Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time Review

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As well as randomly dropping spell power-ups, occasionally enemies also drop scratch-cards that offer desirable upgrades to your character such as the ability to perform a double jump. However, you don't automatically receive these treats: instead you'll need to take the card to the nearest Moogle stall in town where you'll be told to, for example, scratch off all of the square symbols in 20 seconds. If you succeed then you win the character upgrade while if you lose the card will need to be discarded.

When playing a purely single-player game you can recruit up to three other in-game warriors to join you on your adventure. These characters can be named and customised, and will even level up with your main character as in a traditional RPG. Controlled by the AI, you can set rudimentary behaviour instructions such as "Just Follow Me", "Do Your Best" and "Protect Yourself". However, the AI is a desperately poor stand-in for human compatriots; it's obvious the game has been designed very much with multiplayer questing in mind.

And it's here that, for the first time, one player can play on the Wii while up to three others can take up their DS handhelds to join in. One player must host the adventure (and if you're playing on the Wii then you can only host: there's no option to join a DS-hosted game) and, while everybody else earns money, items and experience, it's only this player's storyline that will advance. Drop-in and out play is smooth and barely interrupts the flow of adventuring, and the ability to pick up and carry your team-mates around the environment and even scuffle with them (taking just 1hp off with every hit) leads to some humorous Zelda: Four Swords type moments.

However, what's immediately obvious is that the DS version was the lead platform: the game presented on Wii is emulated and has in no way been effectively re-tailored to the system, even in single-player. The screen is split into two square play screens, one for the top DS screen and one for the bottom, and the dead space on your television around these two windows is filled by a drab wallpaper. Overall it's a woefully uninspiring view into the game.

Water is no longer deadly matter in the Crystal Chronicles universe. Your character is now able to swim, dive for treasure and even freeze lakes to solve puzzles.

The relative sizes of each of the two screens can be adjusted using the plus and minus buttons, one growing in size while the other diminishes. As one window shows the character in the game environment, and the other handles all of the menu and shop screens, you'll need to switch between the two often, which is an awkward irritation, especially when trying to spell-cast in the heat of battle. For these reasons, the game is best played on the handheld.

But if Wii players can see clearly through the shrunken window, Echoes of Time offers one of the best multiplayer adventures on the system. For owners of both consoles it's something of a shame that you can't take your character from the console to the handheld and back again, but being able to team up with other players both wirelessly and across the internet is a strong bonus.