WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!
Usually when people buy a Nintendo DS, they would buy games to play. And I've bought a grand total of.... 4 games for the DS. Seems like I'm just too lazy to keep up with the latest and greatest to waste time. Cough. So a few weeks back, after playing Mario Kart DS day after day on the bus/mrt/us bus, I finally got somewhat bored at trashing the cpu carts. (NB, when I go online, I usually get trashed :P)
StarFox simply wasn't cutting it (completed it the first day I bought it!) and Brain Age was well... not my kind of game. So a trip down to the nearest Game Stop to hunt for games. Several that caught my eye included a new Mana game from Square, and some version of FF 12 for the DS coming out later this month, and.... Chocobo Tales (NB: I was on the lookout for the latest Link offering, but it wasn't there.)
Being such a yellow bird lover that I am, I pondered (quickly) between this and Mage Knight, and decided to send my hard earned cash over to the evils of Square Enix.
Chocobo Tales is definitely a kids game with the extremely, extremely cute graphics. Only probably dog pups and cat kittens could be any cuter. It's definitely running off the Final Fantasy III DS engine. Dang, I forgot FF 3. Means I bought 5 games to date, lol. FF3 kicks ass btw, but due to being and RPG, there is like.... Zero replay value.
Now where was I.... the game's graphics were yes, on the same level as FF3, but alot of the battle sequences and game challenges were done in a very artistic Crayon kind of rendering. Just imagine your kid sibling's crayon art come to life, and fighting. Combine that with a card game dueling battle system, and you got a definite winner.
Now a little problem with the game - I completed it all in under 11 hours! GAH! I then spent an extra 2 hours to finish up some minor side quests to rescue all the Chocobos that were captured. Geez. The game itself was less like a traditional FF game where there'd be random encounters all over the place and EXP to earn, rather, the fights are at pre-determined locations. As mentioned, the battle uses a card system, so by doing mini "quests" (aka Micro Games) you will get extra (not necessarily better) cards for use in battle.
Apart from the card duel boss fights, alot of the game revolves around participating in various Minigames, of which a win will give you cards, or an event that will further the storyline. In general, most of them are pretty straight forward to complete, but there are multiple difficulty levels of the same challenge, each yielding a different reward. Some are just plain luck based, which is *totally* annoying, to downright impossible to win. In fact, there is one microgame called "LeapToad" that I've never had the reflexes to even manage more than 3 seconds before I'm dead :P
Which makes me wonder how an 8 year old would fare.... then again.... 8 year olds are doing websites and hacking hardware nowadays so they'd probably kick my ass ;)
Controls are generally very good, and the music is extremely nice for an old FF retiree like me - I could pick out tunes from FF3 NES, FF6 SNES, FF7 and other tunes that I have heard but can't place. The final battle music has to be the best - I've been replaying that stage for the fun of it and the music. And the final battle HAS to be one of the more innovative fights I've every fought - you play Air Tennis with the final boss :P At least it's not Debarrier - KOTR - Win! (Yes I got to the final cave about lvl 40. So yeah it was an easy last boss)
Final verdict, if you are a FF fan, this is one to get. Just don't expect a gigantic storyline like the other FFs (the newer FFs are just crazy), you only visit an area about the size of perhaps 20 blocks (!!!!). I think only one boss, the 2nd, a golem had me fight the card duel with it about 5 times. Oddly enough, the rest of the duels I was just too lucky. Many times I was down to a few HPs, and I managed to cast a TetraFlare+ card, which basically kills off anyone in late battle :P
I'll probably keep this cart around for a few more days before selling it on ebay, or perhaps trade it for Phantom Hourglass if the tradein is worth it. Or I should get the GB FF6 and see what's the new dungeon about. Gah.
No comments:
Post a Comment