Wii Review: Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon

by Emily Balistrieri on July 27, 2008 at 5:12 pm

Everybody loves a Chocobo, and what better way to show it than by restoring memories to the inhabitants of Lostime with the help of Raffaello, a boy who fell from the sky and hatched from an egg? Dungeon crawling isn’t a new experience for Chocobo, but Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon offers some twists that enhance the Final Fantasy flavor of this friendly Roguelike.

Treasure Hunter Cid and his sidekick Chocobo get whisked into an alternate universe while on the hunt for mad loot. In this bizarre town, people think that forgetting everything is a great way to never worry about anything, so they don’t mind that whenever the Bell of Oblivion rings they forget their own names. Cid does sort of mind, though, and they meet a girl, Shirma, who also thinks something is amiss. Together, Raffaello and Chocobo have the power to enter peoples minds (randomized dungeons) and retrieve the lost memories.

So that’s where the gameplay shows up! It’s a classic tiled-based dungeon crawl where you lose your inventory and cash upon death. Actually, though, you get to keep anything you have equipped (that is: your talons, saddle, and collar), plus all your experience for both your character level and job level.

Yes, the true strength of this game is that it uses the Final Fantasy job system to add a lot of potential experimentation and player choice. Chocobo is given the opportunity to play dress-up before each dungeon, and as you bring back more and more of the townspeople’s memories you’ll discover more and more job memories to level up.

Besides the default Chocobo state, the first job you’ll encounter is the Knight. The defense bonus is pretty cool, but I preferred the Black Mage’s area of effect attacks. Eventually you find more interesting jobs, like the mage/knight combo, Dragoon, and (hint!) you have to actually thieve a bit to become a thief.

Of course, the dungeon is littered with various traps that sap your fullness meter (Gotta eat your greens, because if you get too hungry your HP will start to count down…), or hit you on the head with a washtub, or put you to sleep. Most items you’ll find after not too long are unknown and often cursed, so your inventory will look like a mess of skulls and purple unidentified objects with random adjectives such as “iffy” or “moist” until you get it fixed up in town or use the Appraisal item.

When you’re not in a dungeon, the town has quite a bit to offer between the Blacksmith’s HQ, where you can level up your weapons and armor, and the arcade where you can play mini-games (for God knows what reason) or challenge friends to an online Pop-Up Duel, a collectible card battle game with adorable hand-drawn style graphics that Final Fantasy Fables fans will recognize from Chocobo Tales for the DS.

Basically, Chocobo’s Dungeon has made a genre that is traditionally pretty inaccessible (until recently with the flood of friendly Roguelikes on DS) into something that probably anyone can get a kick out of. Even though the voice acting is mostly corny and the dialogue can be a bit laughable, it’s still nice to have a plot to watch unfold between dungeons.

The one major downfall is the graphics quality. In a dungeon, you can just sort of deal, because it isn’t so horrible, but at certain areas around town the camera pulls way out and it’s almost like your tv screen gets covered in Vasoline. The definition goes straight to hell, and you can even find the line and dance back and forth across it to witness the ugly pop-in of detail.

Luckily that doesn’t really affect the gameplay in the slightest. It’s totally possible to have a fun time with Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon– in fact it’s totally possible to have a fun time with sorting your inventory alone. Probably my favorite part of the game, honestly. Just a quick flick of the remote from the horizontal grip and all your ducks are in a row– feels so powerful!

Ridiculous digressions aside, if you haven’t eased yourself into the more hardcore dungeon crawling games yet, this is a good, FF-flavored place to start.