Games You Shouldn’t Unplay: Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon

Games become best-sellers because when they have big budgets and even bigger marketing, more copies are sold. Unfortunately some of these games are not the best out there, but there’s a sadder story here and it is totally the opposite. There are great games out there that get virtually no publicity whatsoever, so it should be up to the gaming community to make sure these lost gems become found. Note: It’s a better idea if these games are bought brand new (If possible and if it’s not long discontinued), because the publishers will get the money and support. This publisher support can include green lighting a sequel, making a spinoff or more publisher support on that system.

This time on Games You Shouldn’t Unplay is a pretty recent release: Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon for the Nintendo Wii. This was actually a surprise game since the last time Americans saw little Chocobo star in a console game was the Chocobo games on the original PlayStation nine years ago. This fable starts off with Chocobo and his treasure hunting partner Cid warping to the town of Losttime after searching for an artifact known as Timeless Power. Losttime is cursed with the Bell of Oblivion, a devastating chime that when rung, the people of the town lose their memories. Of course, it’s up to our adorable yellow hero to save the residents by going in the dungeons of their minds and recover those memories.

Chocobo’s Dungeon will be very familiar to those known to rougelike RPG’s like Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon and Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja for the Nintendo DS. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of rougelikes, they basically consist of walking on a grid in many randomly created levels. It is turn based and each turn lasts as long as a single step. Developer h.a.n.d. Inc. has made tiny adjustments to the formula to cater to Final Fantasy fans and people who think rougelikes are too hard and boring. They integrated a primitive version of the Final Fantasy job class system. Yes this cute little thing can become a black mage (complete with beady yellow eyes) or a combat heavy knight.

As a Wii exclusive RPG, there is a surprising lack of motion controls. A quick swipe to organize the item menu is all you’ll waggle at in the main game. Making a RPG a wagglefest can be a disastrous result, and luckily Chocobo’s Dungeon refrains from doing that. It plays either through the Wii Remote on its side or if you want, a Classic Controller can be used. Motion controls are used, but only in the loudmouth Moogle’s mini-games, because what’s a Wii game without mini-games?

Thankfully though, most of the mini-games are pretty fun, especially the Pop Up Duel game. By playing the main game, you can gain cards for a Final Fantasy themed deck for Pop Up Duel. You can fight computer enemies or duke it out online via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. It really feels like there’s a completely second game in this game

Chocobo’s dungeon looks great. You can see the art perfectly in sync with the cutesy charm that the game is full of. Menus are very clean looking and easy to understand like the rest of the game. Catchy music is the first you’ll hear when you boot up this game, later combined with good voice acting (for the exception of Moogle). Finally for those with compatible televisions, and the game does run in widescreen and in progressive scan, something that should be standard by now. Square-Enix knows how Wii games should look and sound and hopefully we will see more games from them on Wii.

Some will probably feel like Chocobo’s Dungeon and rougelikes in general are tedious and frustrating, but h.a.n.d. made enough tweaks to make the genre more appealing and satisfying. The game starts off basic, but the game constantly give you more to do and makes the game feel more complete. You probably either never saw this game or saw this game with little or no response. Either way, this game is at least worth a rental to see how you like it. Chocobo’s Dungeon is one of the best rougelike RPG’s out there with tons of charm and worth a gander at for RPG newbies and veterans alike.