A game that takes its roots from venerable franchises like Sim City and Final Fantasy should be good... right?
In fact, this game isn't even mediocre, it's bad.
Why?
It's a title from Square Enix. You expect a certain level of quality from them. Here, you do not get it.
Let's just get into it. You start off as a half pint king with your faithful squire who is for some reason shorter than you are, and a beautiful in a bohemian elven type way advisor. You come across a town with a big ol blue crystal just sitting in the center of town. This town has a penchant for talking to upcoming kings and then going silent after bestowing upon them the ability to cast town building spells.
Once that happens the game acts like this. You make buildings on preordained ground. People reappear. Their children become adventurers for the kingdom, they do behests of the king, they get rewards, you can make more varieties of buildings.
Yep... that's about it. Every morning, your advisor, Chime, will tell you it's time to read the reports of your adventurers and your financial situation. You got gold to pay for researching weapons or spells and to pay adventurers fees, and you get elementite to pay for buildings.
When you make behests to defeat a monster or clear a dungeon (which allows you to build more objects, like say a White Mage temple), your adventurers run up to the behest board and ask you if they should go on the behest. The king says yay or nay. A good king wouldn't send a level 7 off to a level 13 behest. However, the few characters who complete behests tend to get stronger faster as they can hang with the bosses and clear dungeons, thus getting more completion bonus medals for permanent stat upgrades. My first adventurer is not only my strongest... but my strongest by far. Read Gamespot's review, which is clear about this unbalancing point.
Second, you have to achieve a certain number of behests and clear a certain dungeon in order to form parties which add to balance of the game (something that should have been present from the start).
Third, behests are limited to one at the start. But later you get more options and more behests per day. But that also brings another problem. You issue the behests, but you have absolutely no control over which adventurer answers the behest. This is exceptionally annoying when you have a need for a white mage or two, but your most strong warriors are the two that answer the behest. Essentially, you had a wasted day and the gold it cost to post it.
So beyond issuing orders and living a totally hands off life style (you can't even watch your adventurers fight, let alone follow them out of the 3 gates in the castle walls).
So, prepare to sit back, issue orders, and wait for the next day.
Yep, that's the extent of it. With colorful Gamecube quality graphics and repetetive generic Final Fantasy (Don't expect Nintendo to authorize a voice over track on any game) type music to boot mind you.
And if you're really lucky, you can spend an additional 15$ on the "Add on content" for a new outfit for the king and Chime in addition to extra house types.
MLaaK : FFCC should probably be avoided by most people, including little kids who know enough to form parties, but can't figure why you can't do it without play for at least a good half dozen hours in the first place.
Sure, in 15 minute chunks, it's an interesting diversion, but lacks the true depth and quality of either a Final Fantasy title or a Sim-Anything type game.
Best to avoid even clicking on this title in the Wii Ware store at all, lest you get suckered in with the 1 click buy and lack of contrast labeling Nintendo uses online.
Gameplay : Repetitive(4) out of 10
Graphics : Mediocre (6) out of 10
Sound : Rerepetetive (4) out of 10
Value : Squaretastic (3) out of 10
Tilt : Eh... (5) out of 10
Overall : 4.5 out of 10
Good :
+ It has pretty colors.
+ Chime is hot in a geeky intellectual virtual chick in a game made for what should be preschoolers type way...
+ You don't have to play it if you don't want to.
Bad :
- 15 Dollars for the basic game, you can't leave the town, you can't go on adventures or even watch, and they expect you to pay an additional 20$ for extra content?
- I cannot express how repetitive it is to repeat how repetitive this repetitive game repeats itself in utterly repetitious ways.
- Utter lack of control of many things that SHOULD have been controllable (I.E. who wants to accept what behest, parties from the start, etc.). Think of it as Sim-Medieval Village Lite with Moogles.