YMMV / Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time

• Complete Monster: Larkeicus is an immortal Clavat and a nasty piece of work. Originally, his goals were for the good of humanity, as he invented special crystal powered inventions to give the people of the world untold riches. Once the crystals began vanishing, though, the citizens blamed the collapse of the world on Larkeicus. They found a crystal in the forest and at first, Larkeicus wanted to investigate it, hoping to find more crystals. He instead had a change of heart and killed the villagers (including the children) in the village near the forest, which disgusted his apprentice Veriaulde the Yuke. Veriaulde tried to stop his master, but was knocked out. Sherlotta, the only survivor of the massacre, was a prime target of Larkeicus as she was given the ability to spawn crystals. Larkeicus decided to capture her and experiment on her and his apprentice so he could obtain immortality and be treated like a god again. Because of his master's experiments, Veriaulde transformed into a monster on contact with any crystals, which was a boon for Larkeicus, who wasn't concerned with the Yuke's well-being. Throughout the game, Larkeicus is shown to have free agency and is perfectly able to stop what he's doing, but is too engrossed in the scientific experiments he is conducting to really care about his apprentice or anyone else.
• Game-Breaker: HP and MP Absorb Attack jewels. Forget about having to fumble with the magic system or rely on restorative pickups; as long as you can lay down the damage, you'll be set for life. One Snake Eye is enough to make all your MP worries vanish forever, while slotting enough HP Absorb Attack jewels to reach the 15% cap (4 Gigas Eyes) will make you extremely hard to kill.
• Les Yay: You can save one of the town girls from being hit on by letting her pretend she's dating you instead. Even if you're playing as a girl. The guy who was hitting on her points this out. The girl he was hitting on says she knows.
• Nightmare Fuel: The flashback of Larkeicus massacring the entire village, which includes all the children, is quite horrifying.
• That One Level: The Desert Ruins are loaded not just with damage floors, but spike panels that race across the floor, spiked balls that swing from the ceiling in erratic loops, doors and switches that require you to haul butt before they deactivate, and loads of bottomless pits. Not a surprise they were designed by Larkeicus.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Setting the main character as a Yuke gives their interactions with Norsy an older-sibling vibe.
• Viewer Gender Confusion
  • The penguin mercenary. Then again, she's wearing a full body suit so you have no way of telling her gender until you recruit her.
  • The art style as a whole makes it a bit hard to tell whether certain NPCs are male or female.