Roguelikes are a favorite of mine, despite the fact that I didn’t play much of them, but quality overtakes the quantity, always. Our Mystery Dungeon: Shiren The Wanderer review was more of a love letter to the game rather than a hands on report of what I’ve played, I’m still trying to get my way to play Izuna the Unemployed Ninja, but let’s talk about how NOT to make a roguelike dungeon crawler.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Dungeon takes everything that makes roguelikes the bastardly hard fun games that they are, and throw most of them out the window, then put childproofing on all the sharp edges, making it bastardly easy and boring.

You play Square-Enix’s aviary mascot, who in this story is accompanying a treasure hunter where they find themselves in a village suffering from mass amnesia, chocobo has to dive into their minds to recover their lost memories. What’s up with Square-Enix with their disturbing obsession with “memories” lately? are they trying to make an amnesia-aid movement of some sort?

So we all know the story isn’t this game’s strong suite, Square-Enix just likes to cram the Final Fantasy fan service up your throat, but then that’s a given knowing it’s a game that involves a chocobo as the silent protagonist? Though the game is chock full of nougaty Final Fantasy fan service, it might wear a bit thin, even for the fans

Graphically though the game is pretty polished, one of Square-Enix’s main (and probably only) good points is the consistency in the quality of their graphics, it may not be a graphical land mark, but it sure is one of the better looking games on the wii.

The one thing in this game that I do find interesting is surprisingly the most Final Fantasy part of this Roguelike. like almost any Final Fantasy, you are given the choice to change your job class, each job class having certain advantages and disadvantages, giving this game a little more depth. But why put depth in a game that is so easy, that it misses the point?

I can’t help but compare this game to Shiren the Wanderer a lot, obviously because I’ve played Shiren the Wanderer so much, that I think I’ve clocked as much hours on that game as oblivion (total of +270 hours). Ok so unlike Shiren where the game treats villages as separate floors in the number of levels of the game, Chocobo Dungeon, treats has one village being an overworld  to seperate different dungeons (amnesiac minds), making it much more accessible for in experienced players, since if you die you’re brought back to the village, opposing to starting from the beginning of the game like in Shiren.

Speaking of dying, in Shiren you start from the very beginning, it might seem very intimidating and brutal, but gives the game a more tension induced experience, thus enhancing the immersion in the game. In Chocobo Dungeon you’re sent back at the gate of the dungeon, and being able to carry on where you left off in the dungeon if you pass by one of the many checkpoints in the dungeon. In Shiren, you lose all items and stats if you die, again it scares the living crap out of the inexperienced yet, it makes every step worth it’s value in gold. to Shiren’s nature, the experience does feel a lot more arcadey and quick rather than a time investment.

Some people might think I’m a little too harsh on Chocobo Dungeon, maybe because the game wasn’t made for my particular liking, mind you I’m not the type that gives games a miss just because they’re easy, look at Crisis Core and Twilight Princess, they were baby easy yet I had a good time playing them.

See the issue with Chocobo Dungeon is that Square-Enix is trying to cater it to people who don’t play these kind of games, a non-gamer would never buy a turnbased rpg the works in a grid based format from a bird’s eye view (no pun intended), that’s like making a slasher movie where all the knives and sharp blades have been replaced with inflatable toy mallets for the sake of making it “accessible for new audience”, the core fanbase will laugh at you and the inexperience adopters won’t get it.

To prove my point even more, I tried making my youngest sister play this game, she found it too complicated since she has no idea why there’s a grid and why everything moves in turns. So the game, like a person goes to the biggest candy store in town and buys only one Snickers bar: tries to make a statement, yet misses the point and loses the argument embarrassingly.

I enjoyed it’s predecessor on the PSOne (Chocobo Mystery Dungeon 2), I was expecting the same fun in this game, but it dissapointed me with a swift (yet pillowed) kick in the johnson

What we think: If you’re looking for a solid Roguelike, this is definitely not the kind of game for you, I’d suggest you look for Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer or download Nethack for free (on any possible format you can find). Though the game isn’t entirely bad, it’s not entirely good either, not worth your money.

Mohammad AlHuraiz

Founder, editor and host of Lochal Archade. Mohammad has been running Lochal Archade for years and working hard in bringing video game-related content to the UAE and the Middle East as a whole.

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