Table for One
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles' remaster somehow made a game about togetherness lonelier than the original
When I was younger, the idea of doing something alone was foreign and off-putting. The notion of going to a restaurant or to a movie alone filled me with a weird dread, as if a ticket taker or waitress would have earnest thoughts about whether someone was with me (or about me at all). Twenty years and three kids later, though, and it’s another story. Nowadays, if you see me eating in silence at a PF Changs at 1:15PM on a Tuesday…let’s just say, no you didn’t. Likewise with a solo movie. You mean there will be two daylight hours where someone is not demanding 113% of my cognitive capacity? Where do I sign up?
I’ve always been more of a solo gamer, though. I won’t hesitate to play a 60 hour one-player game with no co-o component while multiplayer only/live service titles usually scare me off. I don’t have as much time for gaming as I may have had in years past; even then, though, the idea of mainlining Halo or whatever FPS du jour never appealed to me. The rigor of constant online play leaves me feeling like I’m working a side hustle.
Yet I can appreciate the tenets of game design that encompass multiplayer games, so I don’t discount myself as a total hater. If a game scratches that itch, I’m down. Which is why, once upon a time, I was so enamored with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for the GameCube. A dastardly little four-player local co-op adventure that required each player to supply their own Game Boy Advance system, Crystal Chronicles is an action role-playing game where players roam the world in caravans searching for magical myrrh in order to stave off a miasma plaguing the land. I loved this weird little game back in 2004 when it was released in the United States and was chuffed when it was slated for a Remastered edition on modern consoles and (gulp) mobile devices in 2020. Unfortunately, in the six years since its release, I’ve been mostly unable to actually play it with others. Talk about having FOMO.
Over twenty years ago, the gimmick of Crystal Chronicles was clear: Gamers would huddle around a single GameCube with their respective devices, controlling a squad of player-made characters selected from four distinct races. Each would use their GBAs as controllers and a second screen of sorts when traveling through the poisoned realm. When playing with friends, one player is responsible for carrying a bucket near the party, protecting them around the surrounding miasma as they travel; if playing solo, a computer-controlled Moogle will carry it for you as amassing abilities, items and weapons through each stage. It was a lot of work, yes, but the couch hijinks were unforgettable.
While the gameplay and hack-n-slash combat was seemingly simple, it had a surprisingly robust ability and magic system that would allow players to combine spells with a bevy of combinations and devastating status effects. Players would also collect Artifacts through their travels, providing meaningful stat and power increases giving a sense of progression. These systems, along with the customization of the player character and their respective familial side-stories would keep things fresh for each player and playthrough. Charming graphics and a beautifully varied soundtrack give the game a distinct presentation.
In the early aughts, I don’t think I ever eked out a session with four players. It’s not only that I didn’t have the friends in high school to get together for a JRPG party, but I definitely didn’t have enough friends who wanted to play the game, had their own GBA AND their own link cord, too. But I always had my little brother around, and with that we set out to eventually secure two link cables to play together. We had a great time fighting Marlboros and other signature Final Fantasy beasts, even if we never beat the game. Which is why, in an era of remakes or remastered RPGs getting a second lease on life, the announcement of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered was so welcomed by me. I could play with my brother again and introduce this world to my children. Finally, I thought, I’d be able to play this game like God and Kazuhiko Aoki intended, right?
Unfortunately, none of that really matters if you can’t reliably play with another human being. On paper, the remaster should have made Crystal Chronicles easier than ever to enjoy. Instead of convincing your friends to lug over a Game Boy Advance, a link cable, and somehow all be available on the same Saturday afternoon, all everyone needed was a modern console or phone and an internet connection. A few taps and we’d be playing together again like Friends was still on TV.
Somehow, though, the process is even more cumbersome. Joining friends can be inexplicably inconsistent, hosting sessions is strangely restrictive, progression isn’t shared in any meaningful way, and there were more times where I simply gave up trying to get a lobby working. I have no idea whether that was the fault of the game’s infrastructure, my friends, my internet connection, or the alignment of the planets. What I do know, is that it was easier cobbling together two old GBAs and link cables to play the original game on my GameCube in 2026 (!) than it was coordinating a lobby with my brother.
What makes all of this so disappointing is that none of these issues have anything to do with Crystal Chronicles itself. The combat is still satisfying enough, experimenting with spell combinations is still fun, and dragging a chalice about remains an oddly satisfying gameplay hook. But while Crystal Chronicles is about getting a group together, the remaster never seems interested in helping you actually do that. Instead of removing the physical barriers that kept so many of us from fully experiencing it twenty years ago, it simply traded them for digital ones.
It’s been just about six years after this game was unceremoniously dumped into our laps. Truthfully, I think about this travesty with frightening regularity. The game just sits there on consoles and Android (iOS compatibility is already out), kinda broken, despite some of the stellar work we are seeing from Square Enix in terms of reconfiguring older experiences for a newer audience. I know it is not a perfect analogy, but what the company did with Octopath Traveler 0 and is now doing with Final Fantasy Resonance - reworking a mobile title with gacha and in-app purchases into a cohesive single player experience - makes Crystal Chronicles feel like warmed up leftovers.
Crystal Chronicles has everything you need to be a successful game right there. But in this current iteration, the secret ingredients never get a chance to coalesce because they are siloed off from each other, apparently in a deeply structural and technical way that allegedly made it impossible to include local and online multiplayer. The end result is the near-constant fumbling of a multiplayer experience that cannot get it together.
I have significantly less time for playing games now than I did twenty-two years ago. Which is why the notion of playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles again, without the cumbersome technical limitations that made it impossible to fully experience back in 2004, was so appetizing. But the matchmaking issues, technical problems, and lack of local multiplayer have left a bad taste in my mouth. I guess that’s one of life’s little jokes: I may no longer have qualms about sitting alone at this table to eat. The problem is now I don’t want to take a single bite.