Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales

"The best Chocobo game ever created!"

Today, players may recall "Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon", a two-game series released a couple years ago, with nothing more than a smile in the lips and a thought of cuteness in their minds. While this title has hardly anything to do with the stated ones, in terms of gameplay, the cute Chocobo, his fellow White Mage and Black Mage are back, to face yet another adventure.

As soon as you start playing, you'll spot a scene where the White Mage was about to start telling a story, to some chocobos living in that world. However, the Black Mage shows up with a strange book, which is locked with a strange code. You'll have to play a first mini-game in order to unlock it, and by doing so you'll unleash the power of an ancient demon, sealed inside the book. The evil book quickly turns all other chocobos into paper sheets before leaving, and this is where all the fun starts. In order to collect those sheets and freeing your friends, you'll be facing several mini-games.

Those mini-games may sometimes be spotted by interacting with the main objects involved in them (i.e. talking to a Malboro allows you to play a small game, where you need to hit the famous Final Fantasy creature, before being hit by its breath), but the most important ones are usually found as part of the storyline, in the form of small books. In those cases, there will be certain conditions that you need to fulfill, most of which unlock new content: cards, new Chocobo fellows, access to new areas, or the continuation of the storyline shown in that book. Yes, because each of those books contain small stories, split into two different chapters and which, in my opinion, seem to be based in old children's fairy tales. Those are illustrated with 2D figures, as the ones seen in "Parappa the Rapper".

There are indeed many different types of mini-games: some resemble racing games, others make you collect as many items as possible in a certain amount of time, and there are even giant tangrams for you to play, always requiring the player to use the stylus. Also, all of them contain 5 difficulty modes, and while the final ones may sometimes seem too hard, their rewards are usually worth your time.

As stated before, one of the things you may get from the mini-games are 'cards'. Those cards, contain 4 different areas and are usually assigned defensive (and attack) symbols to some of those areas. Then, you can use them in battles, and when two cards face each other, the symbols available in each area are confronted, causing (or preventing) damage. Each card may also have several special functions, such as "causing more damage if certain cards were previously used", or "causing damage if it defended an attack from the opponent", among many others. In the middle of battles, those cards are always depicted in a 2D style and look plain cute, making me wonder why aren't there more battles during the story mode, since you only face around 5 different opponents, whom you can re-visit later.

However, the story mode is short, and such flaw is solved with the presence of several other modes, which enable you to play against other people, either via wifi or wireless. Those options may become terrains of card duels (and cool mini-game action, via wireless), and add up to the game's replay value, as collecting all the available cards (more than 110) will take you a long time. You can then use them to create several decks of 15 cards, and battle as many people as you want. There is also a sound player, and even a mode that enables you to get gifts, from other people who have the game.

The graphics are generally good, reminding me of the awesome quality found in Square-Enix's very own "Final Fantasy 3". However, the 2D moments of the game suffer from some flaws - while they usually look nice, and depict characters in an interesting way, there are times where the image gets zoomed, and in those times the game will look just bad, with lots of pixels being clearly seen out of their places.

Sound is also one of the best features available in the game, as you'll be able to hear lots of Chocobo-related special effects ("Wark?"), and awesome musical themes, most of which were taken from the Final Fantasy series. Obviously, it also contains new themes, created specially for this game, and those are as good as the older ones.

This game sure isn't perfect, but it is probably the best Chocobo-related game ever created. It requires some knowledge of the Japanese language, but most people will probably enjoy it, provided they don't mind playing a game that can, up to a certain extent, be considered as a kids-only title.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/18/06