Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Won’t Have Offline Local Multiplayer

Now, I’m just a giant chicken posing as a humble country lawyer, but it seems to me that a game known for its offline multiplayer being remastered for a new generation, should probably have its defining feature. A Twitter post from the developers of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered gives the bad news that when this fancified edition of the game comes out for PS4, Switch, and mobile in August, it will be missing its trademark offline local multiplayer in lieu of an all-online experience. Those of you clutching your Game Boy Advance SP Link Cables for good mojo should probably sit back down and perform some self-care.

While the news of the feature removal was posted on the official Final Fantasy: Chronicles Remastered Japanese Twitter page, the translation, and bad news come from gaming historian and translator Robert Sephazon (@Sephazon). According to his post, “Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered does not offer offline/local multiplayer due to development reasons.” A rough Google Translate of the official post comes out something like: “As we have introduced in official broadcasts, this product does not support offline multiplayer. For development reasons, it is necessary to select either offline or online, so we selected online multiplayer so that more people can play.”

While I’m not an expert, it would appear that, given the game’s release on mobile devices, that sacrifices had to be made in order to get the game viable and playing nicely across all versions. Something had to give and a local multiplayer component was the thing to get the boot. This is especially a bummer for Switch fans who originally salivated at the prospect of connecting locally with other handheld users but is far less of a problem for PlayStation consumers.

In case you need a refresher, the official Crystal Chronicles site says: “The game also features online multiplayer for the first time – that’s exciting because Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition is an amazing co-op experience. The original version of the game required four GameBoy Advances and link cables to play with a full team, which was awesome, but also required people to have all that equipment to hand. Now, you’ll be able to play online for a far more convenient and seamless session.”