I’ve been on a Tower Defense kick after finishing my 3rd playthrough of Plants vs Zombies… so I went and picked up the latest Final Fantasy downloadable game on WiiWare, “Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord”. It is literally a tower defense game, in that you are creating your Tower of Darkness™ to slay hordes of adventurers that try and climb it to destroy the Dark Crystal™.

Despite the sheer goofiness and cloying FF:CC license, there’s a decent little game there. You pick floors of the tower and summon monsters to defend it. There’s a fair bit of strategy, and it’s just fun in that Dungeon Keeper way to build your traps and tear apart adventurers. It’s also cheap, like $10. Starts out a bit slow but really picks up and gets challenging a few levels in. My two little boys LOVE watching me play as well.

The other Final Fantasy tower defense game out there, Crystal Defenders on XBLA, I cannot really recommend to anyone. It’s literally a port of a cellphone game, and it is brutally difficult with an awful interface to boot.

Also this week Little King’s Story came out, and is a Pikmin style light fantasy strategy game. It actually has some engaging characters (though remember my tolerance for cloyingly cute is abnormally high). The gameplay is a neat mix of exploration, expanding your town, and resource allocation among your workers. The European version has been out for a while and has gotten some rave reviews. I’m not super far into it but quite enjoying it so far.

I guess it’s a good week for being an overly cutesy strategic tyrant on the Wii.