Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon

A brightly-coloured bird

I'm sure most people know that 'Chocobo', in the Final Fantasy world, is the name of a species (those large yellow chickens that can be ridden in other games). However, in this case Chocobo is the name of the main character in the game, going against normal naming conventions. You run around with your friend Human (not really, his name is Cid) hunting treasure.

The game shows its hand story-wise very early on - you soon end up teleported to a strange town called Lostime where everyone loses their memories whenever a bell in town rings. Without giving away too much on the story, the gameplay revolves around finding people who have lost memories and diving into their minds to retrieve them; this in turn involves fighting through the Dungeons of the title and beating the baddies that you find therein.

The game therefore has two main sections, like most RPG games - Dungeons and non-Dungeons. In the main world, you must explore until you trigger the events to unlock the next dungeon (usually fairly clearly signposted). Chocobo can dash around town barging into private property on a whim, and the majority of people are pleased to see him and ready to help out.

Once you've found the next person who needs their memories retrieved, it's time to warp into the dungeon. The dungeons run on a turn-based system, whether in combat or not - however, when there are no baddies around there are obviously no turns to take. However, when there are enemies on the screen, they only take a step when Chocobo takes a step, so it is slightly different from the usual "real-time movement until an enemy catches up to you" approach. If an enemy is next to you, you can hit it and it will hit you back, or step away and it follows you. So it is easy to avoid battles, as long as you don't get trapped between two enemies, of course.

The dungeons have two time limits, one arbitrary invisible time limit which will warn you before it is about to expire, and Chocobo's stomach. Chocobo needs to keep his stomach full (represented by a percentage value) by eating food. If he ends up being hungry, he will fall unconscious as if defeated in battle. You can bring food with you or find it lying around in the dungeon - Chocobo has no qualms about eating vegetables found inside brains, apparently. When the time limit expires, Chocobo gets too hungry, or is defeated in battle you warp outside the dungeon and lose any items obtained. However, you do keep any experience gained, allowing you to go back in there a bit tougher. Also, each time you go into the dungeon the layout changes slightly, keeping things fresh if you do need to redo it.

There is a boss at the end of each dungeon that is really just a large version of the enemies you've already met, so there are no real challenges there. Once the boss is defeated the person whose mind you are in gets their memories back, and all is well.

The story, although sounding slightly far-fetched on the surface, is actually quite engrossing. Okay, it is very far-fetched, but the characters are fun and amusing, and the concepts are quite different from most dungeon-crawling games. The controls hold up well on either the Wiimote or in classic modes, and I would personally recommend the Wiimote as you can play the game one-handed and there are no motion-controls to speak of.

The main complaint I would have about this game is that it doesn't push the boundaries technologically; it could feasibly have been done on the DS or the GameCube even, as it does not make any real use of the Wiimote and the graphics are decidedly last-generation. However, if it is gameplay and good clean fun you are after this will hit the spot. Also worth a look if you were a fan of the previous Chocobo's Dungeon games back on the original PlayStation. It's not necessarily relevant for Final Fantasy fans as there are, of course, no links to other games in the series, but overall this is a well put together game that will while-away a few pleasant winter nights.

80%

By Richard Bright