Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is the first Final Fantasy game to be released for a Nintendo console in a very long time. The series got its start on the old Nintendo Entertainment System and made its first fortune there, so this release is a sort of homecoming.

In the interweening period several Final Fantasy titles have made profitable splashes on the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. For a time in 1997, when Final Fantasy VII was the thing to have and they couldn't have it, legions of Nintendo stalwarts made a big public stink of threatening to buy the competitor's machine. (Or, rather, they made as big and public a stink as it was possible to make using only chat rooms and online petitions.) In any case, the new game will make a lot of people happy.

Or, rather, the idea of the new game will make a lot of people happy. For Crystal Chronicles has precious little in common with its doe-eyed, sci-fi-themed Final Fantasy contemporaries. There are no wild-haired space pop stars in Crystal Chronicles, and neither are there any wild-haired space volleyball players. The recurring themes of love, loss, and evil space corporations having their evil way in gleaming metal space cities are not part of the goings-on here. Instead, we get a role-playing game like many, many dozens of role-playing games before it: one set in a rural, medievalish fairyland crawling with monsters and magic and clueless villagers.

The game is all about the hunt for myrrh. No, not that myrrh. A different kind, with magical powers. Why do you want myrrh? Because it is your lifeblood. Here is why.

Once upon a time, an evil cloud came along and covered everything with evil. Anybody who touched the cloud got sick. Because the cloud was covering everything, everybody got sick. Lots of people died.

Then a few clever people realized that certain kinds of magic crystals could repel the cloud of evil. These people put a big powerful crystal at the centre of town, where it radiated its protective influence and kept everybody safe. Everyone was happy again, although not being able to go wandering out past the outskirts of town cramped a few folks' style.

Then the clever people realized that the crystals would not last forever unless they were periodically refueled. So they took a little chunk of crystal and put it in a cup, and then they left town. Hey! The little crystal cast its own protective mini-aura! The townsfolk were free to go wherever they needed! So they did. They set out in caravans in search of myrrh, which turned out to work exceedingly well as crystal juice. The problem was, myrrh trees were rare and usually guarded by evil monsters. The other problem was, myrrh trees only dispensed myrrh one drop at a time, which meant somebody was going to have to kill a lot of monsters before there was enough myrrh to make a difference.

This is the story in microcosm. There are actually a lot of villages and each one has its own big giant crystal and its own caravans and its own parties of adventurers. You often meet them in the countryside. They are mostly friendly.

The play experience is straightforward. You drive in your caravan, you find a place crawling with icky beasts, you kill off all the icky beasts, you kill off a superbig giant extra-evil beast, and then you get a drop of myrrh. Once you have a few drops' worth, you go back to your town for a big party. The big crystal will last another year! Yay! Then you go out adventuring again and again and again until you get bored or you find a better way of keeping your hometown safe from the creeping evil death cloud.

You can play the game with your friends, using Game Boys as your controllers. This is sort of neat, inasmuch as it lets you fiddle with your own weapons and bag of tricks using the Game Boy screen without disturbing the action for everybody else.

Of course, being able to play the thing on the internet would have done that too, and would have offered the extra advantage of not concentrating four role-playing fans in a single, poorly-ventilated room.