System Played: Nintendo DS
Year Released: 2007
Year Reviewed: 2011
Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales from the ever diminishing Square-Enix and a group of jokers called h.a.n.d is essentially a collection of mini-games tied together by a half-arsed story about a chocobo and an evil story book who is trying to destroy the world. The game has the look and feel of a yarn aimed at kids but I’ve never wanted to smash my DS into as many pieces as I did when enduring this damned thing!
So Darkmaster of all things evil, “Bebuzzu”, has been locked away in a book... Something about crystals… The story of the game comes down to you needing to rescue your other loser chocobo friends by enduring a bunch of mini game and card battles. Overworld navigation is when the game is at its least infuriating, where you control your choc exclusively with the stylus, not unlike in DS Zelda games. It works well enough here since you don’t do much other than walk about and talk to people or interact with objects.
The meat of the game is the mini and micro (smaller than mini?) games which are scattered around the island. These are all unique little games which see you doing any old crap from racing, collecting junk …even helping a tethered hamster scale a wall while dodging electricity. They’re all throw away and utterly forgetful …but most importantly, devoid of any fun whatsoever. What they lack in enjoyment, they make up for massively in challenge (aka frustration), especially the micro-games, as each has several difficulty levels or achievements you need to get, such as completing something within a strict time limit. The other element to the game is card battles which you’ll use to duel bosses, and the only way to stock up on the best cards is by playing (you guessed it) goddam mini-games!
Going in, I thought hey it’s a kids game but that’s ok! It’s got “Final Fantasy” stuck in the title, it can’t be that bad… If it’s for kids, I can get a gold in every mini-game, easy …and so I did. And for that reason I grew to hate this game. Getting a gold in the vast majority of micro-games is as much a game of luck as it is skill, with random item drops and puzzle layouts. And the level of precision required to ace some of them within the gold time-limit is insane! This is supposed to be a kids game! For all the swearing I had to do to get through it, I did manage to get all the golds eventually which might sound like these are actually well designed little games which you do get better at with practice. Well fuck you man! They aren’t! I’ve lived this shit! I know!
Card battles fair a little better but there really aren’t more than about 10 in the whole game, unless you want to battle the same people over and over again for no gain. Being stubborn about getting my golds meant that I always had the best cards available when going into these battles, so the first few were pretty easy. Later on though it seemed like the last few battles were won or lost (more often lost) based again on luck, as your deck is doled out randomly. I can’t call the card battles ‘fun’ as such, but they were a step up from damn mini-games.
For completists, the game can last about 30 hours depending on how much trouble you have with the mini-games (especially the micro-games). Having endured this, I’m still not sure who the game is supposed to be aimed at. It is way too difficult for kids and will more likely piss off more people than impress. Without the best cards, you aren’t going to get very far, so trying again and again at the mini-games is really the only way to progress and it’s a bastard. The story is throw-away, with the best bits being the weird, out-of-place depressing bits about the death of Irma’s family which take place in the background, just because they are so strange amongst the overall feel of the game.
I wouldn’t recommend anyone play this game unless you’re looking for a reason to smash your DS against a wall.
3/10
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