If anyone knows their audience, it's Square. I really wanted to pick up FF3 for DS when it was released but scoffed at the $40 price tag, which still hasn't dropped. Someone is paying for these games, and they need to be stopped!

I really enjoyed the Gamecube version of FF:CC, and if this game is close to that one in graphics and/or scope 15 dollars is wholly worth it. From the link, it sounds like the other races are some of what costs extra. I'm not really sure how I feel about that, I guess I need more information on the basic game before I make a decision. If this game actually supports Wi-Fi, works without everyone having a DS (minor problem, as far as I'm concerned), and does some of the dungeon-crawling stuff from the Cube version then I'm in for 15 bucks, no question.

Fetal Fantasy?

This is just tangentially related, but the new DS Crystal Chronicles game really turned me off.

FFIII, though, is worth a purchase.

There's absolutely no dungeon crawling in this one. And, as far as I know, multiplayer is out as well. As far as I know, it's not even really an RPG. Think of this as Final Fantasy meets The Sims/Sim City.

Wiki has a good description of the gameplay:

Don't get me wrong-- the production values are pretty top notch. I guess what turned me off was mostly the "kiddie" aspect of the characters at the beginning, the fact that battles aren't turn based, the fact that I didn't really feel like I knew what I was doing, and the fact that it seems like the game focuses on dungeon hacking.

I never played the GC version, so I'm not sure how similar this game is.

I live in New England, our cities and towns were developed by paths cows made. An eight year old would actually be a step up.

My buddy owed me $25. So, I had him gift me the FF:CC:My Life as a King and Lost Winds from WiiWare.

I played a bunch of FF:CC:MLaaK last night and I am currently beginning Day 38 - Chapter 3. Dhelor's quote from the Wiki is a very good summary of the game play. I have been playing Ikariam with the rest of the GWJ hivemind and thoroughly enjoying it. I bring up Ikariam, because this gives me the same feel of country-building.

FF:CC:MLaaK is different from most of the country-building sims because it seems to have an end. Rabbit pointed out in games like Ikariam there is no end to the game or "Put the flag in the ground and you've won." There seems to be a story developing as you clear certain dungeons (they hint which dungeon you need to clear to progress the story). The story is your standard Final Fantasy, cheesy, "Dark Lord" enslaving the world, but with a fluffy Wii filter on top of it all.. They seem to reference occurences from the GameCube Crystal Chronicles (miasma?), but I can't verify since I never played. You can skip all cutscenese and speed through all conversations, which is nice.

Adventurers gather your resrouces (elementite) by clearing dungeons and defeating bosses to build all your structures. Their actions are "real-time" so you are given constant updates of what they are doing. On the Gil side, the more citizens in your town the more you get from them in taxes. Just keep them happy. This constitutes talking to them or building a bakery for them to shop. Days last roughly 10mins with the ability to extend days through happy citizens. Early on with a few citizens and adventurers, you are sometimes looking for things to do, but there is thankfully the ability to end a day at anytime and just see what the days take was in terms of resources and Gil.

As your adeventurers conquer dungeons they also unlock the ability to create new buildings. Some buildings allow you to assign jobs to some of your adventueres. These new jobs for your adventurers include thief, white mage and black mage. There may be others, but I have yet to unlock them.

I do have some problems. The first involves how you give your adventurers specific tasks. You issue behests at the beginning of each day to either Explore a certain dungeon or Kill a specific dungeon boss. These appear on bulletin boards in your city. This is fine because for single behests and lower level adventurers you don't feel could make it through the dungeon you can just tell them to go out and gain EXP instead in a safer dungeon on their own.

The problem comes in when you unlock another bulletin baord and can issue multiple behests. I would try to issue a a behest to kill the boss in a level 10 dungeon and then give a behest to gather some Sword Metal in a level 2 dungeon so that I have something for my high leveled and low leveld adventurers to handle. What happens though, is that you have no choice in terms of which behest/bulletin board they go to. So I have all these level 4 adventurers I just recruited lining up for the Level 10 dungeon and the Level 12 adventurers lining up for the Level 2 dungeon. There is no way (that I have figured out) to send an adventurer to a different bulletin board.

Another problem is as dungeons get harder or you need to do certain tasks in dungeons it becomes necessary to group your parties. The problem here is that you need to build a Tavern in order to form parties (thanks GameFAQs for telling me), but you have to hack your way through to a certain dungeon and boss that will unlock the Tavern.

All in all, though, I am having a good time with it. With all of these 12-year old king young protaganist FF games, I just try to look beyond the childish fluff and focus on the gameplay. It's well paced. In terms of the DLC, it's completely not necessary for the game. Some are cosmetic, but others are new dunegons that unlock new buildings which I don't know what they do. I plan on avoiding the DLC.

It definitely has the feel of a really good strategy flash/web game that you can walk around in in 3D. That being said, I still absolutely love it. It's hard to say if it's worth $15, but it's a lot of fun for what it is.