One does not usually associate the Final Fantasy franchise with the "Sim-City" genre of games, so it's anyone's guess whose idea it was to make a spin off of a spin off and give the Crystal Chronicles IP a sim game for WiiWare. For 1500 Wii Points (and even more if you want all of the game's content), My Life as a King has a lot to prove as a WiiWare title, but seems to have won a good number of fans since its release.
The basic premise of the game is that players take on the role of a young boy who has been forced into the role of king since the disappearance of his father. The land has finally been purged of miasma (the main plot element of the GCN Crystal Chronicles title), so the young king and his subjects return to their kingdom, now barren, and set to rebuild. The little king has the ability to use Elementite in conjunction with the energy of the giant crystal of the kingdom to create buildings and bring his subjects back. Using this power, it's up to the player to gradually bring the kingdom back to its former glory.
Players will have to assign select villagers who are able and willing to become "Adventurers," a system that serves as the game's base and helps distinguish it from other titles of the same genre. Adventurers can be sent off to dungeons outside of the town to defeat monsters, gain experience, clear pathways to other dungeons, and most importantly, acquire items such as elementite or special resources which will help the town prosper, including the ability to create new types of buildings or more of any given type.
Just how fun is all of this, though? For starters, the game is a lot less complex than Sim City as far as learning how to play it. That said, it also has a lot of complexity, such as the Morale system (which builds relationships within the city and helps the city mature), the way that placement of buildings can have a dramatic effect on their usefulness, and, more importantly, the entire Adventuring system, which has classes, detailed statistics, and even full-blown RPG battles calculating in the background as your day goes on. At the start of each day, you can create behests, assignments that you want accomplished that day (though their number is limited). A helpful notifier in the corner of the screen updates you on any significant happenings, which helps you prepare for the next day based on whether or not your crusaders can accomplish the tasks you assigned.
My Life as a King is the type of game that will either entirely bore some gamers or completely hook them. I personally found myself addicted despite my aversion to the genre, which likely had to do with the RPG-like growth of my adventurers and my town. The title has a lot of depth and strategy to it, as well as a lot of play value for those who get into it. The extra downloadable content only adds even more -- though, sadly, it would cost about 1500+ Wii Points to purchase it all. There's a fair plot to go along with the proceedings, as well, even coming up with a good reason why the player should stay and aid the town rather than go and fight monsters him/herself. All in all, there's a lot to be had for a downloadable Wii game.
All of that taken into account, there are certainly some issues. While the presentation is great for a WiiWare game, the gameplay can certainly feel slow -- as in, more slow than it needs to be. It took entirely too long for me to finally start getting into a flow where I was actually growing my city: classes, a party system for my adventurers, and such things of this nature all took quite a long time to accomplish, not to mention that my warriors would seem to get depressed and fatigued for no specific reason all too often and thus not accomplish the goals I set them out to take care of. The amount of time that passes in a day also seems just a couple minutes too short, as well. The fact that so much content must be bought to experience the full game is also a huge downer.
