Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is a city simulation game developed and published by Square Enix for the Wii's WiiWare service on May 12, 2008.

Gameplay
You take the role of King Leo, who is the new king of Padarak. In this game, the magic of Architek provided by the Grand Crystal of Padarak allows Leo to build new buildings in his kingdom to increase its population, increase the morale of the city, and train adventurers and give them the items, abilities, and spells required to successfully take on dungeons. Architek is powered by elementite which must be acquired by sending adventurers into dungeons. As Leo is the king of the city he cannot send himself to dungeons, so he instead enlists the help of adventurers by putting a behest on a bulletin board where adventurers will ask Leo if he or she can do the behest. Behests must be paid for using Gil. Successful behests may result in elementite being acquired, and may teach Leo how to build a new type of building or allow him to build another of a certain type of building.

Adventurers can be equipped with weapons, armor, and items which are purchased at item stores. Adventures can also change jobs by entering a certain building, and there are four job types in the game, Warrior, Thief, White Mage, and Black Mage. Each job type specializes in different abilities and must equip different weapons and armor. Also, a building can be built which allows adventurers to form a party of four adventurers.

The city's morale can be increased as Leo talks to people in the kingdom. When the morale is boosted enough he obtains a morale boost which gives him additional Gil and also the ability to choose to improve the city's quality of life or develop the kingdom further.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) As the title suggests, instead of taking a role of an adventurer like in most games in the series and in most RPG games in general, you take the role of a king of a kingdom.
 * 2) Nice pick-up and play gameplay.
 * 3) A nice blend of RPG mechanics with simulation elements.
 * 4) A good amount of unique lines of dialog can be found for such a small game in file size.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Three out of the four playable tribe races are premium downloadable content.
 * 2) When building buildings, the game's frame-rate drops noticeably. It can also lower when a lot of buildings are in the kingdom with almost no slots for buildings vacant.
 * 3) The game was only released for the WiiWare service, which means you can only buy the game on the Wii Shop Channel. But now you can no longer get it since it is now closed down.