It’s time to play as our favorite Final Fantasy character and clean out some dungeons! Welcome to our review of Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon Every Buddy! We played the Nintendo Switch version, but it’s also available on PlayStation 4.
As you might have guessed by the title, this is actually a port of the Wii game – Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon and the Japanese DS release of Cid to Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon: Toki Wasure no Meikyū DS+ (Cid and Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon: the Labyrinth of Forgotten Time DS+). For those familiar with dungeon crawlers, you will find yourself right at home with this ‘new’ Final Fantasy game. It plays similarly to games like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Expect turn-based and grid-based gameplay while navigating randomly generated dungeons. Your goal in each dungeon is to reach a specific floor to either obtain an item or defeat a boss.
Chocobo Story:
While searching for the fabled Timeless Power gem to power his Airship, Cid and his partner Chocobo ended up being sucked into a vortex and end up in the quaint town of Lostime within the island of Memoria, which disappeared from the rest of the world fifty years ago. In the center of Lostime is a clock tower which rings the Bell of Oblivion that makes everyone lose their memories. Along with his new friend Shirma and a mysterious boy named Raffaello who is able to create a labyrinth of memories, Chocobo has to recover the lost memories of Lostime’s residents. However, these actions reveal the mystery behind Raffaello and the calamity that began the trouble.
Gameplay features and -mechanics:
Dont’t get the wrong idea, however. It’s still Final Fantasy we’re talking about. I personally enjoy the spinoff games (or a little more different games) much more than standard FF-games. Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon was among one of my favorite Wii-titles back in the day, together with the Tactics/Crystal Chronicles games for DS & Gamecube respectively. But Square Enix did change some things in this .. remastered port. So let’s break it down, shall we?
- It still features the classic Final Fantasy job system where you can unlock and select from 14 jobs that come with unique abilities. Chocobo’s level and job levels are retained throughout the game. Each of these is standard FF-jobs, like Knight, Black Mage, White Mage, Dancer etc. (I don’t want to spoil all of them).
- The Switch/PS4 version, however, features three new jobs, however (going from eleven towards fourteen).
- They added a buddy system where you can unlock NPCs, monsters, and even bosses as AI partners to help you through dungeons. Slay enough goblins, and you can bring an upgraded version of the standard goblin (by collecting BuddyPoints). If you like to play in Co-Op, Square has got you covered. A second player can take over control of the AI partner at any time!
- This brings the total to more than 100+ buddies including NPCs, monsters, and bosses.
- The equipment system is similar to the Shiren series where you can fuse equipment to transfer special abilities, and hone equipment beyond the default values to boost stats. Some equipment is element based, which comes in handy to defeat bosses and minions with certain weaknesses.
- Inside dungeons, you get the usual stuff like traps, monster houses, roguelike mini-map, cursed items, hunger meter, special rules, boss battles, and dungeon shops.
- New music remixes and voice actors.
- New dungeons, side quests like Chocobo’s Dungeon 1&2 cameos.
- Normal / Hard difficulty select option.
- Many gameplay balance changes and adjustments including:
- New elements for magic attacks, weaknesses, and resistances.
- SP cost of abilities, SP recovery speed, and new abilities.
- New items, adjusted item effects, and hunger speed.
- Equipment comes with random slots instead of max slots.
- Monster tables, dungeon balance, etc.
- They removed the pop-up duel card game, which was my favorite part of the Wii-version.
- The separate storyline called ‘Cids Adventure’ from the DS version was also removed.
Overall thoughts:
So, we discussed what Square added, what they took away and how this game is a remaster of sorts. But, how does the game ‘feel’ on the Nintendo Switch system? Well, right at home. The game looks gorgeous. It’s one of the most colorful games out there and brings a really nice and happy overall feel with it. Just listening to Chocobo talking and walking around makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I tested the game in both Docked mode and handheld mode but feels good in both settings. I think it’s really nice to do a quick dungeon crawl on the go since most of the ‘smaller’ dungeons are do-able in 20-30 minutes. The bigger dungeons, however, can take up to a few hours if you run into a bad ‘run’. I had the luck of the draw to enter a duel-portal and had to fight an extremely powerful fireboss. I got my ass handed and could start again from floor-x. It did not bother me though since I received experience and jobpoints, which made me stronger.
Square delivered a spinoff with a story of its own. Chocobo is not a generic character, followed by a lot of cameo characters from other entries. It’s a chicken..? of flesh and blood, out on his own journey of self-discovery with Cid. It may look like a game for kids, but is a lot harder then it looks. If you don’t study the strengths and weaknesses of the other enemies and your own buddies, you will have to start over, a lot. But if you invest some time in creating memories (pun!) with the residents of Lostime, you will discover a rare Final Fantasy gem, with a new and fresh look on how you can create a Final Fantasy story (looking at you, modern Final Fantasy entries).
