Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord is a WiiWare spinoff game of the heart-attack-inducingly popular Final Fantasy series that takes the Tower Defense concept to its logical conclusion. You're put in charge of a sixteen-year-old Darklord-in-training named Mira (the daughter of the main antagonist from this game's predecessor, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King), and you lead her and her monster army in an all-out war against the human race. Being the new Big Bad in town, heroes from all around the world have lined up to attempt to defeat her. Her main goal in each stage is to fortify her tower with strong monsters and artifacts to protect the crystal on top (the crystal contains the remains of her father) against wave after wave of heroes.
This Game Provides Examples Of:
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The characters in the demo version mention several times that it's just the demo.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Almost all of the DLC is for new monsters, rooms, outfits that give you more NP or spells or accessories that are cumulative and give you even more NP, all of which make the game a lot easier. Which can be a welcome option for some, as the game is
Nintendo Hard as described below. - Daddy's Little Villain: Averted interestingly. The lead character is all Evil Overlord and very much a villain... but her father, the previous Darklord, was much more of an Anti-Villain, having the strange but sympathetic motivation of wanting to build a place where monsters could live in peace and happiness — the villain part comes from how ruthlessly and amorally he pursued this goal.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts:Using weaker, faster monsters usually results in this.
- Domain Holder: By the time you unlock all the Artifacts, the sheer variety of Field Power Effects now available at your disposal practically makes you a Reality Warper within your Tower.
- Downloadable Content: Including extra chapters and levels, as well as gamebreakers like the entire Items section.
- Evil Counterpart: To Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: The do-it-yourself version.
- Fanservice: Aside from the obvious bonus of showing off her figure, the majority of Mira's downloadable outfits are ShoutOuts to other Final Fantasy titles, including ones based on Chime and a couple based on Rydia and Porom.
- Fashionable Asymmetry / Rummage Sale Reject: Mira's default outfit consists of two different Pimped Out Dresses, cut in half vertically, and stitched together into one outfit.
- Genre Shift: The previous game was a city- and people-management simulation.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Mira is half-Darklord, and half-Clavat. She gets very upset when a bandit leader she defeats threatens to expose this secret to the world.
- A possible subversion, as the previous game hints that the Darklord was a Selkie who was corrupted by the Miasma, which makes Mira a hybrid of two human-like races.
- Of course, then there is the basic idea that Darklord is some sort of race to begin with...
- Killer Rabbit: The Mus. They're cute little squirrels that can't do much damage, but they're ridiculously fast and can be fully upgraded at the cost of just summoning a higher level monster.
- Level Drain: Between stages, Mira's tower will fall apart, and you'll have to rebuild it against the next wave of "goodies".
- Living Toys: Your Exposition Fairy, Tonbetty, looks like a living tonberry plushie. Mira even things she is. She's not.
- Mook Bouncer: Abyss Crane.
- Nintendo Hard: Just purchase the optional chapter 6 for 500 Wii Points. The first level, oddly enough, only contains 10 adventurers (in comparison to the 32 on the final mission). However, their order is so deadly that they will probably destroy your tower first time round. And the second. And the third. And the tenth. There's some later missions that have the same type of order, except with 18 adventurers. Expect at least a few of these.
- The adventurers (AKA enemies) will come usually in groups of 2 or 3, in quick succession, and will always be very varied. For example, instead of sending out 10 magic-type adventurers (which could be countered by ranged monsters), the game will send 3 magic adventurers, 3 melee, and then 3 ranged; usually with a generic or healer to top it off. This means that no matter what monsters you summon, they will always be weak to one of the adventurers. Even worse, they might send fast, low-HP adventurers mixed with slow, high-HP ones, and adventurers with special effects first to debilitate your shiny new monsters. Weird that this brilliant strategy only occurred to the adventurers just now.
- Then you combine this order with Jack of All Stats adventurers who can halve the HP of any monster/artifact, adventurers who stay on the floor for literally two seconds, the fact that almost every adventurer is a ridiculously high level, and almost NO delay between each party of adventurers (meaning if you don't defeat a party in time, the next party will simply waltz up to the top floor and make you lose).
- Admittedly, this has been effective in terms of revenue, as the game practically forces you to buy powerful monsters/artifacts so you can simply complete some optional levels. If you don't, the amount of time spent retrying levels would be much better used to get a job.
- Pimped-Out Dress: Mira's outfits are mainly this.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: King Leo from My Life As A King cameos in the last battle in the base game. Taken to an incredible extreme, if you have My Life As A King and its corresponding save installed on the same Wii as My Life As A Darklord, Leo and the kingdom's names change to reflect the custom names input in My Life As A King.
- Redeeming Replacement: What Mira eventually becomes. Over the course of the game she realizes the previous Dark Lord’s ruthless methods to help monsters didn’t solve anything, so Mira then elects to become a Dark Lord who works not to destroy the tribes but make peace between them and the monsters.
- The Reveal: Tonbetty isn't a living doll or a particularly weird tonberry. She's a Clavat girl, which is revealed when she gets knocked over and her mask comes off.
- Took a Level in Badass: In the first game, Leo didn't do any fighting. In this game, he's the final boss, the most powerful enemy, and overall a genuine Badass Adorable.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The Melee -> Ranged -> Magic -> Melee variant, with Generic units that can fight anything.
- Tower Defense: Very literally, you are building a single tower and filling it with monsters and traps to keep adventurers from reaching the top.
- Villain Protagonist: Mira
