The single-player campaign has the player escort the vessel carrying the crystal's energy, defending it from enemies and solving puzzles to progress. Multiplayer, which uses Game Boy Advance units connected using the console's link cable, has up to four players protecting the vessel. Deciding to partner...
The single-player campaign has the player escort the vessel carrying the crystal's energy, defending it from enemies and solving puzzles to progress. Multiplayer, which uses Game Boy Advance units connected using the console's link cable, has up to four players protecting the vessel. Deciding to partner with Nintendo for game development following severe financial problems created by the failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, franchise creator Square formed the Game Designers Studio as a shell company to develop for Nintendo hardware without impacting games for Sony platforms. The adventurers set out from their village, travelling to the trees guarding the vessel which gathers the myrrh, exploring dungeons in which the trees reside, then returning home to renew their village's protective crystal.:?12–13? Players choose their avatar character from one of four races; they can be male or female, each with four pre-set body types. Each character's attributes are further customised by choosing the profession of their family, which gives the character access to unique facilities and items each time they return to their home town. In towns, the player can freely explore and use the available facilities to create and upgrade both items and equipment using materials and blueprints gathered during their journey. The player can also encounter other caravans and travellers, triggering story events.:?28–33? Items used to support the player are both bought in shops and received as gifts from the player character's family.:?28–33? While exploring dungeons, players are confined to a safe zone created by the vessel, fighting enemies in a style similar to hack and slash games with actions assigned to command buttons; actions can be chained together into short combination attacks using equipped weapons to increase damage and charge up magic abilities. Certain elemental affinities are necessary for crossing into new zones otherwise blocked by streams of Miasma.:?28–33? Instead of an experience point system, character attributes and statistics are increased by completing challenges in each dungeon session which award skill points, and Artifacts found in dungeons which can be equipped to a character.:?28–33? In single-player, the player controls one character guarding the Moogle-held vessel from monster attacks while navigating dungeons.:?14–20? The game's multiplayer allows up to four players to join in a local gameplay session; multiplayer relies on the GameCube console linking with the Game Boy Advance link cable. All players are displayed on the screen, while their GBAs both control their characters and allow functions such as shopping in towns and performing battle functions.:?21–26? Character attributes are increased in the same way, except that the necessary points are given to the best player during that session. The type of radar and what it shows is determined by the color the player's Moogle—one of a recurring Final Fantasy race—is painted during stays in towns and visits to the adventurers' hometown.:?14–20? Crystal Chronicles takes place in an unnamed fantasy world inhabited by four races. The player takes control of a caravan hailing from the village of Tipa, in which members of the world's four races come together to help its mission.:?6–7?:?38–41? 1000 years before the game's events, the world's sustaining Great Crystal was shattered by a meteorite carrying an alien lifeform called the Meteor Parasite.