The official Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Twitter account has just dropped some news that will be disappointing for many. Crystal Chronicles Remastered won’t feature any form of same console local multiplayer. It appears that after a number of delays to the game’s current release date of August 28, the team behind the game has focused on getting the online portion up and running over local support to draw in the biggest number of players.

Here is a translated version of the tweet for convenience.

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. #FFCC#クリクロ

While this decision has been met with a ton of backlash so far, when you stop to think about it the decision isn’t as terrible as it would seem.

First of all, remember that the original multiplayer aspect of the game on GameCube required the use of 4 Gameboy Advance systems and their accompanying GBA to GC link cables. This system was impractical and resulted in the games multiplayer functionality to be unusable for many. It also meant that every player had their own screen to use for things like item management which would not have been the case in a single screen multiplayer experience. if local multiplayer had been added some for of screen real-estate would have needed to be used for every player to do item management taking away from the other 3 players in the party. Not an ideal way to play this game but it could have been managed I suppose.

But, by focusing on the online aspect of the game, it will be fairly similar to the original version. Every player will have their own screens to play on and jumping into the menus won’t adversely affect the other members of the party. And another thing to note, just because a game is online only doesn’t mean you can’t still play it with friends together on the same couch! For players hoping to do dedicated PS4 play this gets a bit trickier, but remember the game is coming to Nintendo Switch and mobile devices with full crossplay support. while one person can play on the PS4 other players can easily hop in on Switch or mobile for a totally local experience. Thanks to the revelation of a Lite version of the game jumping back and forth between different platforms shouldn’t be difficult. Though, I do need to know if cross-saves will be a thing. If all four players want to be on a PS4 just treat it like a LAN party and bring your setup to impress your friends!

While it is again disappointing for one console local play to be removed, I think the team behind Crystal Chronicles Remastered has done a decent job of supplying a useable alternative to get the job done both close and afar. Even with this new revelation, it doesn’t deter me from wanting to pick the game up on August 28. But hey, these are just my thoughts on the matter. What do you all think about this? Let us know below!