by Bear » Tue Apr 03, 2012 11:10 am
Oh, I forgot to respond to Maple but forgot in my last reply. The bucket reference is from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. =)
Basically, you have a team of up to 4 people and the story involves having to adventure out to renew your towns protective crystal that wards off the poison that encroaches. Since you have to venture into the poisonous mists, you are given a small bucket of water that possesses a small version of the protective barrier. The issue is that as you go about someone has to carry the bucket, rendering them unable to attack.
There is a bonus to carrying the burden - you effectively become the party leader because you get to direct where the group goes. If they go outside of your bubble area, they start to take damage and can die off. So of course if you get bored you can run off with the bucket and leave your friends behind to suffer XD
The game was really interesting because the Gamecube had attachments to Gameboy Advances and SPs. It was a mandatory function of the game and drove the actual cost of the game up because each player needed a connection cord AND an independent system. BUT this was really really cool because it allowed for each player to have their own inventory and action screens and also broke down components of play to each player.
For instance, one player would have a map and another might have treasure locations and a third might have objectives that would increase the rewards given at the end of the stage. It encouraged some really awesome multiplayer cooperative play and even allowed players to chain magic into powerful AoEs if they could time their casting properly. It is certainly one of my fave games and when I first saw the Wii-U, I was really excited about the possibility of getting a new version of this game. Of course, I doubt SE would take the risk but one can dream, right?