tl;dr The single most worthwhile purchase you can ever make for your DS.

That might not seem like it's saying much. You might argue that the DS sucks and is a useless console. You might not have one. I don't care, I do, I haven't used it that much (mostly mario kart and the SM64 port, but a few others too), but I got this for christmas and have been meaning to make a post about it since then.
So, some screenshots and promotional stuff:





Right, now, good things:

-Real time battles. There is no such thing and random encounters, everything happens on the map, and the controls are pretty solid.

-the bosses are giant, and usually require you to climb up them like ants and bash them in the head.
-hard and very hard modes live up to their names
-the magic system works very well, though i wasn't sure weather I liked having every spell from the start. eh, still, the stacking mechanic worked very well.
-4 different races, with a character for each gender per race. Each race plays differently (eg yutes are the magewhores of the land, whilst selkies can double jump etc etc) and all of them look pretty cool.
-Solid item creation and upgrade system, based on looting.
-Up to 4 party members
-MULTIPLAYER OH GOD: you can play with bots (more on that later), or use wifi or wireless play to play with friends. There is an alright chat system implemented, but voice chat would have been nicer.
-A crapton of equipment: theres some ludicrous number of items, race specific stuff, quest uber items, etc, and it's all pretty balanced (once you get to hard mode anyway )

-Everything you equip makes a visual different to your character. This makes getting that new awesome armour you've been saving loot and gil for a hell of a lot more rewarding, and the game as a whole awesome in general. I loved this little fact, even though it had no effect on gameplay
-Pretty big world for a DS cart

-new areas open up as you progress the story, and each of those can generally eat between 40 minutes and 2.5 hours of your time, depending on how good you are and what difficulty you are playing
-game over isn't very frustrating: you warp back to the start of the dungeon, but all the puzzles are generally still completed, and you dont lose exp or loot. Makes killing a really annoying boss a lot less "ffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-" inducing.
-Swimming was nice.
-Dude, its a dungeon crawler on the DS, it's damn polished, it plays like it should, go get it

Bad things:

-The bot AI is fairly terrible. There are 5 AI modes which can be set and reset at any time, and you can switch control to them at any time, so you could feasably micromanage how they behave, but it's too much work. Using the "tap L to bring your party back together" mechanic makes it bearable, but you find yourself either dedicating a spellcaster to "use magic like crazy" and then defending them from harm, or just spamming cure every 30 seconds in a boss fight. It's definitely more fun to play multiplayer, in any case (or just have a party of 2)
-The DS occasionally lags after you beat a boss and they drop 30 drops of loot and gil. Something about the shower of physical objects might have something to do with it (:P) but still, you'd think this would be optimised out. Luckily, lag is infrequent/nonexistant when there are enemies around. The extra ram dongle might help this, I doubt it.
-No generic inventory. You cant carry potions with you, or bring phoenix down, or those random items that cast boss spells for you. You can carry a crapton of equipables, and a crapton of loot, but nothing that you can "use up". You can find potions around the maps, in barrels usually, or chests, but when you grab them they auto-drink. No biggie. Oh, and when one of your guys dies, you can either get him/her back with raise (which, remember, you have from lvl 1), or switch to their ghost and look for phoenix down, which is now a drop (which again, auto-uses). This bugged me initially, but you get used to it. You just cant rely on a massive stock of potions anymore.

All in all, it kicks ass, anyone out there with a DS, a spare (~39 USD, ~80 AUD/NZD, ?GBP) and a few hours to burn, consider it. It's the best looking, most fun DS game I've played.

Are you telling me that it isn't some horrible turn based game anymore?!?!?
YES!
No more, going through the menu and pressing attack.
Or letting the enemy stroll up to you and sit there like a ♥♥♥♥♥ while he hits you.

Exactly. First time I played I was skeptical. Within 5 minutes, after a moogle told me to mash A on the enemies and try not to get ♥♥♥♥, I decided it was just as fun as FFXII.

FFXII sucked, and I love the original Crystal Chronicles. I guess I'm odd. I wish I had a DS, I would play the hell outta this game.

I used to play a lot, but then my save got deleted when i forgot to save after a while n my battery died.
I'm going to play it again nao

I liked how well thought out everything was, from politics to character history. The engine was amazing (especially graphically) for a PS2 game.

Everything was thought out, and the graphics were nice, but I hated the main character, and I hated the battle system. Also, it had serious balance issues. The Espers were completely useless, and the Quickenings were almost too good sometimes.

Might aswell start buying games for my Dsi now vthat I finally replaced my broke one, pokemon soulsilver and metroid prime hunters look lonley on the shelf, so why not, Thanx for the suggestion Geti

I can relate to hating Vaan quite a lot, ben, but eh, I enjoyed it. A matter of taste I suppose.
Glad I convinced someone, wiffles

In my opinion, Final Fantasy's style took a downward spiral since the release of FFX as a climax of this neo-japanese-mash-near-tokyo-street-like style that is now rooted in the series.

Every FF game they have released since then have been so visually disappointing to me from an art/visuals standpoint that I haven't made an effort to keep up on them.

4,6,7,8,10 are where it was at.

Also hated the original FFCC.

Who wouldn't? The point is, this game isn't so much about awesome style or anything, it's a dungeon crawler with 4 player real time combat. Heck, it's a handheld RPG without ♥♥♥♥ random encounters. It's fun.

Also, you're being biased if you think 10 looks better than 12, but lets not open that can of worms.

I liked the original Crystal Chronicles, and I think 10 looked better than 12.

I did not like FFXII, personally.
For one thing, it was very, very DRY. Boring. The humor was... nonexistent.
For another, I never really felt a connection with any of the characters. They had few, if not no, motivations, from what I saw.
The plot was mostly stolen from star wars.
The focus was on the war, but not the characters.
Gambits were difficult to use, and it was frustrating to have to earn them to make your allies able to function by themselves.
Plot was uninteresting, the only development that I even cared about after many hours of play was that Vaan's brother died at the beginning. Why should I care about this war? Whats the big deal?

The only redeeming qualities to me were the graphics, the music, and the permit system, which might not even count considering it was very similar to the grid system in FFX.


But I have to agree, the FF series has gone downhill since, ohhh, FFX-2.
Hopefully thirteen will break this horrible streak, I have yet to play more than 30 minutes in.


But yes, crystal chronicles, I kinda like the original, the gameplay was fun, but there was no end. You just keep farming that liquid, I ended up quitting in the middle of year 3.

I'm curious whether this would be fun.

Actually, there was an end to the original, it was a very obscure secret boss. It gave you an element that could bypass all miasma if you kept playing, too.

This game was alright I suppose, although I preferred the gamecube one.
In my opinion it's still better than most conventional FF games, but the tactics spinoff series is definitely my favorite over this one.