Certainly an interesting little game.
I can't speak to Crystal Chronicles on Gamecube but I quite liked this.
For a JRPG on DS this game has some decently deep mechanics. I was honestly surprised at how much I enjoyed playing this, I had no idea what to expect and often struggle with finding RPG gameplay engaging, but was pleasantly surprised with what's actually here.
Instead of being turn-based what we have is a little action platformer where each character has some different abilities.
Some characters have more uses than others but I found myself swapping around enough to feel the variety on display. Meeth the potionmaker has the most mechanics by far however not all of them are as functional in gameplay.
There's also a materia system that is accessed on the touchscreen, the idea is neat but it's barely used beyond spamming heal and revive.

The game is engaging, it certainly makes me want a bit more and frankly, I'll have to get around to the original on Gamecube and its sequel on DS at some point.

The story was better than I've come to expect from JRPGs and I'm usually very opposed to these types of games.
There's still the final fantasy tradition of at least two 30+ minute exposition dumps, but on the whole, I found the characters enjoyable and the story compelling.
Square has a sort of standard presentation on handhelds which consists of shifting between entirely text-based dialogue, to text and voiced in-engine cutscenes, and then a few rare pre-rendered cgi cutscenes sprinkled on top. It was the same in Crisis Core. It's a bit jarring a first but I came to like it. The variety of presentation styles can serve to highlight important moments and update the players internal model of how characters sound and the highs/lows of their emotional profile.
The pre-rendered cutscenes serve as punctuation marks and naturally show off that Square was once the undisputed master of presentation.

TL:DR I would recommend this game if you can snag a copy or get DS emulation to run without throwing up. The story is compelling enough and the gameplay will keep you engaged even if it never really challenges you.

I think this is a pretty middle-of-the-road game, but this was one of my favorite games as a young teen. I think the story drags in a few places and is mostly forgettable, but it was a fun ride through. There's some really cool areas to explore and a pretty expansive multiplayer campaign that takes place after the story (and you don't need 3 link cables to do it lmao). The combat feels janky, and it's sort of a bummer that you don't consistently have access to every playstyle all throughout, but Yuri, the main character, has a pretty good jack-of-all-trades playstyle to make up for that. It's kind of a B-movie video game, but not in an enjoyable sense.

Did you know you can buy this 2008 DS game for full price on square enix's store? Right now in 2023? Isn't that crazy?

On one hand, the DS-adapted Ring of Fates succeeded where Crystal Chronicles had failed - to say the least, i.e. offer an accessible co-op experience. In doing so - however, the cyclical world and nuanced combat of the first was replaced by a simple, generic mash-friendly action-RPG. The overall gameplay is therefore more mind-numbing than entertaining, although its fixation with storytelling (in single-player mode), action-adventure (pairing Mana's A.I. party and swapping with Breath of Fire's unit-specific tools) and platforming unveil new avenues for the series' development.