"Theres a card battler in my minigame complitation"

Chocobo Tales for the Ds is what IM assuming is the first of many Final Fantasy Fables to come. But don't let the cute yellow bird and paper Mario esque graphics trick you, this is not an easy romp through Rocket Slime.

The story in the game is simple enough; some great evil is out to take over the land and its up to you to stop him. Same linear story but it does a good job for being a game based on mini games.

The game play in chocobo tales is like most mini games collections on the Ds, you use the stylus to get the job done. You travel the world and find pop-up books which you jump into and each one has a twist on an old fable, a final fantasy twist. Each mini game has something to do with the book you jump into and they have different difficulty settings. Each book has 7 objectives for you to complete which net you different prizes, freeing one of your chocobos, getting extra cards etc. Besides the pop-up book mini games there are micro games to be found. The micro games give you a goal to hit for Silver and a ridiculous, laughable goal for Gold.

When you run into enemies and bosses the cards you obtain from mini games and pop up books become useful. You build a deck that consists of 15 cards to do battle. There are 5 different categories, Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Gray. Each card has 4 panels on them and each panel is one of the 4 colors. The real meat of this mode is found in the wi-fi internet play. I only played 2 or 3 rounds but it was pretty interesting.

All in all final fantasy fables is a good game and like all mini game compilations, has some good ones (Job Juggler) and some terrible ones. (Jelly Jugglers) The wi-fi card battling could keep you coming back over and over again if you like it enough. It's a good game and if you're into card battlers defiantly buy it for online play alone. You could finish in 12 hours or less if you're just concerned with beating the game, 20-25 to complete it. It's a good start to what will probably be yet another ongoing Square Enix series.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/17/07