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Appearances are often quite deceptive. Chocobo’s Dungeon, on the surface, might appear to be a “kiddy” game, particularly with the presentation. The characters are all cheery-voiced youngsters and you control a bright, small, yellow chocobo who seems as though he’d be at home with Oscar the Grouch and the Snuffleupagus. However, sunshine presentation aside, spend some times with Chocobo’s Dungeon and you’ll find one of the richest experiences available on the Wii. While the gameplay in and of itself seems simplistic, there is quite a bit of depth in reality.

If you have never played a Final Fantasy game before, chocobos are ostrich-like creatures that characters can ride on to travel the overworld. In this game, you are actually controlling a chocobo (who is, surprisingly enough, called Chocobo…). The basic gameplay is simple. This is considered a mystery dungeon game, which all follow the same basic concept. The dungeons are randomly generated and each has a certain number of floors. The idea is to find the stairs on each floor to get to the lowest level. Each floor has randomly spawned enemies. Depending on the length of the dungeon, you may fight one or more bosses. Simple enough, right? The controls reflect this. You can either use the Wii remote or the Classic Controller. For the Classic Controller (my preferred method), the control pad or left control stick moves Chocobo. Melee attack is executed through the A button, while X brings up the menu. From the menu you can access your items or abilities.

In Chocobo’s Dungeon,  the action takes place in a town called Losttime in the region of Memoria. The denizens of Losttime are losing their memories due to the Bell of Oblivion that rings from the clocktower whenever they’re on the verge of remembering something. Many of the dungeons themselves take place inside the memories of the citizens, as Chocobo enters their minds. When he finishes a dungeon, he retrieves their memories, and the person (surprise) remembers who they are. Some of these people open stores for Chocobo, while others don’t really have any sort of reward. The other dungeons (without really spoiling anything) are set locations with actual monsters as opposed to the shades you encounter in the memory dungeons.

As this is a Final Fantasy game, there is a Final Fantasy touch added to the game. Chocobo can eventually change his job (class) to such jobs as knight, black mage, white mage, thief, and so forth. As you defeat enemies in dungeons, you get experience points and sometimes the enemies drop job points. When your job levels up, you obtain new abilities. SP points are used up when you use your abilities. Abilities include such things as healing, attack spells, and support spells (such as the thief’s alert, which shows the entirety of the floor you’re on, including stairs and enemies).

Aside from the SP gauge (which starts at three crystals and increases as the game progresses), Chocobo also has an HP bar and a hunger meter. HP (hit points) represents your health, it goes to 0 and you faint, causing you to be expelled from the dungeon. If you die in a dungeon, you lose whatever items are in your inventory at the time. Fortunately, whenever you find the stairs in a dungeon, you are able to escape the dungeon with whatever loot you have, and can then store it at the storage in town. The hunger meter decreases as you progress through the dungeons and can be remedied by Gyshal Greens, which can be bought or found in dungeons. Hunger is only a problem if you get to lower percentages, in which case you are unable to walk quickly.

The dungeons themselves start out fairly short, but the later dungeons reach up to 20, 30, and even 50 levels. However, as a helpful addition, in the longer dungeons when you reach a certain floor (usually 11, 21, etc) you get the ability to restart from that floor. This allows you to escape with items from dungeons without having to painstakingly go through the entirety of it.

In terms of items, Chocobo can equip talons (attack), a saddle (defense), and a collar (which has a random effect, poison immunity as an arbitrary example). Talons and saddles can be honed at the forge for increased efficacy. You can also forge two pieces of equipment together in order to make a better one. Talons and saddles also have seals, which add an effect. For example, a sleep seal added to a saddle will provide immunity to the sleep status, whereas it will cause enemies to fall asleep when added to your talons. Honing and fusing aren’t “necessary” but there’s really no good reason not to, as it is a huge help in completing the dungeons when you have more powerful gear.

The worst part of the game easily are the cutscenes and characters. The voice acting is atrocious, and the animations are decidedly poor. Often you’ll see that the characters mouths will continue to run on well after the voices have stopped, which is inexcusable. That being said, any cutscene can be skipped by using the + button, and I encourage you to use it to its fullest extent.

Graphically the game does work, however. The town and characters are bright and cheerful, whereas the dungeon denizens are more fiercely rendered. The story itself is pretty basic, and there aren’t too many twists involved. I’d argue that you can easily skip many of the cutscenes and still figure out where the story is going to end up in the end. The music works well, as the memory dungeons tend to have more mysterious undertones whereas the set location dungeons have music that either relates to their element or is heroic in nature.  That may not make sense unless you play the game, but trust me, it works. As an added effect, the Wii remote itself will emit sound, such as the level up fanfare and the chocobo’s chirps. It’s not necessary, but it works well.

In terms of length, the main adventure can be finished in anywhere from 15 to 24 hours depending on how many of the optional memories you complete. My first playthrough, I finished the main game with 16/20 memories restored (you can only access 18 before the game is complete) at approximately 23 hours. After completing the game, there are several dungeons you can access, including a monstrous 100 floor dungeon. As far as other replayability is concerned, there are also a few minigames that can be accessed, including the pop-up card battle from Chocobo Tales for DS.

Overall, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon is a deep experience hidden behind a cutesy exterior and a simplistic gameplay at root. On a system that is seemingly bogged down by shovelware, it’s refreshing to find a third party Wii game that isn’t just a rushed second-rate effort. The gameplay is repetitive, but not to the point where it becomes problematic. Chocobo’s Dungeon is definitely a game that should be in any Wii owner’s stable: don’t let the challenge scare you away from one of the most engaging experiences to be had on the system.

Graphics: cutesy graphics but work well enough. The environments are all detailed and look nice.  8.0

Sound: the songs aren’t catchy enough to get stuck in your head, but certainly not overly irritating. 8.0

Gameplay: Simple, but engaging gameplay that doesn’t grow stale. The job system helps keep things fresh.  8.5

Longevity: Main quest can take anywhere from 15-20 hours. Including the bonus dungeons, there’s a lot of content to keep people playing. 8.0

Overall Score (not an average): 8.5 

Until next time.

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