Review: Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon

Dungeon adventures have always been special fun games for me ever since the beginning when sitting around with a room full of other teen aged guys playing the original Dungeons and Dragons. But this Square Enix offering, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon id far from the RPG from yester-year. No, this one is lead by the cutest little yellow bird you have ever seen. Well, that is what My wife says...*cough*

Actually, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon is a continuation of a 1999 Square Enix game, Chocobo's Dungeon 2 out on the PlayStation. Though this newest offering is by far superior, it is by no means perfect. Much of the game play is somewhat repetitive, even shallow in some ways, but none the less, it still comes through with its share of fun, offering just enough of a difference in the dungeons to make it interesting.

To start out, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon has a good storyline. Chocobo and his partner Cid are treasure hunting out in the desert sands, searching through a tower, a dungeon if you will, when something goes wrong. Through this mishap, they are transported to a village called Lostown in the middle of a strange land called Memoira. Here memories are thought to be bad, causing sadness and hate and only good to be forgotten, which they are. Each night, the bell a strange clock tower in the middle of the town rings causing each person who hears it to forget...loose their memory of good things, bad things, and sometimes, even their name.

One day something even more unusual happens. A meteor flies out of the air and lands smack in the middle of town and as it turns out, it is an egg, and in it is a baby named Raffaello. This unusual baby seems to have the power of helping people find their memories, with the help of Chocobo. As the bell rings and the evil cloud hovers over a person's head to steal their memories, Chocobo has the opportunity to jump in as he follows Raffaello into the cloud and these are the dungeons where Chocobo must fight monsters and find and return the memories to the residents of the town. Especially the four oracles of fire, water, light, and dark. In this way he is able to free the land from the evil that binds it.

The dungeons are a set of turn-based game boards. As Chocobo moves a square, each monster moves a square. Use of an item, use of an ability, use of an attack, all constitute a move. There will be items that you, playing as the Chocobo, will find in the dungeons. These will include Talons which are offensive weapons. They will come in several flavors such as wood, leather, fire, and more. Each will have its strengths and weaknesses. You will also find saddles which of course are armor, which also come in several flavors; again such as wood, leather, fire, etc. There will be potions which will fill your HP and Ether which will fill your SP so that you may use your special abilities.

There are also other items that you will find that are unknown quantities and will have several "?s" by them. These could be good or bad items and potions. There are potions that if you drink them will take away half of your HP or SP so you need to be careful what you drink. To watch for those, you will need to pick up appraisal glasses which will let you identify what one of these "???" items is. It could be a very good item, or very bad. There are also some items that are cursed. You can use a book that you may find to remove the curse or take these items to the church in town to be blessed to remove the curse. You will not be able to remove a curse item that is equipped once it is equipped.

As you continue through these dungeons and return memories to people, you will also unlock additional jobs such as knight, white mage that cures, black mage that has ranged spells, and more. At the beginning of most of the dungeons you will be able to choose one of these jobs to use in this dungeon. Here's the point though. There are some dungeons where you will have only one hit point that you will be able to use and so you can't get hit at all in that dungeon. Another dungeon you will have no health so every step that you take will take one HP away from you so you will need to find or create items or spells that will cure you throughout the dungeon. More are the same way. Each is its own unique puzzle so choose your job wisely. When you die in a dungeon, everything that you have that is not equipped is lost. But that's okay too because many of those dungeons require you to go in with nothing to start with so you must sell everything or put everything in storage.

Additionally, if you die in a dungeon, you can go back into it again and choose a different job if you wish, but the dungeon layout will be completely different every time you go back in. So though the game may seem somewhat repetitive, it also changes too. Each dungeon is a little different in some way. Sometimes you may walk into a room and there is no one there, but you step on an invisible trap and a bell rings and you are now surrounded by 4 monsters, two are asleep and two awake and you have two SP gems and half of your HP left. Now you have to stop and think out what you are going to do several moves ahead just as you would in a game of chess, or if you are fortunate enough to have one, use a pair of teleport wings and escape the dungeon and live to fight another day.

There are a lot more things to know about the dungeons too line the traps and the duals, but I can't tell you EVERYTHING. That would spoil all the fun for you in finding out on your own. Naturally there are many things to do while outside of the dungeons as well. You can go fishing, play some mini-games at the Mog house like the card games, Bat Basher video game, and kick darts too. There really is a lot of depth to Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon and it really is more than just the same dungeon fight over and over again if you just look for it all. Heck, you can even grow flowers and shout romantic phrases to Dungeon Hero X. But I'll let you laugh about that part yourself like we all did. He really is a lot of fun, Kupo!

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As for the visuals, graphically I would consider Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon a treat. The environments are really quite rich and full. The player models are also well done but most might consider it all anime-ish. Well it really is. It is an anime RPG brought to life. The voice acting was okay for the most part though it seemed to be made mostly for the younger crowed, even the young at heard will enjoy it.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon goes a long way to offer a variety of fun to the child in all of us. No it's not a "perfect" game, and there were a few glitches, but for the most part this is a title that remembers that games are meant to be fun first and foremost. And Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon is fun for all ages. It keeps you thinking as a chess-master and at the same time lets you go brainless for a while and go tail-fishing for some Dil if you want to. Plus it gives you so many aspects to the game that you can keep playing it for more hours than you would have first have thought and find that you are still playing. I can easily recommend Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon to anyone who wants to pick up a Wii controller and just loose themselves in some chirping for a little while and remember what good clean fun is really like again.

Score: 8.2 (out of 10)

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