Posts Tagged ‘Chocobo’
Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon Game Review–A Warking Disappointment
Yes, I know that kind of punnage in a headline should probably get me shot by the pun police (whom as we all know are only permitted to carry chocolate guns for irony’s sake), but I do it because I CAN. Now, that having been thoroughly exhausted, let’s wade into just WHY this game disappointed me so deeply.
But first, the incredibly confusion Square-Enix brand plotline. A long, long time ago, before Cid got old and showed up with his airship in every Final Fantasy game EVER, Cid was just a young treasure hunter looking for a power source so he could build that airship. And he, along with his partner, the titular little yellow bird, thinks he’s found it in the form of Timeless Power, a fist-sized jewel that seems to have a small galaxy inside it. Anyway, just as he’s about to collect his airship battery, it’s stolen from him by a rival treasure hunter and he, his rival, and their pets are transported to an alternate dimension in which the ringing of a clock tower bell causes a vortex to open up behind a person’s head and steals their memories.
Still with me? Good. Because this hasn’t even gone off the rails yet.
That’s going to happen when the star baby named Raffaello falls out of the sky and lands in front of the clock tower. He’s contained inside a rather large egg, and when it hatches, he emerges. Raffaello has the power to open the memory-stealing vortexes, enter them, and start sobbing uncontrollably while clinging to a rainbow-colored floating puzzle piece (representing lost memory), thus forcing you (playing as the Chocobo) to follow him into the abyss and rescue him from what looks like nothing at all. Repeatedly.
I’m only slightly kidding on that last part–you’re going to have to fight your way through a series of enemies to reach Raffaello on each level, but somehow floating star baby just wandered right through the horde of monsters you’ll have to fight. Ah well, it wouldn’t be much of a game without the fighting, now would it?
I admit, that when I started playing this, I was pretty enthusiastic about it. An action-driven RPG for the Wii? Sign me up! And indeed, the gameplay was pretty solid and fun, and there was plenty of humor to be had in the dialogue, and the stories were pretty solid and compelling (except for the overarching one featuring green-haired star babies that hatch from eggs that are capable of surviving planetary entry but can be broken from the inside by a baby), but I rapidly found a flaw in the game.
Specifically, the sheer repetition. I found myself dragging my Chocobo through dungeon after vaguely similar dungeon with only new monster types and new items to break up the monotony. And sadly, the story wasn’t THAT compelling to keep me that interested. I’m still trying to get my head around Raffaello.
I admit, this particular review is going to be highly subjective. I was basically disappointed in how much of the game seemed similar to the rest of it. I tired of doing the same thing over and over again. And I’ll admit, the rest of the game was solidly done enough to make it a really good game. So if you can stomach repetition, and don’t mind when things repeat themselves, and have a fair tolerance for redundancy (not to mention repetition and repetition), then you and Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon should get along together nicely.