Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King
Platform: Wii
Developer: Square Enix

My Life As A King, Is a launch title for the Nintendo Wii, Wiiware service, it cost's the most out of the other Wiiware games, but it's also the biggest wiiware game out at the moment. MLAAK costs 1,500 Wii points, It's also the first game on the Wii to use Nintendo's Pay to play service. Which see's you paying a few Wii points(the most being 800) for additional content, such as extra dungeons, Races, buildings etc.

Story:

Not much to say about the story really, for a Final Fantasy game, it's rubbish.The game takes place after the events of the Gamecube game Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, a young king must rebuild and repopulate his town, His father is Missing, and some Dark Lord wants to take over you town...at least that's what i got from it, because MLAAK doesn't really do a great job of explaining the story and for those who didn't play the Gamecube original may not understand what the hell some of the characters are referring to at times.

Gameplay:

Let's get one thing straight, If you want a fully fledged Final Fantasy RPG, don't come looking here. This is a Tycoon simulation game. You Will not see any fancy cutscenes or fight any battles yourself.

Okay, Right, I've never really been a fan of Tycoon games, but I was willing to give this one a try.
Like most Tycoon games the point of MLAAK is to quickly build up your Empire and make it as big and as powerful as you can. There is no time limit on doing this, but you have limits on how much you can build, You need a substance called Elementite, which is found in Dungeons, since you can't go to the dungeons, You hire Adventures to do the job for you.

Once the adventures go out to the dungeons, that you pick for them, you are left with pretty much nothing to do. apart form run around and talk to the civilians of your empire to build up Morale, which can be exchanged for making your empire into a a better empire, or to stay out later at night.

The adventures also try to act like jerks most of the time. Let's say you have a Black Mage Dungeon, where only Mage's can use attacks to hurt the monsters. most of them won't go for that dungeon because "they" don't won't to, well guess what I'M THE KING! do it!
It's quite annoying. but you get there in the end.

One thing the game does well is that it does make you feel like you accomplished something by building the empire back up, and it does create the Final Fantasy world quite well.

If you like Tycoon simulation games, then you most likely love it, but I found it quite boring.

Graphics:

Nothing amazing to been seen really, some times it looks better than the Gamecube original, other time's it looks like a bad PS2 game. also later on in the game, it suffers from some lag and frame rate drops.

Music:
In total I think's there's about 4 songs in the whole game, it's typical Square stuff really, which is a good thing, and it fits the game well, bar the odd few scores.

Overall:

Maybe i'm a bit bias due to not really liking Tycoon games, but some people are addicted to MLAAK, and I can see why, as it does offer a good package, even if it's quite flawed.
The replay value is good as well, since once you complete it, you can start a new game + on Hard or Very Hard mode. then there is the Downloadable content, which should keep you busy for a good month.
But overall I found myself to mostly be bored whilst playing MLAAK, which is a shame, as I was hoping I'd really like it.

Score:

6.9 out of 10

nice review. i still need to get this game :) even though after reading your review its not what i expected it to be

I was maybe a bit harsh, because I'm not a fan of Tycoon games, but I justn't didn't really see the fun in it, apart from when you can build stuff, and that only lasts about 10 seconds.

lol :p how can u not be a fan of tycoon games!!

jacko999 Wrote:lol :p how can u not be a fan of tycoon games!!

They just kinda bore me, some I can play for awhile and keep me busy for a few hours, so i "like" some, but in the end i get bored, just not my genre.

When I first saw you mention this game on the forum, I looked it up on wikipedia and saw it mention it was a building game... I sat there for a second thinking... "nah, can't be.." but now, reading your review I see it's true.. Oh well, I don't mind. Part of me really likes tycoon games, but that part of me hasn't come back from vacation yet.. You see, I have "phases" in what genre games I like, one month it'll be rpg's, next it could be FPS's..

Anyhow, reading you're review, it does sound a LITTLE bit biased towards the fact that you don't particularly like tycoon games, so all in all, I'm expecting a 7.5.. maybe 8.

I give it a 9. The activities can drop quicklyin the game, but you get enjoyment in seeing houses and markets go up in the town. I haven't been bored with it, and I played a straight 3 hours today.

how can you not be bored of just running around and talking to people...? I just don't see the appeal here.. or maybe i'm missing something.

omg yay a new final fantasy game as soon as it comes out im grabbing it :)