It's so cute.

Really. I've never been much afraid of losing my masculine image, so let me say this with all the gleeful abandon of a high school girl: Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Rings of Fate is as cute as a button, darn it, and it's a pretty decent game, too.

With Ring of Fates, developer Square Enix has crafted an addicting action RPG that throws me back to the days of Diablo 2. Ring of Fates is notably more cheerful than Blizzard's epic, of course, but whether I'm clicking frantically or feeling my hands cramp from holding the DS, both games possess that addicting quality I've come to fear. Realizing that I've been playing my DS for three hours straight is more than a little depressing at times.

The Crystal Chronicles series started back on the Gamecube in 2004. I've never played the original title, I'll admit, mostly because of the difficulty in doing so. Getting a game going with friends required multiple Game Boy Advances, a luxury I had neither the friends nor the patience for. Ring of Fates effectively eliminates that difficulty by moving the franchise to the DS, opening up the wide world of Wi-Fi for all sorts of co-op or party gaming. Unfortunately, the multiplayer aspect of Rings of Fate is surprisingly limited, forcing players to use the local wireless between systems in order to feed the addiction.

It's a strange move on Square Enix's part, in my opinion. The idea of being able to create a character and venture out on quests with friends in another part of the country is very appealing, particularly with the DS's inherent portability. By limiting the multiplayer to local wireless, however, I would be forced to gather my friends together and have us all game in the same room, a picture which is so dorky I don't dare think of it.

This left me with no choice but to play the single player portion of the game. Thankfully, Square Enix has crafted an adventure entertaining enough to last me through the game's ten or so hours, with character dialogue occasionally hilarious and never tedious. The hacking-and-slashing to go with it is enjoyable, as it must be, seeing as how there are only a few things you'll do during the adventure: kill, loot, and forge equipment.

It's a simple setup. I'd take my character to a new dungeon, murder a new set of monsters, steal items from their still-quivering corpses, and dash off to town with every intention of making a new weapon to do the exact same thing somewhere new. The process is made interesting by the fact that every item - hat, armor, or weapon - is individually modeled and displayed on your character, tapping into my vain desire to have the most stylish mass murderer ever.