For Crystal Bearers it was only on the market for four days (somewhat earlier for some because there was quite a bit of street-date breaking). If there's a significant dropoff in Crystal Bearers' numbers for January, then we can declare bomb, i think.

"If there's a significant dropoff in Crystal Bearers' numbers for January, then we can declare bomb, i think."

No, because Wii games have long term sales. If they are low in six months, then we know it's in trouble.

We'll have to wait till January numbers come in to know how well The Crystal Bearers really did. It was a change from past Crystal Chronicle games but there is no one style of gameplay for that series though. Look at all of them, only the DS games were similar in style I believe. The Cube version and the WiiWare versions were all different. So when people complain about how this version is so different I have to wonder if they've really played the past games. The game is weird but it isn't anywhere close to being crappy or horrible. (It requires you to have a bit of curiosity about how you play when it comes to it's combat. Most reviewers seemed like they simply wanted to pick an option and have the attack carried out and couldn't be bothered to simply play the game. Kept complaining about what it wasn't instead of what it was.) The same for Silent Hill. Both are decent games. Not ground breaking or huge must buys but good ones.

The bad thing about this is that both games were not advertised or pushed. Konami said straight out they were going to do nothing. Square-Enix had a token gesture with the odd ad at weird times (the same horrible push that The Conduit got with ads near midnight). Not to mention they had it go on sale after Christmas. A number of places broke the street date because of that and even then they couldn't really put it on the shelves so one had to go ask for it by name in some places.

I agree there isn't much incentive to do battles. That annoyed me about Chrono Cross. But they didn't call that game over that.

The main three previous Crystal Chronicles, so not including the smaller WiiWare games, were all co-operative based action RPG's with a certain kind of gameplay. Not being this kind of game is the big deviation Crystal Bearers made.

Also I may be wrong, but I recall there being news (rumor?) that Konami was barely even shipping SH to retailers. So take that as you will.

That review is not what I would call a fair representation of the game. The game is longer than that by a good bit, and the combat kicks a lot of ass in certain parts. There are more than a few strange inconsistencies in the whole review than I normally like quite honestly. The game looks beautiful compared to other Wii games. It is just about everything it was billed to be before release save for relatively short length.

While the combat was interesting and some of the minigames were quite flashy (particularly the last boss) I have to disagree. 

The game can be longer, and I mention that there are alot of side quest type things to take up your time if you so care to, but adding that still doesn't add up to a good value for a game that's most closely related to Zelda (which are the gold standard for value for such a game and have far more value)

And I definitely don't agree that the game looks beautiful.  There are a few cool visuals aesthetically, but technically the game is nothing amazing, and the sometimes atrocious dialogue/voiceacting helped bring the presentation back down to 7.0

Yet you complain about the combat, and give it no praise for where it works extremely well. And when it works, it is a fucking blast. Instead you trash it for the low points.

My problem with your length is it is entirely inconsistent with the text of the review. You say you got lost (despite the game being completely linear), and did side quests and yet beat the game in 9 hours. Without getting lost, and not goofing off I am at 11. I could have shaved maybe an hour or two off by catching a train here or there, but no way 9 hours to beat it unless you are trying to beat it as fast as humanly possible. The text and the numbers just don't add up on that one.

The voice acting is also not terrible as you seem to imply, nor is the dialogue. It is standard Square Enix quality. Yes it is absolutely atrocious compared to other media, but compared to video games it is absolutely fine.

Edit: Also, which Wii games look better specifically? You say it looks bad, but I don't see it. Nothing "technically impressive" is extraordinarily vague.

Yeah its sad news...