[gamebabble] Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon (Wii)
It's been awhile since I wrote one of these reviews, probably because it's been awhile since I finished an RPG. I'm not really up for going into this level of essay with platformers. Anyhow...
Story
Cid, an inventor/adventurer, and his partner Chocobo are searching the world for an artifact known as "timeless power" which Cid hopes to use to build an airship. They find it in a mysterious dungeon, but it is taken from them by Cid's rival Irma. All three are hit by a random plot device, and, along with Irma's chocobo companion Volg, are drawn into a town called Lostime.
Everyone in Lostime has lost their memory, and Chocobo decides that he will retrieve the townspeople's memories, which just happen to be buried in their minds in the form of roguelike dungeons. In the course of his adventures, Chocobo meets a young girl named Shirma, who becomes the main side character, and a baby named Raffaelo, who matures very quickly into a teenager and who has a terrible secret.
The plot of Chocobo's Dungeon had potential in the form of the question: "If someone's memories are bad, might it not be better for them to not remember at all?" There are hints that what happened in Lostime in the past was horrible enough that someone might wish to forget it. However, any bite this theme might have had is completely lost by the end (no more spoilers!). But I have to give it its props in that other roguelikes I've seen don't have a plot to speak of.
Gameplay
As mentioned in the plot section, Chocobo's Dungeon is a "roguelike" game. There is a central town where you interact with the townspeople and do your inventory management, but the bulk of the action takes place in randomly generated halls and rooms with monsters, items, and traps scattered around. There are boss fights at the end of the major dungeons, some easy, some challenging. Chocobo learns a nice handful of jobs as rewards for completing dungeons. These jobs are in the same vein as other FF job systems: Black Mage is an elemental damage/kiting class, White Mage can live through almost anything, Knight is a toe-to-toe fighter with high defense, and so on.
In addition to the regular dungeons, there are "challenge" dungeons which limit Chocobo in some way. Some have level caps, some reduce him to 1HP (!), and in some he is moving in darkness. You can never bring your precious stock of items into these dungeons, and must rely on your job skills, items you find in the dungeon itself, and caution to get you through.
If Chocobo is defeated, he loses all but his currently equipped items and the gil he is carrying, but keeps his earned levels--both his base level and his job levels. You're given huge amounts of safe space to put your extra items into, so even if you choose not to reset when you lose, you could probably bring yourself back up to speed quickly.
I thought it was well put together, but found that, after about the halfway mark, the dungeons were too easy. You are given a larger and larger pool of items and job abilities as you move along, but the monsters don't increase in density or difficulty. Items shore up any class's lacks--for example, any job can do a Black Mage's Blizzard or Drain spells, or a White Mage's Protect and Shell, with scrolls that stack to 9 in a single inventory slot.
I didn't play all the jobs to the max, not even close, but at least four had some form of HP recovery, MP recovery, and/or high-damage attack/spell. Your gear was not limited by class, and in your travels you are likely to find items that can counter any status effect the monsters can throw at you, even the thornier ones like sleep and confusion. And you can always bring potions and ethers in with you. In any case, between items, gear, and the abilities themselves, the jobs started to seem the same aside from general ATK or DEF after awhile.
Look and Feel
There is a "jigsaw puzzle piece" visual motif throughout Chocobo's Dungeon--Lostime is surrounded by what looks like a force field made of puzzle pieces, each character's memory comes back in a scene with their portrait framed by drifting puzzle pieces, and so on. It's pretty neat. Each dungeon has its own distinct "look." One has clockwork gears in the walls and background, another is watery and green. It's all pretty, although in static camera angles where Chocobo is in the middle-to-long distance, things can look grainy or dim.
The less said about the voice acting, the better. It is noticeably bad, and I'm not a person who pays much attention to voice acting.
The developers decided to use favorite pieces from many or all of the mainline FF games for their background music. I recognized themes from FFV, VII and even XI among the game's tunes. I'm torn about this: on one side, they chose some of my favorites, which made me smile, and they were used in appropriate situations. But, at the same time, isn't that a bit cheap? Couldn't they come up with some new stuff aside from a couple of pop songs?
One final thing I must mention are what I call the "cute points." These are clickable spots where nothing happens except Chocobo does something monstrously cute!!
*****
I love dungeon-crawlers, and cute things, so I enjoyed Chocobo's Dungeon from start to finish. But although I liked it, it could have done a lot more. More meat in the combat or storyline, more attention paid to the voice acting (a fault of the US production company), or something truly new in the second half. Fun, but not a masterpiece. 6/10, two stars on Backloggery.
Story
Cid, an inventor/adventurer, and his partner Chocobo are searching the world for an artifact known as "timeless power" which Cid hopes to use to build an airship. They find it in a mysterious dungeon, but it is taken from them by Cid's rival Irma. All three are hit by a random plot device, and, along with Irma's chocobo companion Volg, are drawn into a town called Lostime.
Everyone in Lostime has lost their memory, and Chocobo decides that he will retrieve the townspeople's memories, which just happen to be buried in their minds in the form of roguelike dungeons. In the course of his adventures, Chocobo meets a young girl named Shirma, who becomes the main side character, and a baby named Raffaelo, who matures very quickly into a teenager and who has a terrible secret.
The plot of Chocobo's Dungeon had potential in the form of the question: "If someone's memories are bad, might it not be better for them to not remember at all?" There are hints that what happened in Lostime in the past was horrible enough that someone might wish to forget it. However, any bite this theme might have had is completely lost by the end (no more spoilers!). But I have to give it its props in that other roguelikes I've seen don't have a plot to speak of.
Gameplay
As mentioned in the plot section, Chocobo's Dungeon is a "roguelike" game. There is a central town where you interact with the townspeople and do your inventory management, but the bulk of the action takes place in randomly generated halls and rooms with monsters, items, and traps scattered around. There are boss fights at the end of the major dungeons, some easy, some challenging. Chocobo learns a nice handful of jobs as rewards for completing dungeons. These jobs are in the same vein as other FF job systems: Black Mage is an elemental damage/kiting class, White Mage can live through almost anything, Knight is a toe-to-toe fighter with high defense, and so on.
In addition to the regular dungeons, there are "challenge" dungeons which limit Chocobo in some way. Some have level caps, some reduce him to 1HP (!), and in some he is moving in darkness. You can never bring your precious stock of items into these dungeons, and must rely on your job skills, items you find in the dungeon itself, and caution to get you through.
If Chocobo is defeated, he loses all but his currently equipped items and the gil he is carrying, but keeps his earned levels--both his base level and his job levels. You're given huge amounts of safe space to put your extra items into, so even if you choose not to reset when you lose, you could probably bring yourself back up to speed quickly.
I thought it was well put together, but found that, after about the halfway mark, the dungeons were too easy. You are given a larger and larger pool of items and job abilities as you move along, but the monsters don't increase in density or difficulty. Items shore up any class's lacks--for example, any job can do a Black Mage's Blizzard or Drain spells, or a White Mage's Protect and Shell, with scrolls that stack to 9 in a single inventory slot.
I didn't play all the jobs to the max, not even close, but at least four had some form of HP recovery, MP recovery, and/or high-damage attack/spell. Your gear was not limited by class, and in your travels you are likely to find items that can counter any status effect the monsters can throw at you, even the thornier ones like sleep and confusion. And you can always bring potions and ethers in with you. In any case, between items, gear, and the abilities themselves, the jobs started to seem the same aside from general ATK or DEF after awhile.
Look and Feel
There is a "jigsaw puzzle piece" visual motif throughout Chocobo's Dungeon--Lostime is surrounded by what looks like a force field made of puzzle pieces, each character's memory comes back in a scene with their portrait framed by drifting puzzle pieces, and so on. It's pretty neat. Each dungeon has its own distinct "look." One has clockwork gears in the walls and background, another is watery and green. It's all pretty, although in static camera angles where Chocobo is in the middle-to-long distance, things can look grainy or dim.
The less said about the voice acting, the better. It is noticeably bad, and I'm not a person who pays much attention to voice acting.
The developers decided to use favorite pieces from many or all of the mainline FF games for their background music. I recognized themes from FFV, VII and even XI among the game's tunes. I'm torn about this: on one side, they chose some of my favorites, which made me smile, and they were used in appropriate situations. But, at the same time, isn't that a bit cheap? Couldn't they come up with some new stuff aside from a couple of pop songs?
One final thing I must mention are what I call the "cute points." These are clickable spots where nothing happens except Chocobo does something monstrously cute!!
*****
I love dungeon-crawlers, and cute things, so I enjoyed Chocobo's Dungeon from start to finish. But although I liked it, it could have done a lot more. More meat in the combat or storyline, more attention paid to the voice acting (a fault of the US production company), or something truly new in the second half. Fun, but not a masterpiece. 6/10, two stars on Backloggery.