Chiisana Ou-sama to yakusoku no kuni / Final Fantasy: My Life as a King (WiiWare)

[kryss]

Or The Little King and the Country of Promise

1500 points. I'm thinking this one is going to be a great bargain. There was however a notice before I could download it saying that extra content for it would be chargeable. So take note.

I'm not going into the story here, just play mechanics. As you would expect it's very text-heavy but you can still enjoy it (and wait for a translation to appear online).
As the King you have been granted the power to create buildings, so called 建築術 (ken chiku jutsu) by standing on an available area and either pressing - or shaking the wiimote to summon one of your minions. Tell her what you want built and there you go.

However, you cannot just build without cost. You must collect a special kind of stone to draw power from. But you cannot collect the stones yourself as you're the king and if you were hurt what would become of the kingdom?
So you must employ adventurers to seek the stones. And you must pay them for their services. So you tax the people would live in your town.

Each new day you are presented with choices as to where the adventurers will be sent and what they'll do. Look for stones or look for other places to go to look for stones. Makes sense really. After that, the adventurers all gather by the noticeboard and you decide who's going and who's staying according to their skill.

You cannot leave to town so you must busy yourself with building houses and shops, talking to the townsfolk and occasionally letting a new adventurer join the band.

The moogle brothers are there, and you'll need them for certain things. But I'm not saying what.

This game is probably going to get more attention from me than ANY of the VC games I've downloaded up until now. The visuals are nice, the music is relaxing, I can't wait to get back to it.

[Phar]

Just got this, as already said the graphics are quite nice for a small download, especially the character models, just trying to get to grips with the basics at the minute though, built a few houses, I think i'm on the tutorial about tax or something now, i'll probably give it more time at the weekend as Star Soldier R's taking most of my time at the minute.

There was however a notice before I could download it saying that extra content for it would be chargeable.

It'll be interesting to see what extra content will be available for this, I did notice the red wi-fi logo when downloading it, makes you wonder if nintendo are just going to charge for just additional content instead of multiplayer gaming, I hope thats the case.

[r3z]

Looking on the website the examples of extra content given are extra costumes for the King & Chime (lame); and the ability to build the homes of/employ adventurers from other tribes whose dungeons you clear (not so lame).. costing 100~300 points.

[kryss]

That's where I forgot to look. Although in my defense I did finish typing the above at about 12.30 last night and needed sleep.

[r3z]

Just downloaded this yesterday and have noticed earlier that DLC is now available to purchase.. details here.

100 points for the clothing options; 100 points for a special large house which can have 8 occupants (can only use 1 as an adventurer) and pays a lot of tax; 200 for a shrine where you can temporarily strengthen adventurers; and 300 each for 3 different types of tribes with specific abilities or you can get them as a set together for 800. 2 blocks for the clothes but only 1 for each of the tribes/house designs.

As I've only just started the game I don't think I'll worry about the DLC content for now.. it seems like there is plenty to get on with for the time being so I'll try and build my town up a bit first.

[kryss]

Hmm...You can get that extra stuff either from the title menu, or the castle menu it says. May have to get some more points later and add more stuff.

[r3z]

Yeah, I just realised you could actually enter the buildings and castle today when I got the weapon shop, and found that there are options within the castle to take you to the downloads as well as from the menu.. the promotion of the extra content ingame seems a bit in your face at times, what with options like changing clothes being there by default until you click it and it says you need to buy them, plus the fact that the people in the town appear to frequently mention that other tribes could come and live there too - makes it a bit harder to ignore!

I don't think there is any way to remove/alter buildings after they're complete (is there?) so maybe it would be best to download them sooner than later.. guess it would add a bit of variety to the town, and the characters - I don't have many adventurers yet but have already got a few which are completely identical in looks and clothes.

To use DLC it says you also need to download an update of the game from WiiWare as well - not sure if I'd need to as when I got it yesterday the extra content was apparently already up, but I expect you guys will have to.

[r3z]

I'm steadily working my way along and quite enjoying this - it's the right kind of game to have just sitting there in your Wii so that you can go in and quickly launch it for a short 20-30 mins session.

Probably you guys have reached there already, but it's useful to know for how to plan out your town (especially if you're considering about integrating the buildings available via additional content later on).. regarding removing/altering buildings I mentioned before, when you get to chapter 3 you become able to remove buildings so that you can put bigger buildings in their place and use up space more effectively - the building/shop closes for the day and at the end of it you get the crystals it takes to build them back so you can rebuild elsewhere the next day, and any inhabitants "stay at the castle" while you move their homes so you won't lose any townspeople/adventurers.

[kryss]

Yeah I need to update it but it told me I need to have the same number of blocks as the game and I just don't have space so I decided to leave it for the moment. I might just erase the game and re-download rather than deleting other stuff.

A tip for job changing, only let NEW adventurers change jobs, otherwise they lose all their experience. You can increase the number of adventurers you can have by building the Guild and paying a little extra. This then ups the number from 5 to 8. To change jobs you have to have built the relavent job's building, like the white mage's house, etc. then when choosing the mission(s) at the start of the day you can set one to the castle grounds and choose which you want them to change to.

[r3z]

When changing jobs isn't it just their abilities (magic/etc) associated with their previous job which they lose rather than their experience level? Like you I've tried to just get new adventurers to change job (I've got 12 now) but they take a while to get upto a decent level where you can send them out on proper missions without dying.. and one dungeon boss I've met now doesn't seem to react to the attacks of my normal warriors so I was thinking of converting one of my levelled up characters to a black mage to do the job. It doesn't seem like warriors have any special ability so it should be ok to change them anytime, I guess? Think I'll give it a go later..

Oh, have you found out how to stay out in the evening yet? The site says the townspeople will put out lanterns if you make them happy, and I thought Chime said you could stay out late by using the 幸せ玉 to develop the kingdom, but it doesn't seem to have made a difference yet.

btw - there's a small preview of the next wave of DLC content which is due for the end of the month here. Nothing major it seems - a pack of 11 new dungeons which if you clear will allow you to increase the number of each shop you can build; and another special building which will give some kind of effect like the shrine, it seems.

[r3z]

Changed a few over tonight - they keep their current levels, but lose any abilities/magic and also if they already have items which can only be used by their previous type they won't be able to use them anymore (also got a new building for training warriors where they can learn abilities and after you place it you then have the option to change them back to adventurers if you want).

[r3z]

It seems like I've reached the final dungeon now, but having trouble clearing it as my characters are too weak and keep coming back dead - it's only s'posed to be a level 23 dungeon and I have a couple at about level 30, but even when I send out visitors of around level 35~37 as well they don't get the job done either. They don't even seem to be able to complete the few material gathering missions available, but all shop/magic is already at level 40 which my adventurers can't use anyway so I don't think it would do much. It's got quite difficult to level up too so it seems like it might be a chore to do this last bit

There is still a lot of space on the map which might have some more dungeons hidden, but I reckon it is probably saved for the extra content dungeons. Think I might pick up the 11 dungeon pack out soon as it's only 300 points (reasonable value seeing as there's 22 dungeons in the main game that I've played), and they might be helpful to improve my adventurers.. looks like you get some new weapons too.

[r3z]

Completed this evening .. the last part of the game was a bit taxing as you have to pretty much skip through a lot of days trying to build up your characters/recover them from dying and there is little else to do, although it's quite interesting to follow the progress of the final battle by an onscreen life gauge (some of the DLC dungeon bosses have this also it seems).

You get a rank and some statistics at the end (I took 135 days and got overall rank A), however it looks like there is still a bit more to the game once you complete it -

->Open Spoiler<-

you receive a bunch of medals (like the ones you give out for completing missions rather than the apparently useless ones which you get from making people happy), and then get an option to save your cleared file (can use a different save slot if you want to keep/continue your original town), from which you can start over on Hard or Very Hard difficulty. It says you will take some of the data from your cleared game through to the new game, but I haven't tried it yet so I'm not sure what exactly you keep, or what differences there are - would be nice to get a bigger town but I doubt it.

. Overall, it's a pretty good package for 1500 points without even adding any extra content - I reckon I'll start over once the new dungeon pack comes out as that'll add enough new content to make it more of a fresh challenge.. might even add some of the other extra content as well

[r3z]

Looks like I'm the only one getting into this, but for anyone that's interested the dungeon pack is out now! In addition they've also announced more content.. there's more clothes for the King/Chime, a library, "endless tower" dungeon which you can play over and over, and "Castle Reform" which will allow you to change adventurers names, etc (full details not up yet).

Also, there is now an updated contents page which explains exactly what you get with just the 1500 point main game. It shows that there are an extra 15 dungeons on harder difficulties (total of 38 compared to 23 on normal), so there's even more to look forward to when I download the new dungeons later on and start a new town .. although I might play the new dungeons on my old town first!

I have to say that I'm very impressed with this game. Never warmed to the idea of paid for extra content previously, but when the main game is a reasonable price and has plenty of content like this one it is a bonus, and I hope there are more titles like it coming up on WiiWare rather than the mostly puzzle games which are currently on offer.

[kryss]

You're not the only one enjoying it, I just haven't had time to get back to it. I think it would be worth the second play though for the extra 15 dungeons before buying any of the extra content.
Though the 3 extra races are a must, I'm not so tempted with the cosplay stuff.