In the town of Lostime, no one remembers their sorrows and disappointments. Many of the locals are pleased about it, saying, “forget it all and we can all smile.” Forgetting the bad things in your life has its benefits, but Lostime’s citizens also keep forgetting their happy memories, their loved ones, how to work the town’s utilities and what traumatic event lead them to become an amnesiac village.
Lostime is the setting for Square Enix’s role playing game Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon, which details the adventures of a cute little bird who decides to help everyone get their memories back.
Adventurers Lost in an Amnesiac Town
A chocobo is an ostrich-like bird that turns up in the Final Fantasy series. While in these games they are simple pack animals, Chocobo chicks have turned up as protagonists in a number of Final Fantasy spin-offs like last year’s DS game Final Fantasy Fables : Chocobo Tales.
The game begins with adventurer Cid and his sidekick Chocobo searching a dungeon for a treasure. After running into a competitor, the duo is suddenly transported to Lostime. After arriving, a bell in the town square tolls, stealing Cid’s memories.
Cid is not alone. The town is filled with the cheerfully forgetting. Not everyone is happy with their memory loss though. A young girl named Shirma is desperate to save her memories, and let’s Cid and Chocobo lodge at her aunt’s farm, away from the town bell.
Soon a mysterious baby appears out of nowhere and enters the maze of confusion that surrounds the townies’ memories. Chocobo finds he can follow.
Memories, one learns, are locked in maze-like dungeons populated with monsters, laid with traps and littered with health potions, weapons and gold.
These memory dungeons are the heart of Chocobo’s Dungeon, and the game is aimed very solidly at those who enjoy spending hours wandering through dungeons searching for stairs leading deeper into those dungeons and eventually to a big bad monster that must be defeated in order to retrieve the amnesiacs’ memories.
Old-Fashioned Turn-Based Combat
Chocobo explores a memory dungeon
Battle is turn based. Every time Chocobo takes a step, every monster, except those who are sleeping, will also take a step. If a monster sees Chocobo it will give chase in the same turn-by-turn fashion.
Chocobo has a basic attack and an increasing number of more powerful attacks fueled by “special points” gained as he explores. Chocobo can also throw items at monsters with varying results. As you progress in the game, Chocobo gains the ability to play as different soldier classes, each with their own special attacks, including a dark mage who can throw fire or thunder at enemies from a distance.
If you think this sounds essentially like hundreds of other role playing games, you are correct. Chocobo’s Dungeon isn’t interested in creating anything new, but in simply creating a solid, dependable and very familiar role playing experience. The game doesn’t even pay much attention to the advanced capabilities of the Wii remote except in a few mini games; battle is strictly a pushbutton affair. The innovation shown in the Final Fantasy series is completely lacking in this spin-off, suggesting that Square Enix, like many developers, sees the Wii more as a toy for kids and grandmas than as a serious platform for major games.
Design Lapses
There is a certain amount of laziness in the game’s design. Since dying in a dungeon will cause Chocobo to lose everything he is carrying, he can store excess items in an inconveniently located bank. Some optional missions don’t allow Chocobo to bring anything with him, and while the game will automatically deposit your items in the bank in these cases, retrieving them all involves the tedious process of withdrawing a couple of dozen items singly. Purchasing health items from merchants is done the same way; you can’t buy 5 health potions at once, but instead must buy them one at a time.
The game designers’ motto could be: you work harder so we don’t have to.
There is also laziness in an optional card battle game that is played with cards you find or win during gameplay. The game itself is fun enough – from a deck of cards you are given a random 3 to choose from and then your card battles it out with an opponent’s – but it’s lifted in whole from Chocobo Tales. Chocobo’s Dungeon hasn’t even improved on the game’s remarkably primitive system for setting up your 15-card deck out of the dozens of cards you find during the game. On the bright side, you can play the game online against friends and strangers.
Flawed but Fun
With an inconsequential story, forgettable characters whose lips don’t sync up with the dialogue and frustrations like ridiculously difficult optional missions (in one a single blow from an enemy will destroy you), Chocobo’s Dungeon is far from being a great game. Yet the basic gameplay is solid. There are various methods to strengthen your weapons and armor and give them special powers and each character class has a number of interesting special attacks that can be acquired, although I generally stuck to just a couple of classes.
This makes for an enjoyable experience, but, perhaps ironically for a game about memory loss, Chocobo’s Dungeon is eminently forgettable.
