Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates

The first Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles game for the DS. Unlike the first game, its main mode of play is a story-mode with lots of dialog and pre-made characters. The story follows a pair of Clavat twins named Yuri and Chelinka, whose hometown is attacked and Chelinka falls into a coma. When she awakens, she has lost the ability to speak. Together, they set out on a journey to help Chelinka regain her voice, find their childhood teachers Alhanalem and Meeth, discover why their home was attacked, and learn the purpose of a unique crystal they own. All while trying to stop an ancient prophecy from destroying the world.

There is also a multiplayer mode, which is more like the first game. You create your own character, selecting name, race, and gender, and set off on fetch quests through dungeons you've cleared in solo mode. Also like the first game, you can do this on your own or with nearby friends over the DS's local wireless.

Tropes used in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates include:

Moogle: How wonderful it is to meet you by chance, kupo.

  • Bonus Boss: The Giant Crab.
  • Bonus Dungeon: River Belle.
  • Butt Monkey: Arguably, Stiltzkin. Over the course of the game's beginning, he's been slammed by a door, lost a ton of money from the Magicite Tutorial's expenses, and was almost cooked by Meeth.
  • Call Back: Some zones are covered by poisonous mist, and require a party member to carry an aptly-charged Urn to cross safely. Crystal Bearers and the Chalice, anyone?
  • Cast From Lifespan: The twins' crystal power. Chelinka uses it at the cost of her soul, and Yuri uses it at the cost of his longevity.
  • Charged Attack: The Focus Attacks, which are tied to the specific weapon being used. Some weapons will shoot blasts of energy, others make you leap to the target and perform a powerful attack.
  • Chew Toy: Alhanalem. Between Chelinka' glomps and Meeth's pots, he takes quite a licking.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: ...Basically, all of the party characters. And about 85% of the NPC population too.
    • Special mention goes to Gnash, who has forgotten his own name. Granted, he was abandoned in the wild as a very young child.
  • Combination Attack: Basic magic spells can be stacked on top of one another for added effect (two Fire spells make a Fira {or Firaga with proper timing} attack, and spells of different elements can be combined to create a Gravity spell). The basic elements can also be combined with a Charged Attack for an elemental strike.
  • Continuity Nod: The appearance of Lich is a nod to her role in the first game.
    • Two of the moogles from the first game, Stiltzkin (who gave the tutorial) and Artimecion (from the Striped Brigands) make appearances.
  • Corrupt Church: The Crystal Temple. Gets progressively more oppressive as the game goes on. Plus, its temple is the final dungeon, and its Pope is using it to recreate the world in his own image.
  • Coup De Grace Cutscene
  • Cute Mute: Chelinka, after a certain event. She can still talk, but she can't vocalise her thoughts. She eventually gets her voice back though.
  • Damaged Soul: Latov's soul is filled with anguish and rage in the afterlife, thanks to the Lich. Yuri and the others are able to put him to rest.
  • Double Jump: Selkies.
  • Dungeon Bypass: Only scripted obstacles and doors with keys, of which are few, are unpassable. Most of the room puzzle's purpose is to materialize or move platforms to reach points that are just out of reach. Not only can your chatacters jump on each other, but you can stack any item to make a ladder. And most of the items you find are cheap rubbish you can buy for less than 5 gil at the shops. Do the math.
    • Selkies take this trope Up to Eleven: while they cannot double-jump or use ziplines when holding a key, they can just throw the key against a wall, make it bounce on their head, and run on the zipline as if it was a tightrope while balancing the key on their head. Someone sign them up for circus already.
  • Fantastic Racism: The workshop-keeper does not like Yukes.
  • Gainax Ending: The ending sequence. Chelinka's Heroic Sacrifice to heal Yuri of his mysterious illness causes Yuri to become Unstuck in Time, and after wandering around for a little bit, the collective Yuris and Chelinkas of all the parallel universes Cosmic Retcon the events of the game from ever occuring because Magic in this continuity works based on alternate universes.
  • Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Meeth is prone to doing this, particularly to Al, with either her ladle or her pot.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: Everything the Magicite seller in the Connecting Worlds chapter says makes her sound like a drug dealer.
  • A God Am I: Galdes.
  • Guide Dang It: The way to defeat the final boss, by locking magic spells onto the circle. Subverted in that you do get instructions, but only after you fail several times.
    • How crafting with gems work. The are easy enough to use by themselves. However, if you actually look up how they work, you would have never guessed.
    • And item crafting in general, since the scrolls don't have the same name as whatever they produce. If you don't write it down, it's easy to accidentally use your rare materials to make a duplicate of something you already have.
  • Heroic BSOD: Chelinka after Latov dies, and Yuri during the ending.
    • Meeth is in one too when you first discover her after the Time Skip.
  • Heroic RROD: Yuri falls victim to this when he uses his power to stop the falling ceiling in Rela Cyel.
    • And in the ending, he starts slowly dying after overuse of his crystal powers.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Several. Latov dies this way. And both twins try it at different points for the sake of the other, but the other one always undoes it.
  • Idiot Hero: Yuri as a young child, to a ridiculous degree. That changes when things turn bad for him and Chelinka.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Meeth beats monsters with a ladle, and her charge attack is to mow them down with her pot.
  • Jump Physics: Selkies can double-jump.
  • MacGuffin Girl: Chelinka is pursued by the Temple for her crystal abilities. Yuri might be of value to them too, but Chelinka is the only one who can make the crystal shine on her own. Tilika and Lady Aleria were also this, with tragic results.
  • Magikarp Power: Unlike most games in the series, Lilties begin this one as a support class, with slow attacks and only moderate power. It's arguable where the exact turning point is, but if leveled up fully, well, it quickly becomes apparent why they ruled the world.
  • Nerf: In the first game, all classes could easily be played as close range fighters, with Lilties being the most brutal. In Ring of Fates, while Yukes can still be played as melee characters, Selkies are now archers and Lilties are largely a support class (though with enough leveling, that changes).
  • New Game+: Can be done twice. Also allows access to the Bonus Dungeon.
  • Nobody Poops: Averted:

Yuri: Go? Didn't Papa tell you to go before we left?

Young Yuri (on being allowed to explore The City alone): We are practically adulterous.
Latov: Erm, not quite.

  • Patchwork Map: One level where you'll have to chose between running over lava that burns you or ice that freezes you in a slightly lengthened period of time. You need not worry about doing large amounts of backtracking if you decided you don't like the path you chose. The ice path is side by side with the lava.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: The red crystal that extracts power from the Great Crystal is powered by Tilika, and later, Lady Aleria.
  • Running Gag: Chelinka bear-hugging Al.
  • Shotacon: The female Selkie scroll-dealer in Rebena Te Ra has this reaction towards Yuri.
  • Shout-Out: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull mog."
  • Super Drowning Skills: Running through shallow water is okay. Anything above the head is fatal. Latov really should have given Yuri some swimming lessons....
  • Time Compression Montage: The game moves forward several years in a single cutscene. The twins' age is still ambiguous, but they go from five-ish to somewhere between eight and ten.
  • Timed Mission: Multiplayer mode allows you to take on side missions for more experience and money. All of these have time limits and span multiple levels. The goal is to finish each one as quickly as possible.
  • Twin Telepathy: Yuri and Chelinka.
  • Verbal Tic: Alhanalem the Yuke has a habit of ending every sentence with words ending in emphasizing the "al" (written in text a la "physicAL), and his Lilty partner Meeth ends a lot of hers with "e" sounds.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Now you didn't just let those moogles that waited all those years... met by chance for nothing, did you?
  • "What the Hell?" Dad: Latov loves his children, but one has to question his judgment in allowing them to play with hatchets, spelunk in the monster-filled cave on their property, and walk around the city alone.
  • You No Take Candle: Gnash.

Oh! Way out! Still have time! Make escape!

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