I haven't been following Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon too closely, mostly because of big work contracts calling me away to do other things. That said, its a game I'm pretty interested in. It's the odd Wii RPG, the graphics are ridiculously adorable, and its a roguelike to boot. Now, the question is, is it a good roguelike? There's no question Chocobo's Dungeon is gonna look better than Baroque, and it is properly turn-based.
I don't have my copy yet, and won't get to tear into it until after E3, so let's take a look at what reviews have to say about Chocobo's Dungeon. We've gotten enough roguelikes over here that by now I expect most reviewers know how to tell a good one from a bad one, and generally know how to write about them. For the most part, I'm not going to be disappointed by this selection of reviews, too! Good job, game reviewers! Anyway, read on and see what the 'net's biggest print outlets have to say about Chocobo's Dungeon, and maybe it'll help you decide whether it's worth your cash or not.
The high score comes courtesy, bizarrely enough, of IGN with an 8.4. What a brave new world we live in where IGN isn't giving roguelikes crappo scores out of hand! No, actually this is an entirely solid and fair-sounding review. What Daemon Hatfield seems most impressed by in Chocobo's Dungeon is how well it does what a good roguelike should do: force you to put lots of thought into your every in-game decision.
Chocobo can explore the town of Lostime much like your usual RPG, barging into people's homes unannounced and gathering information about the village. Once inside a memory/dungeon, though, the game switches to a turn-based experience where every action the player performs costs a turn. Chocobo and all the dungeon's monsters are governed by this system, meaning the player has to consider every step they take. Every move, every attack, every spell cast will result in a reaction from your enemies. This isn't a game where you can zone out and grind through dungeons leveling up your character. Successfully making it through requires careful planning and consideration of your environment.
What I would usually expect to be the high score is the B+ grade given by 1up's Jeremy Parish, who has never been a reviewer opposed to old-fashioned or simple game design. He does generally oppose crap, so it's fairly meaningful when he offers Chocobo's Dungeon high praise. What's interesting is that his review goes into the history of the prior Chocobo's Dungeon title that came to the US back in the PlayStation era, and talks a bit about how gamers' expectations of RPGs and openness to niche genres has changed.
With so much unchanged in this follow-up, one might wonder why, exactly, Square would bother publishing it in the U.S., particularly in light of the chilly reception afforded the series' last outing. Perhaps they're banking on today's gaming audience being more sophisticated than the PlayStation user base of yore, or counting on their fans' willingness to accept the game for what it is rather than excoriate it for failing to be something it's not. After all, console RPGs were still something of a novelty in the U.S. the last time Chocobo went dungeon-diving, having only reached gaming's mainstream with 1997's Final Fantasy VII. The Mystery Dungeon games, with their roots in idiosyncratic text-based hack-n-slashes designed for limited VAX mainframes, weren't quite what role-playing neophytes expected. Chocobo's Dungeon 2 looked like Final Fantasy, sure, but where fans expected spiky-haired ladymen level-grinding their way along an existential journey to mope the world to safety, they instead found a cute mascot battling merciless critters in random dungeons and struggling through an endless sequence of brutal setbacks. Gamers are more accustomed to niche RPGs these days, thanks to the rise of combat-driven console RPGs (not to mention the number of PC gamers and developers migrating to consoles). So perhaps Square Enix figured now was the right time to take a gamble.
GamePro's take on Chocobo's Dungeon is a bit more moderate, but still surprisingly positive given the mixed reception the mothership sometimes affords roguelikes and retro game design. Reviewer Todd Melick really plays up the cute factor, but... man, I can't blame it. All RPG grognard grousing about gameplay aside, looking at this game is like if you created some sort of generic kitty-puppy hybrid and then dressed it up like a newborn duckling.
One of the things that Chocobo's Dungeon does right is the story, which was one of the elements that kept me playing long after my patience for the game's faults had run out. The cute and cuddly Chocobo, along with series icon Cid, are mysteriously transported to Memoira, a land where memories are considered bad. Every night, when the town's bell chimes, the inhabitants of the land lose their memory, to start anew the next day. Through a bizarre twist of events that involve the appearance of a flying baby-it makes more sense in the game-Chocobo must enter the minds of his friends to retrieve their memories and set the land free from a hidden evil.
The low score comes from Game Informer with a 5.5 out of 10, which shouldn't surprise anyone who's followed roguelikes for long. Here's the entirety of Matt Miller's dismissive review, which is fortunately too short to waste much time.
A relic of a gameplay design that should have gone extinct with the dinosaurs, the name tells you everything you need to know about Chocobo Dungeon. First, there's Chocobo; the little yellow bird should never have been more than a guest star. From characters to plot, the story is profoundly forgettable. Then there's the Dungeon. I capitalize because there's no other way to indicate how central it is - the gameplay hinges on this concept. Different tile sets occasionally pop up, and the mazes are randomized each time, but you still just enter, grind, loot, boss, and restart in these dungeons again and again. The game does everything it sets out to do - it's just that what it sets out to do isn't much.
Now, what's funny about this review is that it's virtually identical in terms of score and sentiment to basically every roguelike Game Informer review ever, and you know what? That makes it a total failure of a review, and I'd argue a completely invalid score. For reference, here's a round-up of all of Game Informer's semi-recent roguelike scores and links to the actual reviews when possible. Compare 'em all and you'll see they're so identical, you could almost build a generator to write these things.
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team - 3.0/10
- Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja - 3.5/10
- Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - 3.0/10
I couldn't find the scores for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness/Time or Baroque. Beats me why. It could be they weren't reviewed, or my issues with the review got misplaced. Maybe the generator was down for repairs?
