3-24-2009		1-29-2009
	3-27-2009		-

A wonderful event. A 16th birthday, a day where you come of age. All of the village has come to rejoyce. You are sent into the forest to claim the crystal, showing your passage. When you return you find that Eryll has been taken ill with the Crystal Disease. It is now up to you to venture to the outside world, and locate a cure for your friend, before it is too late.

You would think, with the Luke-warm or down right hate for this series, they would have given up by now. But Square went ahead and tried again to bring a fantastic Crystal Chronicles title out. Though echoes of Time is certainly not that spectacle of the main series titles, it certainly has a step in the right direction. One of the biggest problems with the Echoes of Time, released for the Wii and DS is it is certainly meant and done for multi-player function, with little in the means of playing it alone. Definitely gone are the days of I fight and you fight. Everything is poised for you and your friends to have a slamming good time. Even if you are trying to play it on your own.
Graphically you have a very nice game to play. Though the sprites are similar to the DS Final Fantasy III and VI, they certainly are brighter, and done a little better. And even the sprites are not all that add to the graphical appeal to the game. When your character equips something, it will show in the game. Basically, if you put on a Red Jacket, it shows you wearing this jacket in the game. This is a neat, almost missed addition, that almost every other type of game is still missing out on. Another good step in keeping the game fresh is the wide variation of settings and items. Though there are some of the standard pallet-swapped items and enemies (Something we all wish Square would eliminate), this is in fact a very minor happening. There is a whole variety of places and things, that keep the game interesting for hours.
Sadly, in a complete departure from Final Fantasy, the scoring of the game is....well....it just sucks. There is no great fun scoring, no epic sounds, and very little dialogue. You could actually do better turning the volume off, and listen to a CD or the radio instead. That is something, I do not think I have been able to say this about a Final Fantasy title, but this one it was true. I spent more time with my earphones on listening to the radio while playing. That being said, the scoring of the game was really the only truly bad spot for Echoes of Time.
The other issue with Echoes of Time is its storyline. One of the things that Final Fantasy games have come to be known for is their emphasis on telling a epic story. The story of Echoes of Time is more like a black eye on the face of Final Fantasy. It is boring and generic at best, with even the lacking story of Mystic Quest topping it. It is a tripe of overly long and worthless dialogue that just goes on and on. This can easily take away from the experience of the game, and may turn a few people off of it. If you want the enthralling edge of your seat tales of the main series, perhaps you should go play one of them, because Echoes of Time is severely lacking one of these.
But for gameplay, and puzzles, this is where the game shines well. Though it starts out easy enough, Echoes does gradually increase the difficulty and thus makes for a more challenging down right fun game. With your friends, you could not ask for a better co-op RPG. It certainly has the ability to play alone, though some puzzles get really hard this way. It has the basic hack and slash button pressing, thus there is no intricate ATB to learn, or abilities to try and master that are difficult. But if you think you can fly right through into fighting, guess again. Skipping the dialogue will, more times than not, leave you without knowing what to do next. (You know similar to that Infinite Undiscovery game) So there is some reason to sit through the very long dialogue...just make sure you have phones with music or something on.
Overall, this is one fo the turning points in this series. It is not great, similar to the ones before it, that being said it has the right idea of where to push the series. With the release of My Life as a Darklord, and My Life as a King, it seems they are getting around to making this a good series. Now if only they can make it great!