Wasteland 3 Review

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It's the early years of the 22nd century, and Hell has frozen over — at least, that is, if Colorado happens to be your idea of Hell. It certainly looks like it in Wasteland 3: Colorado Springs was spared the nuclear holocaust at the heart of Wasteland lore, but an unrelenting nuclear winter holds the entire Centennial State in its grip. Radiation oozes through mountain valleys. Killer clowns ravage the eastern plains. A cult that worships Ronald Reagan controls Colorado's oil supply. It's a distinctively bold setting for this lengthy and often challenging isometric RPG, and it improves on Wasteland 2 in almost every way.

If you prefer your post-apocalyptic landscapes filled with snow rather than sand, no worries: You don't need to play the hot and dusty Wasteland 2 to understand what's going on now. Here you play as a duo from Arizona's Desert Rangers, an Old-West-meets-sci-fi lawkeeping outfit whose base was destroyed at the end of Wasteland 2. The Rangers head to Colorado after a leader there offers Arizona vital aid in exchange for some help on his own turf, but the mission goes south when almost the entire Ranger company gets wiped out in an ambush. You play as the only two characters who survive, and you need to fulfill your mission with a severe disadvantage. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/wasteland-3-choice-and-consequence-behind-the-scenes"] After that, the story can go in substantially different directions. Wasteland 3 does a fantastic job of tying meaningful consequences to almost every choice, and it prepared me for about 60 hours of such decisions mere minutes in. If you, for instance, convince a hostage taker to let a Ranger go she'll run away and warn her friends, who'll set up and ambush and kill other innocents. Attack her and she'll kill the Ranger, meaning you’ll have one fewer recruit for your party, but you won't have an ambush ready for you. And that's just a small taste of the choices to come.

[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Wasteland%203%20does%20a%20fantastic%20job%20of%20tying%20meaningful%20consequences%20to%20almost%20every%20choice."]Later, Wasteland 3 forced me to decide between saving a family being attacked and saving a convoy of lawkeepers transporting some power armor for the Marshals faction. I chose the power armor, but I ended up wandering through the gutted remains of the family's home for a reminder that decisions have consequences. The power armor gave a nice reputation boost, but not without making me regret my decision a bit by hearing one of the Marshals say “these refugees aren't going to punch themselves.”

These often aren't easy choices, either, as everyone you meet in Colorado is kind of an asshole. They're written well enough that they left me puzzling over which degree and brand of assholery I could live with, and it's remarkably hard to avoid being corrupted by the sketchy business unfolding around you. Adding a kicker to that, I like that I rarely saw the effects of my choices quickly, and usually not until I was well past whatever pivotal save file I'd made for backtracking. Some don't even become apparent until the later hours and Wasteland 3's wide assortment of endings. It makes "gaming" the various factions essentially impossible. (And even if it didn't, the ridiculously long load times even on my SSD made me think thrice before going back to a previous save.)

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Sometimes these effects would catch me by surprise, as they did when I returned to a faction I liked and found them massacred in the wake of a seemingly throwaway decision I'd made. These moments can hit hard, partly thanks to the fact that Wasteland 3 looks significantly better than its predecessor. That’s especially true on the overworld map where the Kodiak -- your tanky weaponized vehicle -- plows through the frozen wastes between towns. Sometimes key characters get special up-close animations, allowing their personality to shine better than it does in general conversations in the usual isometric perspective. Fully voiced dialogue lines mean it sounds better, too, leading to memorably silly moments as when you meet a "Scottish" mechanic who learned his accent from watching a tape of Braveheart. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=The%20American%20political%20allegory%20sometimes%20feels%20a%20little%20too%20on%20the%20nose."]That's tame and cheesy by the standard of most of Wasteland 3's rough-edged and often bloody humor, much of which is wrapped in contemporary American political allegory about fascism, refugees, and a brutal police force that sometimes feels a little too on the nose. Deer splurt out a pond's worth of blood when you run over them with the Kodiak, and I once came across an old copy of Oliver North's "Under Fire" with "something viscous" dried on the pages. I chatted up a male prostitute called Jack Off Hearts and heard a confession of erectile dysfunction while strolling about Colorado Springs. Just in case, you know, you had some idea that Wasteland 3 was for kids. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="legacyId=20059522&captions=true"] All of the color commentary comes from NPCs you meet, because the two surviving Rangers you play as don’t have any personalities but the ones you create for them in your head. There are preset pairs of folks you can choose, like punk lovers and a father/daughter duo, that give a false impression that their relationship might have some real impact on the story. For the most part, they're as generic as any custom character you make yourself, which you might as well do because that way you can start off with "quirks" with big bonuses for one stat at the expense of others. Why two Rangers instead of one? The idea is that you can play Wasteland 3 in online co-op if you wish, although I didn't have a chance to do so as part of my first 55-hour playthrough. It sounds delightfully maddening, though, as either player can make decisions without the other one, which could have the nasty side effect of turning two factions hostile when you only mean to tick off one. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Many%20quests%20offer%20alternative%20methods%20of%20resolution%20if%20you%20have%20the%20right%20perks."]Having two Rangers around at all times also gives you some leeway for more skills, as Wasteland 3's gameplay hinges on six-person teams. It's best to keep these as well-rounded as possible instead of specializing everybody along a similar path, particularly since many quests offer alternative methods of resolution (or at least an advantage before combat begins). Having a character with the "Hard Ass" perk, for example, can let you skip otherwise inevitable fights with a few gruff words. "Kiss Ass?" You can sweet-talk your way out. Got a person with high-explosive expertise? You won't have to worry much about landmines. These options are so numerous, though, that I frequently found myself holding back from allocating points when I leveled so that I'd have some left over in case I needed to meet some requirements. It also made me more cautious about switching out team members for fresh recruits once I'd invested a ton of points into rounding out my squad. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-modern-rpgs&captions=true"] With the right skills, Wasteland 3 even lets you enlist animals ranging from tomcats to robot chickens to the cause, and some other usually uncontrollable NPCs will sometimes join up as well. These guys are great to have around because they tend to be heavy hitters, but they're also overly fond of rushing into danger because you can't control them. I lost a particularly good one because he ran into the rocket trajectory I had planned out, and I hated having to convince myself he was worth the sacrifice and to not reload my save. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=You%20can%20use%20your%20heavy%20hitters%20when%20you%20absolutely%20need%20them%20most."]Superficially, Wasteland 3's turn-based combat looks a lot like Wasteland 2's (or XCOM's, for that matter), and its emphasis on action points and flanking doesn't differ much from familiar tactical RPGs. A few changes, though, make it a heck of a lot more satisfying this time around. For one thing, the key change is that enemies and friendlies take turns as an entire team. Within a team, though, you're free to choose which order your characters fire in, even to the point of hopping back to a specific character after you've spent all the action points for another. This can be brutally punishing if you didn't get your squad members set behind cover before the fight begins and the entire enemy team gets a free shot, but it also means you can use your heavy hitters when you absolutely need them most. There's also a greater emphasis on environmental interaction this time around, ranging from simply blowing up explosive barrels to firing the big gun mounted on top of the Kodiak. It's especially satisfying to unleash precision attack abilities by building the strike meter after a few rounds of normal attacks, as these can turn the tide in seemingly hopeless battles. [poilib element="poll" parameters="id=bd4814ee-298a-4bc8-83b5-d0a9ebee5267"] And there are many such battles. Wasteland 3 is as tough as its Rangers, and it's overly fond of tossing you into overwhelming situations with little easy access to cover. It rewards careful thinking, though, such as making you find terminals that shut down deadly weapons or remember to bring along a few deployable turrets of your own for extra protection. Cool weapons spice it up, too, such as the Frozen Ferret Launcher (which is exactly what it sounds like). It's also relatively easy to revive downed team members, so total wipeouts weren't as common as I expected them to be when I was first learning the ropes of combat. When I needed an extra health boost in combat, the new shared inventory made it easier to find one. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=The%20Frozen%20Ferret%20Launcher%20is%20exactly%20what%20it%20sounds%20like."]When paired with Wasteland 3's humor and personality, the changes help keep the combat interesting, and that's a good thing because there's a lot of game here. Developer inXile Entertainment claimed there's around 80 hours of play here, and that's not far off the mark based on my experience. My main issues with Wasteland 3 have more to do with the interface and, to a lesser extent, performance. It definitely doesn't have as many bugs as its predecessor, but I'd still sometimes find myself having to restart because the "End Turn" button wouldn't work. Weirdly, framerates had a tendency to tank when the otherwise excellent and entertaining folksy songs that play over key battles kicked off. The map was a constant annoyance, as you can’t just click a point on the map to move the camera there and then right-click a spot for your team to travel to. Instead, you have to steer the camera to center it over to that spot. That was particularly maddening in towns like Colorado Springs and on maps I'd already completed and surprises no longer awaited. But maybe there's a reason for that. Surprises seem to lurk around every snowy corner of Wasteland 3, ranging from simple first aid caches to new NPCs who pop up at your base of operations. It's a world that invites exploration and rewards it, as many frozen bread crumbs lead to massive new chunks of an already massive story.

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Control: AWE Expansion Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out In the lead up to playing the AWE expansion for Control, I did a full playthrough of 2010’s Alan Wake so I could pick up on and fully appreciate the references that Remedy was bound to pack in as it connected its two weird sci-fi universes. While the short and sweet AWE may not be the full “Alan Wake Experience” that long-term fans were hoping for, it thrills for large portions with its exhilarating combat and trademark peculiarities. With fun additions to Jesse Faden’s arsenal and a brand-new area of the Oldest House to explore, there’s a great time to be had with Control’s second expansion while it lasts and plenty of knowledge to gain for fans of both Alan Wake and Control alike. The mysterious disembodied voice of long-missing novelist Alan Wake leads Jesse to the Investigations Sector of the Oldest House and she soon discovers why: Dr Emil Hartman, the sinister psychiatrist from Alan Wake, is roaming the corridors of the sector -- but not like you’ve ever seen him before. He now cuts the figure of a gangly eldritch horror made up of the unenviable combo of being consumed by the darkness and corrupted by the Hiss. His mutated form very much echoes the distinctively horror-themed tones to this expansion, erring much closer to the eerie elements of Alan Wake than the core Control storyline ever did. These main missions tell a fairly straightforward tale over the course of about three hours, but it’s one that had me wanting to know which turn was going to be taken next, especially as someone who’s such a big fan of Alan Wake’s story. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=control-awe-dlc-screenshot&captions=true"] This isn’t to say that AWE isn’t for Control fans who haven’t played Alan Wake, though. Yes, it provides a satisfying amount of extra detail and context to those wanting more Alan Wake in their lives, but it does so without ever alienating those who aren’t familiar. While the thriller writer himself may not appear as much as I’d wished for, there’s a healthy amount of extra reading to be done in the form of collectibles that expands on his old adventures in the town of Bright Falls. These range from interviews with residents to case files about Cauldron Lake and the Altered World Events that took place there. There’s also plenty that don’t relate to the events of Alan Wake, though, including more background information to be found out about the Bureau and some delightfully bizarre correspondence that frankly could only be found in Control. A favourite of mine being a note that simply read, “Hello, My feet gossip at night and now I have to wear shoes to bed. Sincerely, Me.” [poilib element="poll" parameters="id=5d1a2d51-6f24-48ca-b7e3-bcc807c0f997"] The Investigation Sector houses three different Altered World Events which you’ll fight and puzzle-solve your way through using all the skills that Jesse has mastered up until this point, along with some great new abilities. There’s a new craftable form for the Service Weapon called Surge that’s effectively a sticky grenade launcher, allowing you to decide when you want to make enemies explode like pinatas full of red mist. I enjoyed Surge and ended up using it much more than I initially thought, finding it specifically effective at crowd control and, crucially, in the final challenging boss battle. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Using%20Jesse%E2%80%99s%20telekinetic%20Launch%20ability%20is%20still%20one%20of%20the%20most%20satisfying%20feeling%20button-presses%20in%20recent%20years."] Using Jesse’s telekinetic Launch ability is still one of the most satisfying feeling button-presses in recent years, and it’s been improved further in AWE. With multiple hits of L1 on the DualShock 4 you can now stack up to three launchable objects in the air before raining them down on your foes. This felt repeatedly great and importantly, very useful, especially against shield-using enemies. Launch is also at the core of almost all the puzzles in AWE as well, whether this be moving power blocks around to open sealed doors (you’ll be doing this a lot) or using conveniently positioned lights to clear the oozing darkness from blocking your path. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/12/10/why-control-is-igns-game-of-the-year-for-2019"] Those puzzles are the weakest part of the gameplay, though, as they are rarely challenging and often repetitive. In fact, these power block puzzles were my least favourite part of Control’s main campaign, so it’s a little frustrating to see them used so frequently over the course of a short time here. Luckily though, Control’s combat is so enjoyable that getting through these slightly tiresome sections are usually worth it just to get to the next fight. A new enemy type, the jetpack-wearing Hiss Airborne Ranger, provides a welcome challenge and really puts your shooting skills to the test due to their ability to easily evade launched objects while simultaneously firing projectiles at you. Each arena has been well crafted for the battle you find yourself in and take place in the clinically brutalist architecture of the Oldest House -- until you start ripping concrete out of every wall and ceiling that is. In some ways, the Investigation Sector is all too familiar though and a separate aesthetic would have been welcomed for this area to set in apart from the rest. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=This%20final%20encounter%20was%20one%20of%20the%20highlights%20of%20AWE%20for%20me."] You’ll still be fighting the Hiss, however, and I found this ever so slightly disappointing (even though the introduction of a ton of new enemies is admittedly a tall ask from an expansion of this scale). The gruffled mumblings of axe-wielding Taken from Alan Wake never emerge, and most of the time the light mechanics you use are relegated to puzzle-solving rather than fending off enemies. Elements of the light-based combat Wake used against the Taken do appear at the very end in a tricky boss battle that took me quite a few tries, though. This final encounter was one of the highlights of AWE for me, as it has you juggling both your health and energy meters constantly while you frantically dart around grabbing any blue shards you can. It really encapsulates Control’s ‘attack is the best form of defence’ mindset and provides a fantastic ending moment, all before a tantalising teaser scene at the end that is sure to thrill fans and leave them hungry for more. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/08/26/control-review"] Outside of the main story missions, there’s a host of side activities on offer as well. Some provide fun character moments, one man’s mission to find himself a head, for example, but most boil down to simple fetch quests that aren’t the most engaging on a gameplay level. Everyone’s favourite Finnish janitor, Ahti, has a few more clean-up jobs for you to do as well in the Investigations Sector, but again these are relatively mundane tasks such as mopping up mold and dealing with darkness. The best of this batch is the appearance of an arcade machine that offers a couple of enjoyable, if not revolutionary new modes that have you fighting off Hiss in both horde and time-attack scenarios. On top of that it gives you the option to replay any of the one-off boss fights from the main campaign or the incredible Ashtray Maze sequence. All of these modes are presented with polished retro intro graphics and are another example of the beautiful level of detail that has gone into Control’s world.  

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Tell Me Why Review

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There are no facts. First-hand accounts have an inherent subjectivity to them, people lie, and memories fade. All of this is what’s meant to make Tell Me Why so intriguing. But while the characters and world are brimming with charm, pulling the thread to reveal the secrets of this fictional Alaskan town’s not so mysterious murder proves to be the least compelling part of the whole adventure.

In Tell Me Why you switch between the perspectives of twins Alyson and Tyler Ronan after they’re reunited 10 years after their mother’s death. Over the course of 8.5 hours (spanning across three episodes), the two prepare to sell their childhood home, which proves to be both a physically and emotionally exhausting task. Despite being completely separate from the Life Is Strange universe, Tell Me Why soon veers into the supernatural in a similar way, primarily through Alyson and Tyler’s ability to talk telepathically and rewatch ghostly replays of key childhood memories together. Made up of golden light particles, the translucent look of these replays give them a mystical and transient feeling.

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Through these visions, you get to see more of the twins' past and sometimes “remember” details from key events so you can confront folks in town and get the answers you’re looking for. Similarly, chatting telepathically allows the two to strategize their next move, opening up more dialogue options or guiding the other through a task.

One of the best ideas is that sometimes Alyson and Tyler have different memories of the same event, forcing you to choose which memory to believe. This pulled me into the drama of these characters. I always went with whichever scenario felt more realistic, based on what I knew of the characters involved. Given who’s involved, would this fight end in tears or curses? Given Alyson or Tyler’s relationships with the people in their memories, who is more likely to be unfairly harsh or too forgiving?

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I found myself almost equally split between choosing Alyson and Tyler’s memories, which is a testament to how fleshed out these characters are. Like real people, I learned to read between the lines, detect their biases, and ultimately make my decision of whose memory to trust.

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That said, it doesn’t really matter which perspective you go with. While some characters may protest when confronted with your memory-based evidence, there’s no way to really know “the truth.” This ties in thematically with the idea of truth not being an indisputable sequence of events, but the lack of pressure I felt as a player made my internal debate a bit dull and low-stakes. The selection process quickly turned into a mundane task I had to do rather than a compelling way to twist the twins’ fates.

Forgetting the Nuance

Spoiler alert for the first moments of the story: Upon starting Tell Me Why, you immediately see a flashback that reveals how one twin killed their mom in self-defense. That the killing took place is never in doubt, but the driving conflict of Tell Me Why quickly becomes figuring out what drove a mother to threaten to murder one of her own children.

It feels almost impossible to process and move past something you cannot explain. I imagine that’s what the twins are experiencing as they continuously confront the violence that led to their mother’s demise. Their desperate need to give their twisted tale some sense is understandable, but the search feels unfulling because nothing can unring that bell and there’s no answer that could provide comfort in such a dark scenario.

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I also felt that Dontnod fumbled a bit in the depiction of their mom, Mary-Ann. There was a nuance between the light and darkness in her character I felt Dontnod was reaching for, but didn’t quite come across in its execution, which focused on her most extreme behavior.

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She certainly isn’t portrayed as a stereotypical abusive mom: Mary-Ann handcrafted all her kids’ toys and sewed their clothes (as money was tight), she read them bedtime stories, she took them on vacation, and by everyone’s accounts, she loved them. However, we also know she was obviously troubled. I expected Tell Me Why to further pull back the curtain on Mary-Ann’s mental health issues but they’re never explored in any real depth.

As far as other explorations of mental health, there’s a depiction of a panic attack and therapy is addressed, but it ultimately all feels underexplored, and we’re forced to fill in the gaps ourselves. It’s not ideal for a story that wants to provide commentary on such issues.

Decisions, Decisions

Tell Me Why is full of plenty of choices but the situations rarely made me feel conflicted and the consequences weren’t severe enough to make me feel invested. There’s an icon that flashes on-screen that tells you if your relationship is positively or negatively impacted by your choice, but that never amounts to much. There are some notable, more stressful exceptions, such as having to correctly recall the date I just saw in order to get a full confession, but these moments are few and far between.

I was excited about the fact that you sometimes get the option to say nothing at all, but that excitement was quickly undermined by the fact that your character will still provide some form of response even if you don’t. For instance, early on you can accept or reject a gift. I didn’t select an option at all but when Alyson fussed about it Tyler angrily blurted out “Fine, I’ll take it. I said I’ll take it.” While that didn’t result in Tyler getting the gift it still felt awkward to have my character respond when I hadn’t committed to anything.

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While the differences may become clearer with multiple playthroughs I wanted to feel that weight immediately: I want to have regrets, I want to feel like I picked right or wrong, I want to sit there and not know what to do, but rarely did choices give me that kind of pause.

This feeling of pointlessness is exacerbated by the fact that more often than not you’re presented with multiple options of what to say to a character instead of being forced to choose a single response that affects your relationship with them or impacts your next dialogue options. Even in one of the final confrontations you’re given two questions you can ask... but you’re able to select both before ending the conversation, and the order you select them in doesn’t change the person’s response at all.

Delos (Double) Crossing

The act of snooping around, reliving memories, and asking the citizens of Delos Crossing the right questions eventually gets them some answers in a way that’s satisfying. However, though the revelations we unearth show that almost everyone failed Mary-Ann in some way, there’s little that’s nefarious enough to be deeply intriguing. Even the big reveal at the end failed to floor me.

To Tell Me Why’s credit, the ending itself is unexpected. Throughout my playthrough I tried to guess how the story would end and my guesses kept changing with each new piece of information. However, my constantly shifting theories felt like they were the result of the story pulling me in too many directions rather than the execution of clever twists that put all the clues together so that they lined up in an unforeseen way. And the answers were never as exciting as the curiosity I had leading up to them.

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Puzzling Moments and Minigames

Much of Tell Me Why’s puzzle-solving is tied to reading from Mary-Ann’s fairytale Book of Goblins to parse out key information. These stories are well written enough but having to read an entire children’s story to solve simplistic riddles isn’t all that interesting. Matching animals to the gifts they brought the princess is simple enough that you know the answer you’re looking for immediately, and plucking them out of a four-page story can feel like a chore especially if children’s books aren’t really your thing. Here’s an exception, though: chapter three includes a sequence of several back-to-back Book of Goblins puzzles that are fun to solve because they’re interconnected, and provide meaningful answers to the story.

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Other types of problem-solving are a bit more interesting; using the emergency exit map to figure out how to get upstairs or slowly learning new search terms to pull up police files stand out. It was reminiscent of Sam Barlow’s Her Story, in which each video gives you a clue for what to look for next, and created the same thrilling anticipation loop where you were constantly rewarded with new information. And, of course, there are some cliches that would’ve been better left on the cutting room floor (after playing Life is Strange I’m thoroughly over selecting worn-out buttons on a keypad, in general).

Minigame moments serve to add a layer of humanity and lightheartedness to the heavy themes Tell Me Why explores. I’d happily fish with Michael, Alyson’s best friend and coworker, for hours and I appreciated our warehouse plushy fight, even though it was over far too quickly and wasn’t as snappy or dynamic as it could’ve been.

The People of Delos Crossing

Tell me Why has a trans character front and center, and it’s mostly well handled by Dontnod. We learn about Tyler’s identity as a trans man not through the bigotry he experiences or by reading his name from before he transitioned (aka his dead-name) on an old ID card or any other “bet you didn’t see that coming” form of cringe, but by exploring his bedroom as he packs his things and through early conversations with his sister. It makes sense, since that’s the same way we learn about everything in Delos Crossing. Besides which, Tell Me Why isn’t a commentary on transphobia, despite episode one’s occasional ignorant comments from supporting characters and gender role-focused childhood memories.

However, I could have done without the bait and switch; the story invokes transphobia, only to quickly switch gears. It makes me wonder if Dontnod could’ve accomplished the same thing without invoking the trauma story its writers have stated they were actively trying to avoid.

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While transphobia and bigotry aren’t meant to be a focus of Tell Me Why there are some depictions of ignorance and prejudice. There’s an optional scene where one character describes the ways they’ve felt unwelcome as a queer person in Delos Crossing that’s really tactfully done. In contrast, the inappropriate comments made by mom’s old friend, Sam, and subsequent apologies after seeing Tyler for the first time feel more like a dream scenario than a realistic depiction. At times, Dontnod struggles to walk the line between being true to the persecution Tyler may experience as a trans man and telling a story with a trans character that is about more than them facing discrimation as a trans person.

Likewise, with fictional Delos Crossing being set in rural Alaska, Tlingit culture is highlighted in the environment and key characters throughout. Driving into town, we’re immediately hit with a gorgeous mural that grounds us in the culture of that space. And conversations with Michael, a Tlingit man, led to more insights that fit the natural flow of the conversation. Tlingit culture didn’t play a big role in the Tell Me Why’s plot, as the Ronan twins aren’t indiginous themselves, but having key characters from these clans elevated the inclusion above the usual set dressing.

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Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition Review

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I missed out on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles when it came out for GameCube way back in 2004, so I was excited to hear it was getting remastered for modern consoles. A lightweight dungeon crawler based on the Final Fantasy universe, starring cute, Chibi-style characters? Sign me up! It ticks so many boxes for my interests, I couldn't believe I never picked it up way back when. Well, it turns out past-me was doing myself a favor, because this is not a good or fun game in the slightest, and the remaster’s clunky multiplayer makes it even worse. In fact, its repetitive, boring, and frustrating nature means it’s a perfect metaphor for the year 2020: I expected really great things, but instead ended up living out slight variations of the same thing over and over again.

The Final Fantasy lore provides the scaffolding for stories, but Crystal Chronicles never actually builds anything on it. Look, I'm a sucker for dumb premises, and on paper this setting, in which everyone has to recharge their village crystals annually to keep from being poisoned, is exactly what I want from a cutesy dungeon crawler like this. I won't knock it for being overly simplistic, because that's exactly what I was expecting; besides, there’s so much else to knock it for and who has the time?

What We Said About Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on GameCube

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From IGN's January 2004 Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles review, by Mary Jane Irwin:

"Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is a game that I wanted to like a lot more than I did. I was excited for it, connectivity and all, but something feels a little off. I don't know whether it's the lack of cohesive storyline, or that the gameplay elements were so surprisingly simple. Poor controls also plagued my enjoyment. I never used defend once -- it would have been helpful, but it's not practical. While there's several nitpicky things, like being killed by the camera, the big problem is that this isn't any different than any of the other hack n' slash titles on the market. It has high production values, connectivity, and the Final Fantasy name attached to it, but other than that nothing stands out. If this were to be rated solely on the single player experience, the score would be much lower, but fortunately multiplayer, flaws and all, is fun."

For one thing, the story plays out through boring interstitial cutscenes you randomly encounter at crossroads on the world map. Despite this ostensibly being a remaster, the character animations exude the purest of GameCube energy: mouths flap open and closed in a canned loop, body gestures are extremely limited, and the character models themselves don’t show a lot of signs of being updated from their 2004 versions. Square Enix has added voice acting here, something missing from the original GameCube version, but listening to someone read dull dialogue doesn’t do much to improve it. It's hard to feel any connection to the secondary characters when their only purpose is to serve as the answers to eventual trivia questions.

I might have felt differently if people I met along the way popped into a dungeon once in a while to lend a hand, or otherwise had any effect whatsoever on gameplay, but the fact that they never do means all of these interactions are completely forgettable, trite filler I couldn't for the life of me care about. Cruelly, you can’t just mash your way through the dialogue to get to the end, because you would then be punished later on when knowledge of your past dialogue options becomes a critical part of the story, so you still have to pay at least some attention.

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On top of being boring and mostly useless, the crossroads scenes are bookended by some pretty ridiculous loading screens. I'm playing on my PS4 Slim, and it takes around 15 to 20 seconds both coming and going. I've loaded into cutscenes that last roughly the same length as the loading time, immediately followed by another 15 to 20 seconds of loading. Look, I'm more than willing to look past loading times when they, you know, load something good or worthwhile. But this is preposterous. More than once, I'd complete a dungeon, load, move my caravan one space on the world map (roughly two seconds of movement), only to hit a random crossroads scene... and jump back into the loading screen. In other words, that’s 15 to 20 seconds of loading, two seconds of movement, 15 to 20 seconds of loading, 10 to 60 seconds of pointless cutscenes, followed by another 15 to 20 seconds of loading.

It's infuriating on the world map, but even more so in some of the levels. One of the dungeons, Moschet Manor, is set up like a mansion. There's a central courtyard surrounded by monster-filled rooms -- these are single rooms, mind you, not whole different branches or multiple locations -- and entering into any one of them triggers a loading screen. Leaving them triggers a loading screen. It's abysmal. To make it worse, the doors only open when the switch in front of them is showing the symbol for the element type of your chalice. That means I sometimes had to stand there while it cycled through every symbol before the switch activated, followed by a loading screen. Oh, and those switches are on the inside of the rooms, too, which means you need to do the same thing to leave. Any rhythm Crystal Chronicles might build up is quickly struck down by absurd loading times and pointless filler.

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Fortunately, most of the boss introductions and some of the other repetitive animations are skippable by pressing the Option button. That's pretty much all I can muster, positivity-wise: some parts of Crystal Chronicles can be skipped over entirely.

Oh, but not all of them. There's a cutscene before the final battle, and while you can spam through the dialogue, you can't skip it. With loading times and skipping through all the dialogue, it took me about two full minutes from the time I died until the time the battle started up again. Given the level of difficulty of the final boss, different attempts at this battle took me as little as 10 seconds and as long as 25 minutes – only to lose and start the horrible process over again. I’ve spent around 23 hours playing and I shudder to think of what non-trivial percentage of that time has been spent staring at loading screens.

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I understand this is a remaster and not a remake, so keeping in the original difficulty and gameplay is fine. But the unskippable final boss cutscene coupled with the horrendous loading times – something that absolutely should be addressed in a remake on modern hardware – makes Crystal Chronicles impossible for me to enjoy for any length of time.

All of that sounds bad, but it’s not even Crystal Chronicles Remastered’s worst offense: co-op play has been relegated to online-only. If your memories of the original involve hanging out with a group of friends, conquering dungeons while using your Game Boy Advance as a controller, you can sort-of replicate it by installing the "Lite" version of this remaster. It’s basically a free trial version that allows you to join other people's games and dungeon crawl with them at any point (provided they own the full copy, that is). So if you want to relive your Crystal Chronicles multiplayer dreams, you could have all your friends bring their Switches over with the free Lite version installed – or you play from the comfort of your socially-distanced homes. But I would much rather have had simple, local co-op instead, and since the Lite version isn't available yet I'm not able to speak to how well it works as a convoluted stand-in.

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Getting a group of friends together online isn't exactly easy, either: you have to send them a proprietary 12-character friend code, one that expires every 30 minutes. This allows for cross-play, according to Square Enix, and the developers worked to develop the online rather than local co-op, saying it was either one or the other. Minecraft: Dungeons, a much better lite-dungeon crawler, offers the opportunity to play either locally or online, although it lacks cross-play.

There are also lobbies you can host or join, and when you first start a dungeon you're given the option to play single or multiplayer. I was lucky enough to match up with a stranger on my first try, and we fought our way through River Belle pass. It was difficult to work together, since the only way to communicate is by choosing from a menu with pre-written dialogue options ("Let's do this!" for example), but ultimately we were able to defeat the boss and… my connection was lost as it loaded into the post-level rewards screen. If you lose your connection at any time, you also lose any loot you might have gathered. So that was a waste of time. Also, if you're joining a friend or stranger online to play, you don't make any progress in your own game – that’s just for the host.

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There's also no drop-in, drop-out play, so if you find yourself in need of a hand in a particularly tricky dungeon or boss, you need to back out of the level, find someone to join you, and run through it again. There's one dungeon with optional puzzles that can only be solved in co-op, so I'll never see what's on the other side of those doors because at this point I just want this to be over.

Leveling up in Crystal Chronicles is interesting, and if it didn't require a repetitive grind I'd like it much more. Instead of earning experience points and leveling your character passively, you gain strength through collecting artifacts in the course of your dungeon crawling. There are up to eight per dungeon, and after you defeat the boss, you choose one of the artifacts to keep. Artifacts can increase your strength, magic, and defense, among others. It's novel, and it's almost thrilling to discover you collected an artifact with a +3 stat boost. Unfortunately, the repetitive nature of the dungeons and the battles ultimately overshadows the thrill of unlocking a powerful new artifact.

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Fights, regardless of whether they're against minions or a boss, are simplistic and require patience more than any other trait. Wait for any enemy to charge up an attack, run in and hit them, back off to avoid a hit, repeat. You can also charge up a spell and use that, and some of the attacks are ranged, which changes things up slightly. Regardless of the type of attack you use, the pattern is the same: wait, move out of the enemy's attack, attack with your spell or weapon, get out of range, wait, and repeat. It's boring with smaller enemies, but on the bosses it's just mind-numbing because it’s simply a matter of repeating the same attack pattern for minutes at a time. It rewards rote memorization of simplistic patterns rather than any type of skillful timing or resource management. There were times when a boss's minion might switch things up by coming at me from the left, but in the case of every boss, the best strategy is to take out the minions and focus on repeating the same pattern over and over again until the boss's life bar is depleted.

You might have heard about a few extra dungeons being added in the remaster, and the good news is they exist! The bad news is you can't open them up until you've beaten the main game, which took me just over 23 hours of solo play. They're basically remixed "New Game+" style dungeons, mostly painted over existing ones with harder enemies but better loot. However, for some reason they're not all available at any given time. In fact, they rotate depending on the real-world day. I got a dialogue screen informing me they rotate out each day at 4:00 am Pacific Time, which seems kind of unnecessary, but I'm not interested in playing them anyway.

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