Final Fantasy: Echoes of Time Walking Review

We got Square Enix’s “Final Fantasy Echoes of Time” for the Wii over the weekend. I didn’t get a lot of time to play, what with preparing for boyfriend’s WWE anniversary to prepare for, but once his event was underway, and I’d made sure the boys were settled with snacks and soda, I got to go upstairs and be dismal and confused.

First, there’s an incredibly long load when selected from the main Wii screen. We first tried it downstairs to show boyfriend’s guests- I had time to set up and get dinner in the oven before it got to the main game screen. The User Interface…There’s a lot of double use of buttons and it makes things a bit slippery. For example, on the Wii nun chuck, the “C” button summons party members by holding it down. The “C” button also casts magic…by holding it down. You pick things up by hitting “Z.” You can then attack them (“A”) or put them down (“Z”) or throw them (“Z”) or lay down/do a crazy break dance move (“Z”) and drop whatever you are holding. The screen itself is set up to resemble a Nintendo DS split screen- the main action on the left and party list, status, and magic selector on the right ‘screen.’

The basic premise set up is that your character is from a small village in a forest and no one is allowed to leave the forest due to the Law, no one is allowed into the forest until their coming of age ceremony at sixteen, and the children of the village occasionally fall ill with ‘crystal sickness’ that makes the children stronger, faster, quicker to heal, and they never fall sick again. Your character was the first illness in a long time some years ago, and another child falls ill in the opening. Unlike your character, the child who falls ill is habitually ill and may die from the illness and is in need of a medicine. For some unexplained reason, your character is allowed to break that Law and leave the forest.
Only, no one tells you to do so. A lot of people hint at it, one person tells you where the big town is, but no one says “Hey, PC NAME, you can leave our village and have proven you can walk through the forest without being eaten by wolves (more on that below) and for some reason are except from the Law, why don’t you go and get this medicine from the town? We’re not sure they’ll have it, since it is an ancient illness and no one else has crystals…that we’ve heard of. I mean, we’re not allowed into the World At Large, so there’s no real way we can check.”

On the coming-of-age quest, you go into the woods and get asked if you know how to fight. The town Moogle then starts showing you how to beat things up. The AI takes over your toon and picks up a cute fox thing (Mus) and just starts hitting it against a tree. At that point in time, there has been no indication that the fox thing behind the Moogle was an enemy. You then go around being attacked by things until you come to a door which you open and then fight your first boss. Afterwards, you have a cut scene that doesn’t explain anything but hey, you passed. And you get a “short cut” back to the village on the opposite side of the map from where the animation for the short cut is shown. You go back, you find out about your sick friend, and, for me anyway, eventually get bored and try leaving. Hey, you’re out! There’s a big city a short distance away.

So you go to the big town. It is filled with ‘adventurers’ and tomb raiders and scholars…who get lost in the giant library and are all scared of the forest to the south and have no idea about the lost village. But there is an item customization shop, an item shop, an adventurer’s guild, an item storage place, a moogle who gives out quests, and the library.
The item stores lead to a problem- in order to customize an object, it has to be unequipped. There is no option to unequip items; your character must always be wearing and carrying something. So in order to customize an item that you like using, you must carry around an item you don’t intend to use to equip it before getting it customized and you must remember to change your equipment before leaving/entering battle.
While I’m talking about items, here’s another problem I have: items for healing and restoring magic are instant use. You can’t carry them around and use at your leisure. But the items do work on all the party, so that’s nice. And only the party leader can ‘use’ them, even if it’s sitting on another party member’s head.

The first time I came to town, I didn’t visit the moogle, upgrade weapons, or get additional party members from the adventurer’s guild. Why? Well, I didn’t know about the moggle and the dialogue about the Adventurer’s guild was primarily derogatory and made it sound like I could only party with people online. Later, when I was at the final boss for the first dungeon, I kept wondering why the heck I was having such a hard time killing him; I could get him within 30 hp of dying and he’d KO me. So I started over and took more time to explore. After going downstairs when I heard someone fell on the camera guy, watching a little wrestling to cool down from the so far frustrating game, and finding the manual to see what it said about equipping items. The manual mentions the quest giving Moogle, near the Adventurer’s Guild in town.
The second time I did it right- I went to the adventurer’s guild and found that they can add party members to your party; so regardless of what you chose for your main toon, you can now fill out your party with whatever else you might have wanted to play, because any member of a party can be the party leader and will be treated as if they were from the lost village. I tried to do some quests from the moogle before setting out. That was a mistake.
The quests are, in a word, dumb.
The first quest possible is a fire fighting quest. You (and only you, the rest of the party is on break) pick up barrels of water and throw them at some fires. Only, they don’t always do anything. Sometimes they explode and douse a small portion flames. Other times, they land, as a barrel, in the flames and sit there. You can pick the barrel back up and suffer knock-back flame damage…sometimes…and try throwing the barrel again. You can stack the barrels and try to throw them for a bigger watery dousing, but so far, all I’ve achieved is stacking a bunch of barrels and having them land in a fire.
The second quest you unlock by talking to a chef on the stairs to the library (North of the main gate, left up the stairs). He wants you to roast a bunch of Mus for his restaurant. Go back to the Moogle and take the quest. Again you’re on your own. The Mus are the little fox like things and they are in several areas. Once you enter those areas, they swarm you. Your two big problems- running out of magic and beating something to give you a magic restoring item occasionally runs into an area where the Mus are and you end up fighting all of them. I ran this quest several times and failed it each time. Once, I only used fire magic (the requirement for completing the quest). The only thing I can figure is that it needs a certain number of Mus, but it doesn’t tell you how many. The fail note says that “if you accidentally kill a Mus using something other than magic, don’t worry, more will appear.”
The quests appear to be on a time limit and have been very difficult and vague in what they need to be beaten. The manual says that they give money, but the quest menu doesn’t say how much. I think that, for my money, I will go out and beat the poor monsters against a wall.

One other thing about the city before we move to the first dungeon: North on the plaza with the water fountain is a mother, child, and magic user. The child is having a fit because it wants a sweet drink. The mother says no, and if you keep misbehaving, the witch of the forest will come take you away. The child is skeptical. The magic user jumps in and mentions a person from your village. You then have the option of then saying, “Yeah, and she still gets lost” or “Hey! I’m from that forest!” It doesn’t appear to matter what you choose at this time. Both options will cause the child to start crying and scare everyone.

To move forward, go to the Library and speak with the creepy guy from the opening scene to get his quest. Then go speak to the two guys near the water fountain.

The first dungeon is as straightforward as anything else I’ve seen in the game so far. You have simple puzzles to solve, monsters to beat, frivolous warnings, and a lot of doubling back through areas to unlock new areas. The dungeon- The Aqueducts. Having seen real aqueducts in person, as well as on TV and in photos, I would call this place poorly named. For one, it’s underground. Second, its purpose appears to be cleaning the water rather than moving the water. And housing monsters and treasure chests. The point of the quest is to find out why the water is turning brackish and report back to the maintenance people in the city. Posted on placards on the walls of the sewer are signs stating, “Monsters appear to be messing with things. They sure are cute though,” and “Don’t go into this room! It’s a big monster and it’s mean and dangerous!” So if the maintenance guys had just talked to the sewer workers, they’d know what was going on.

That’s all the major stuff I’ve done so far. I will continue to play as available between building up our WOW characters and upcoming holiday fun. If anyone has insight or comments, I’d love to hear them.