it will have the option of hearing the Japanese voices, but as it seems for other important stuff, the voice acting was region-locked, so only Japanese audio for Japanese copies. I think the acting in FFCCR wasn't that bad; however, it wasn't that good either, so I turn off the VO.
The new dungeons are counterparts of the original ones, that means that 13 dungeons (not including the final dungeon) have a new skin. They also come with new re-skinned and re-sized enemies with more powerful attacks and swarms of them. They can present a real challenge, but unlike the original dungeons that increase their difficulty by each cycle you complete (capped at LVL 3), the new ones have a fixed difficulty. Although they're hard, once you complete them, there's not much reason to replay them because the spoils you get there are awkwardly sorted between them.
Given the number of enemies and difficulty, dungeons are meant to be played with at least two people. Which leads us to this remaster's main problem. The original game was a multiplayer game in its design, local multiplayer, to be precise.
Sadly, FFCCR doesn't build upon the multiplayer design of the original. It builds around its single-player. While it's not as bad as a lot of people say, it certainly is a different, more condensed, and sterile experience than what you get while playing multiplayer. Now, instead of being in the same caravan. You and your friends can only interact in dungeons, so a big part of the immersion is severed with this decision.
The main problem with this immersion-breaking decision it's more pronounced when doing dungeons together with friends. For some creative or technical desition, the only person that can get a Myrrh drop after beating a dungeon is the host, this means that for every one of us to complete a year playing together, we needed to play through 9 dungeons, and we could only choose from the exact pool of dungeons, so we ended repeating a lot of them over and over. The issue of advancing so slow through every year but getting stronger is that you overpower yourself too quickly, and it only makes your playtime more hollow and boring.
Clearly, playing together with friends was not the objective of the developers when making this remaster, because is easier to play at your own pace but one can only have so much fun playing with strangers, and because there are only preset messages that are very limited, to say the least, communication with other players isn't that fun. So more often than not, you'll be paired with people that maybe isn't on the same page as you in terms of how you want to proceed, attack, or navigate.
When everything's said and done, I have some fun playing this remaster with my friends, not in the way I would like and not even close to my experience with the original. Same with the NGC version it's hard to recommend this game and it feels like a huge missed opportunity, but if you played the original and liked it playing it solo I think this is the definitive version of that experience. But if you're looking for that game in regards to its multiplayer aspect, well, you better get some local friends and look on eBay for that GBA + cable link stuff.… Expand
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Remastered EditionYour Score0 out of 10User Score
