Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (Wii) Reader Review

If anyone has noticed, i love my square games, so when the new WiiWare title, aptly named My Life as a King arose i was quickly down to the story to buy my Wii Points cards for their newest addition to the spin off series Crystal Chronicles.

So where to start, lets start with the title of the game. My Life as a King basically sums up your life within this simulation type game. From building your kingdom to announcing Marks/Bequests on dungeon bosses, the whole feels overwhelming at first. But square is here to save you my implementing an easy to use and quick to mater control layout. You will predominately use the nunchuck and A button for most of the game, with the odd input of the B button and a shake of the control.

Now Graphics can be a hit or a miss with Final Fantasy fans and much of the Crystal Chronicles franchise has branched into a 3D colourful and cheery approach and MLaaK follows much the same detail. With nicely drawn houses and some similar character models from previous FFCC games, much of the game graphics will feel like they did on your Gamecube. But do not fear Square has added some little extras like house creation shows to the occasional night and day differentiations. 8/10

Sound in games keep the player interested, sometimes even hoping for certain themes and snippits to be heard just once more. My Life as a King has a small tracklist, which in all instances can feel restrictive and unfinished but the quality of the included music is still of a high calibre. 7/10

Now we come to the main part of the game, the gameplay. Taking a complete 180, My Life as a King is the first simulation Final Fantasy game to appear on any console and has its share of flaws but outweighs those by solid customization and the usual depth of FF games. From commanding your army, creating buildings, shops, guilds, gaming halls, parks, fountains, more houses, the possibilities to playing the game exactly the same way is hard but still possible.
The general layout is you create a house which houses 2 people, 1 adventurer and 1 resident, the adventurer can be commisioned to work for you as an adventurer to leave town during the day and explore the many dungeons in the world (yes you can't view or complete the dungeons by yourself.) The resident on the otherhand basically walks around the city you build and babbles about who they miss and the occassional tip for development. While exploring is on the so-so side the building of the town is where this game shines.
From the start you have access to a limited number buildings to create, these include the standard house and weapons shop. As your progress and explore new dungeons you gain access to many more and the whole castle becomes your playground. The key is to set up you castle so that every adventurer spends as least time as possible getting ready every day to go adventure. It will most likely take you till your second play through to get a grasp on the full concepts of building the perfect city but who knows you may just have the creator in you. 9/10

Now we come to the part i usaally give a 10 in, Length. This game is long but not in the sense of the other Final Fantasy games pre dating it. It will take you a while to move through every dungeon and with the Downloadable Content, you can spend much more time expanding and creating the perfect city. But after 400 days you feel the effects start to fall and you get used to the repeating pattern. But since square has announced more DLC in the future, we can only hold out till then with what we have at our disposal. 7/10

All in all this game is a great game for WiiWare it has a simple premise with alot of depth into the customization of the city and even the small story is a nice addition. Get this game on WiiWare for 1500 Wii Points.

Overall 8/10