Description

Chocobo's Dungeon for the Wii is a bit of an odd duck as far as RPGs go, especially RPGs targeted towards children. Chocobo's Dungeon is one of the best professionally produced "rogue-like" titles that I've encountered. If you're wondering what a "rogue-like" title is, I recommend a light bit of reading on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike).

To put it bluntly, Chocobo's Dungeon is a niche title based off of an extremely old formula dating back several decades since the dawn of computer RPGs. It doesn't deviate far from the formula: random dungeons, random monsters, random treasuremore…, random... you get the idea. Each time you take a move in the dungeon each of the monsters can do the same, so it requires a fair amount of strategy. Each dungeon consists of several levels each of which ends with a boss battle. If you die in a dungeon you lose all of your equipment except for the items you have equipped. If that sounds harsh, consider the fact that old-school rogue-like games typically deleted your save file when you died and Chocobo's Dungeon seems pretty merciful in comparison. The game has also deviated from the traditional rogue-like formula by allowing you to switch job classes (knight, black mage, white mage, ninja, etc). All in all, it makes improvements on the formula while staying true to the concept. The problem with this is that the rogue-like formula is probably either too slow paced or too hard for most children to come to grips with (and many adults). If you like rogue-like games though, I recommend it.

Here's where the appeal to rogue-like fans tends to drop a bit. The game falters in the storyline department. I will not lie when I say that the storyline presentation is generally fairly terrible. The basic premise and concept for the storyline is actually pretty sweet but then some overpaid write at Squaresoft decided that a huge portion of the storyline had to center around a baby. So you get to run around as a big chicken and help a baby save people's memories by diving into their minds and... I'm sorry... I can't go on. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and I just started skipping most of the story elements.

Pros:
+++ It's a professional grade, high-quality rogue-like game.
+++ Dungeon graphics and monsters are well designed
+++ The music is pretty much completely amazing with brief exceptions. Some of the best music I've heard in any video game for a long time.

Cons:
--- It's a rogue-like game. A majority of people really won't have patience for it. This alone will make you love it or hate it.
--- The backgrounds in the town often look downright ugly because of a poorly implemented depth-of-field blur effect.
--- A decent story concept that was butchered.
--- The controls are really unintuitive unless you use the Classic Controller.

So, I just spent several paragraphs pretty much harshing on this game, stated that most people probably will not like it, but I still gave it 4 stars. Why? Because, despite it's flaws, the game is an excellent rogue-like title and I have a lot of fun with it. Don't expect a traditional Final Fantasy title or a kid-friendly action game. That would be like going to see Tiger Woods play golf and then complaining that it wasn't as exciting as the Super Bowl. Most rogue-like games don't even have stories OR graphics, so this game stands out. If you enjoy rogue-like games I recommend this title despite the painful storytelling, but if you aren't sure or are unfamiliar with the genre I recommend renting it first.

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Info:

Category:

Games > Wii

Case Type:

DVD

Release Type:

Retail

Language:

English

Region:

NTSC

Comments:

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Cover Info:

Title:

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon (2008) NTSC Retail DVD

Part:

Front

Dimensions:

3226 x 2151 px

Size:

1,572 KB

Downloads:

115 (0 today)

Uploaded:

Report a Problem Wrong Cover Duplicate Image Bad Quality Wrong Info

15/07/08 by __Brujo__

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