N-Philes writes: "The Final Fantasy series has a long and illustrious history dating back over twenty years. Many of its past games involve epic storylines of love and loss where no less than the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Today, the series provides us with games like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. The story takes place thousands of years before the original Crystal Chronicles during the "Golden Age" when all of the tribes are at peace. You begin the game on your character's 16th birthday and are tasked with going Elmer Fudd on some of the surrounding wildlife to prove you have truly reached adulthood. After completing this monumental task, you are then notified that a fellow villager has a case of the sniffles and your new epic quest is to retrieve a magical fantasy version of TheraFlu. Even with a storyline seemingly ripped straight from a rejected Disney cartoon, the game does introduce some unique gameplay elements while also providing a solid multiplayer experience."
Graham Russell: "Generally, when you’re looking to play a game with friends, it’s much easier to do it on a home console. With portables, each player usually needs a system, and most need a copy of the game (and maybe some funky cables, if you go back enough). Generally, people haven’t bothered to take advantage of the technology. Of course, if you’re a crazy person like me, that’s more of an incentive than a barrier."
SPC: "Last week began the five week series of what I perceive to be the 50 best Nintendo DS games of the system's exhaustive library... This week we delve into ten more top titles for the Nintendo DS, one of the best-selling dedicated gaming platforms of all time, currently at around 150 million units worldwide across all revisions. On these ten titles for this week, we have a menagerie of memorable characters and series like Mario, Mega Man, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Remember that these games must have released in North America to be on this list. With that out of the way, are you ready for round two?"
Gaming Gauge writes:"It’s not a secret that I’m a massive fan of Square Enix’s Crystal Chronicles series, and oddly enough it was the second DS entry, Echoes of Time, that really cemented the series as one of my favourites. This was because it took the addictive multiplayer action online and really concentrated on making the experience natural and easy. There unfortunately hasn’t been a new entry in that style since then(fingers crossed there’s a new one at E3) but I was very excited when I heard that Square Enix was working with n-space on a new online dungeon crawling, hacking and slashing adventure for the 3DS; finally something to satisfy my hunger! My thought immediately went to how Square Enix should concentrate on this ease of use again and what lessons they should take away from Echoes of Time."
