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.