No, I still haven’t beaten “Green Grass and High Tides.” I’ve given up on that quest.

Instead, I’ve been busy yelling at my party members in “Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Rings of Fate” on Nintendo DS. These guys don’t know up from down.

The game’s predecessor, “Crystal Chronicles” on GameCube, was all about co-op play, but almost no one tried it because each player needed a Game Boy Advance and link cable to play. “Ring of Fates” sidesteps this game-killer with the option for wireless DS-to-DS multiplayer or solo play with A.I.-controlled partners.

My girlfriend wasn’t interested in popping my second copy of “Ring of Fates” into her DS and the wireless multiplayer doesn’t work across ’net, so I was stuck with A.I.

That wasn’t the smartest decision, it turns out.

Well, that’s not entirely true. It was the smartest decision given the alternative of not playing “Ring of Fates” at all. Despite this post’s bemoaning of the A.I., there really is a surprisingly great “Diablo”-esque action RPG on the cartridge. Just watch out for the A.I.’s attempts to “help.”

Each party member in “Ring of Fates” has his or her own unique ability and weapon set, but everyone shares the same magic pool. If someone casts a cure or fire spell on their own, it comes out of the party’s total magic availability. The A.I. partners like to do that — often. To combat this, I simply made their default magic the equivalent of a phoenix down.

Take that, poorly coded A.I.!

The upswing is the game doesn’t force you to baby-sit the party. So long as you’ve done an adequate job of outfitting your own character with the best weapons and equipment, it’s entirely possible to solo through “Ring of Fates”‘ roughly 10 hours of gameplay.

It’s too bad, really, that I could solo and get through with it already, as it’s very clear how much fun “Ring of Fates” would be with a set of friends. Wired’s Chris Kohler recently offered to be my Wi-Fi friend, but I’ve already finished off “Ring of Fates” and moved on to a patched “Bully.”

Maybe we can pair up on the long-promised upcoming Wii version.