Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles

[Nester the Lark]

Here is another interview on The Crystal Bearers with producer Akitoshi Kawazu.

In this one, he admits that when he first saw Grand Theft Auto III, he wanted to do a Final Fantasy game in that style. He also mentions that he intends to make sequels to the story of The Crystal Bearers.

[Da Robot]

This game just keeps sounding awesome, nice to see a Japanese take on the sandbox game.

[Da Robot]

MLaaDL has been rated E10+ by the ESRB for deep cleavage . . .


Content descriptors: Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes

Rating summary: "This is a strategy role-playing game (RPG) in which players add floors to a tower and fill it with defenses and monsters. Players' objective is to keep several waves of humanoid invaders from reaching the top of the tower. Invading units and the defending monsters engage in turn-based battle with swords, magic spells, daggers, and arrows. If the humanoid invaders inflict enough damage to a floor, the screen will shake, a red alert will sound, and the tower will explode into several pieces. During Story Mode cutscenes,
characters will often engage in dialogue and sometimes attack each other with flying drop kicks and electric bolts. Some of the female characters have exaggerated-size breasts or wear clothing that exposes deep cleavage."

[Nester the Lark]

^ Maybe a more appropriate descriptor would be "Warning: Contains a character who resembles Alaska Governor Sarah Palin." I think kids would find that more traumatizing.


(Couldn't resist. )

Anyway, here's a fairly lengthy interview with Akitoshi Kawazu about The Crystal Bearers.

Points of interest:

• Kawazu implies that the game did come close to being cancelled.
  
• Kumi Tanioka is not handling the musical score in this game (the first time she hasn't scored a CC game), but she is contributing a song, and there will be rearrangements of music from earlier games.
  
• The original GameCube game was created at the request of Hiroshi Yamauchi.
  
• Kawazu says it feels like his "duty" to keep the Crystal Chronicles games on Nintendo platforms, but with Square-Enix increasingly going multi-platform, he can't say it'll stay that way.

[Nester the Lark]

The official North American site for My Life as a Darklord has been updated. It now has some gameplay details and a new trailer (unless it's an old trailer I've forgotten about).

I guess the Darklord's name will stay "Mira" for the English version, instead of "Miss" as previously stated.

[Nester the Lark]

Triple strike! 300 damage!

Here's an article+interview from RPGamer about The Crystal Bearers.

It confirms that Stiltskin is in the game, and is the only "returning" character from other games.

Kawazu also mentions that Layle will be able to go fishing using the Wii Remote. Does this game sound more and more like a Zelda-killer or what?

[Nester the Lark]

Quadruple Combo! 422 Damage!

Here's an article about My Life as a Darklord at Dengeki Online.

It looks like you'll have to fight Chime, Hugh Yurg, and King Leo from My Life as a King. It also seems that you can change Mira's outfit to be either all light or all dark instead of half-and-half.

Now that the game is out in Japan, I wonder when it well finally get released in North America.

[Nester the Lark]

5-hit chain! 5036 damage! Level up!

According to Siliconera, My Life as a Darklord does, indeed, have DLC. The extra items include weapons, spells, monsters, traps, artifacts and new outfits for Mira. All extra content costs 100 Nintendo Points each, except for Mira's outfits, which are 200 NP. (What a rip!)

In total, the core game at 1000 NP plus all DLC comes to 2200 NP. That's actually not too bad compared to My Life as a King, where the core game was 1500 NP and all extra DLC came to as much as 3800, but perhaps there's yet more on the way for Darklord.

[Da Robot]

Finally some new info so I can perform a combo breaker!

Here's some footage.



Interestingly enough Joystiq says "heroes storm your tower, you delay their progress by adding floors to the structure and filling them with monsters. The strategy comes not only from managing your resources enough to build as many floors as you can, but also in placing things so that there isn't too much stuff on one floor. If there is, the heroes can just skip over a floor!"



Also gotta love this quote from the RPGamer interview Nester posted.

RPGamer: All previous games in the Crystal Chronicles series tried to emphasize a theme, for example the Ring of Fates on the DS had a theme of Fraternal Love. What is this game's primary theme?

Kawazu:(After a slight pause) Super Heroics with refreshing gameplay.


EDIT: 2nd Japanese trailer for MLaaDL, shows that the Mira can wear a bikin. King Leo can be seen fighting in the tower (1:30)

Footage of Famitsu columnist and J-Pop singer Mari Yaguchi (don't worry I'm never heard of her either) plays MLaaDL (video is 10 minutes long and in Japanese). Appears that you only need the Wii Remote to play the game with. Personally I don't see much point in watching the video, I watched 3 minutes and stopped.


Here's the Nintendo Channel TCB interview.

[Nester the Lark]

There's currently a contest at the official US site for The Crystal Bearers. The winner gets two tickets to this year's Tokyo Game Show, four nights at a hotel, a chance to meet the development team, a Wii console, and a finished copy of the game autographed by the dev team.

As far as I know, this contest is only available in the US, tho.

[Da Robot]

Jul 6, 2009 16:03:25 GMT -5 Nester the Lark said:

There's currently a contest at the official US site for The Crystal Bearers. The winner gets two tickets to this year's Tokyo Game Show, four nights at a hotel, a chance to meet the development team, a Wii console, and a finished copy of the game autographed by the dev team.

As far as I know, this contest is only available in the US, tho.

And it excludes people living in New York or Florida for some reason . . .


It also appears that you can now pre-order TCB from Amazon and Gamestop. While the game specs states that it has 2 player co-op in special areas of the game.


EDIT: European release date for MLaaDL has been revealed to be July 17th (next Friday!)

Source.

[Nester the Lark]

According to andriasang.com, yet more DLC has been released for My Life as a Darklord.

Among the usual items and monsters is a "stage pack" for 500 Points that adds 15 new stages to the game, but you can only purchase it if you have finished the main campaign.

Also, for 200 Points, you can dress up Mira in Sherlotta's outfit from Echoes of Time.

[Da Robot]

The newest Nintendo Power has features a TCB cover and article. Here's the page from the preview article.



(45 degree angle titles FTW!)

First page (artwork)
Second page (article)



EDIT: Realised this is my 2300 post!

[Da Robot]

Crystal Bearers has also been confirmed to be released in Europe this winter according to info from this video that not in english.


Also some important notes from the NP article.

"Nintendo Power recently had a chance to delve even deeper into the world of The Crystal Bearers, and after spending a few hours there, we have no qualms declaring that this is one of the most exciting Final Fantasy games in ages."

Elements of rascism?
"In an event known as the Great War, the Lilties destroyed the Yuke Crystal, apparently wiping the Yukes from existence. The Lilties enjoyed newfound prosperity, became the world’s dominant race, and ushered in a new age of science and reason. Lower on the social ladder are the Clavats, who mostly live as peaceful farmers or servants, and the Selkies, who have become a class of carefree outlaws who tend to rebel against Lilty rule. Though the world is now more or less at peace, there are underlying themes of racial oppression and genocide—not exactly lighthearted stuff." - Nintendo Power

NP actually gave TCB the award for "best of show" at E3 (even appears on TCB website).

Also NeoGAF turned the first page (without text) into wallpaper if you want it.




Finally TCB website has updated with new "world" info and character info and images for Keiss and Belle.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's a new Japanese trailer for The Crystal Bearers that shows off the stuff you can do with Layle's telekinetic powers.



It seems you can use the attacks of enemies you capture...