DPrime Review: Final Fantasy Fables Chocobo’s Dungeon

Final Fantasy Fables Chocobo’s Dungeon is a turned based RPG where the fighting is done on a giant grid. You are the main character from the beginning Chocobo who is a chocobo. You start out driving towards a giant tower which contains the item that your comrade Cid has been looking for all of his life. Once you enter the tower Cid explains to you that you get two different types of equipment the talons (attack) and a saddle (defense), he also tells you about combat, traps, special attacks, and hunger. Traps vary from damaging you, blinding you, halting you, to summoning ten to fifteen monsters to fight you, special attacks vary from class to class and each one takes different amounts of crystals and has different range, and hunger slowly decreases as you move and fight and once it reaches 0 you must eat or you take 1 damage a turn.

Once you reach the top of the tower you get teleported to a strange isolated town. Once you arrive a strange man welcomes you, you soon discover that this town is full of seemingly brained washed people that tell you your better off with no memories. Cid tries to talk his way out of the situation when a bell rings, The Bell of Oblivion, and it erases his memory. You are seen by a young girl named Shirma, she comes out of nowhere and tells you to follow her to the edge of town where the bells tone can’t reach you. You meet a baby named Raffaello who is a magic baby who can go into peoples memories and restore them. Chocobo can follow behind him and battles his way into retrieving Raffaello and helping restore that persons memory.

So as you progress through the game you meet Dungeon Hero X, Merchant Hero X, Romantic Hero X, and Card Hero X. Dungeon Hero X gives you tips on how to fight strategically and tell you things you may not have known. Merchant Hero X appears in dungeons if you step on certain teleportation pads and he will take your unused items for a better price than normal shop keepers. Romantic Hero X is a moogle that you can go to and say a romantic phrase (that you find out about in thank you letters from people who you helped get their memories back) and he will give you a card for each one you say. Finally Card Hero X is in an arcade where you can use your cards to play a card game online or against the AI, and he also offers arcade with 3 games (one you can’t play until you finish the game) that each have high scores, and everyone you beat you get yet another card.

Every time you enter a dungeon the path and items change, but the goal stays the same. When you do side mission to try to get certain peoples memories back you get a certain objective, such as having 1 HP, being blind, level caps, being hungry, ect. When you enter a side mission you have to leave all of you equipment and item with a fat chocobo who will hold on to them until you get back. If you die then you loose all items and gil except ones you have equipped at the time of your death. Your equipment can get rusted or cursed and to fix that you can help a preacher and a forger to repair or purify you items.

At the beginning of the game you have to make a choice and it is either to hold the Wii mote like a classical controller or up right like you actually have to you it. There are four different main dungeons and 20 side dungeons. The first dungeon (Fire) has 20 floors, then the second (Water) 30, third (Light) 40, and the final (Dark) has 50. Each one of the dungeons has a few bosses that you may or may not recognize from older Final Fantasy  games like Shiva, Alexander, Ramuh, and Leviathan. There are also classes that chocobo learns to use such as Knight, Dragoon, Black Mage, and Dark Knight. Each class has 8 levels and will learn spells ever time you gain one.

Chocobo’s Dungeon is a really fun game, kind of childish, but it still will last for a good twelve to fourteen hours of game play. The levels go up to 99 and the arcade is pretty entertaining and making a deck and versing people online is pretty fun as well. The town is filled with little side thing to play around with like fishing for money, more space in the fat chocobo’s stomach, and for the hell of it. If you really want to you can swing on swing sets and teeter totter with another friendly chocobo which is just kind of dumb.

What I Liked:

Story: The story was actually pretty deep and meaningful in a way with a few plot twists.

Class Changes: The different classes are really helpful against different enemies and bosses and the attire change is cool to see as well.

Forging: Every weapon had different abilities and level maxes that can be fused with other weapons and upgraded quite a few times.

What I Didn’t Like:

Voice Acting: The way that the characters talked and the expressions they had didn’t always go with the situation and it made it awkward to watch and take it seriously at the same time.