The problem was, the game was not the greatest in the world because it focused heavily on people playing together. That was difficult when everyone coming to the Crystal Party had to bring their Game Boy Advance and the trusty, oft-used Game Boy Advance – Gamecube Link Cable.

Now that half the world owns a Nintendo DS, all they have to do is buy Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates to enjoy cooperative multiplayer dungeon-crawling action. I would suggest anyone interested in the game at all does so; Ring of Fates is a fantastic game that gets sweeter as you invest more into it. It is also one of the best ways to play DS with friends.

It’s all crystal after the jump.

Probably the biggest surprise is that Ring of Fates not only includes multiplayer gameplay, but also a solid single-player experience to boot. The story takes place thousands of years before the original Crystal Chronicles, in a land protected by crystals, looked over by an ominous blood-red moon. One night, terror strikes a small village. The twins Yuri and Chelinka, Ring of Fates’ protagonists, are quickly shown the vile face of true evil when their father is stricken down in cold blood by the evil Cu Chaspel.

The story unfolds with several strong supporting cast members, each coming from a unique race. Yuri and Chelinka are standard but strong main characters of the Clevat race, a human-like race of warriors. Their company is also quite robust; Alnahelm, the magic-casting Yuke, is one of my favorite characters in any recent Final Fantasy game. His manner of speech is hilarious; he talks in a way similar to Yoda and places his adjectives after their respective nouns. Instead of saying, “This is a magical game,” he would say, “This is a game magical.” This sort of personality is a nice touch.

Cu Chaspel deserves this paragraph of his own: the main villain is perhaps one of the best I can recall, as he truly makes the story worth experiencing. His terrifying mask only shows the exterior evil that he possesses, and his evil cackle is a true mark of his insanity. The voice acting for this character is top-notch, as is the dialog. With such a prolific villain, it is a surprise he only appears at select points throughout the game. Even so, when he does, it is always a dramatic treat.

Moving onto the gameplay, Ring of Fates escapes a few problems by being addicting and generally fun to play. The controls are simple. The D-pad controls movement while A interacts with objects, NPCs, and attacks enemies. B jumps, and X is used to cast magic. There are buttons mapped to some of the touch screen controls, but not all of them: the touch screen is used as an inventory screen, but it is also used to switch characters and use special attacks. Every character has a special move that is just as helpful in puzzle-solving as it is in combat, so each of the four races are even more unique as a result.

In combat, Yuri is a generic warrior character whose physical strength makes him a top choice. Alnahelm is also fun to use; his mid-range magic attack is powerful and keeps him away from danger. Gnash the Selkie is an archer who can use his arrows to hit far-off switches as well as long-range enemies. Last, Meeth is a Lility who uses alchemy to create magic orbs. She is also a semi-powerful physical attacker. None of the characters are useless, although some are more useful than others in many situations. Yuri is generally helpful in any battle, but switching to Alnahelm is helpful in solving puzzles because he is very commonly used in doing so. Gnash can double-jump, so navigating platform jumps with him is much easier than with other characters. Last of all, there are all kinds of places that only Meeth can go – using her effectively is vital to finding some of the best loot in the game.

The fighting system is simple, and plays a little too sluggish for my liking. It feels like a rough version of Zelda set in an isometric perspective (the camera is angled from above). Attacking enemies is sometimes difficult due to the camera perspectives and D-pad alignments not matching up; the isometric angle is entirely to blame. Still, battle is simple enough. The hit detection is generous, and enemies are not very intelligent. Then again, neither are your A.I.-controlled teammates. They often stand around and do nothing, though they also attack feverently at other times.

Another problematic issue with controlling the game comes into play when you try to cast magic. Targeting rings appear below the casting character and can be moved around manually to attack enemies. The only problem with this is it takes too much time and leaves your character wide open to attack, which also cancels the magic spell and uses up a magic orb. The spell-stacking system is interesting; spells can be stacked by aligning targeting rings from different characters and casting simultaneously. Unfortunately, since it is too hard to cast with one character, stacking magic is almost too difficult to care about. In cooperative multiplayer matches, stacking works perfectly. Alone, it doesn’t. In fact, everything works better in cooperative multiplayer. Consider the single-player to be "training", even though it is also such a large part of the game.

There is a light focus on puzzle-solving in each dungeon, but overall, the game flows very smoothly. Most missions start in one of the game’s towns, where Yuri and Co. are given some sort of objective to assist whoever needs helping at the current time. This usually involves going to a nearby dungeon, forest, mountain, or cave to battle enemies, loot for items, and solve puzzles. Halfway or so through each dungeon is a save point, usually followed shortly by another and a boss battle. After each boss battle, you usually return to a town and repeat the process. The flow is solid and stays this way throughout most of the game, so it is never difficult to stay on task. However, there is always time for level-grinding and exploring previous dungeons in between each new and old mission.

I can't let any of the small flaws lead you away from what is otherwise an exceptional game. Ring of Fates is put together like a masterpiece. The soundtrack is fantastic, in the way that you would expect any Final Fantasy soundtrack to be. If screechy children didn't voice the dialog, I would rave about the voice acting. Instead, I will just say that Square-Enix wrote fantastic dialog and missed the beat on VO. It is also hard to ignore the graphics, which are easily some of the best on DS. The 3D engine works very well. The character models are detailed very well, and so are the environments. The CG cut-scenes are also beautiful, albeit brief and rare.

Final Score: B

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