Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales (DS)

Good morning everyone. Today we'll be reviewing this cute little games that stars this cute little yellow bird. Is everyone ready? Then here we go.

Story: The chocobos all live on this farm with a white mage Shirma and her friend the black mage Croma. One day while Shirma is reading a story Croma comes and insists that his very strange and dark book be read instead. The only one who can open it is a small yellow chocobo, the player. Once the boko is open, it reveals that it is sentient and wants to devour the world, starting with all the chocobos and books in the area. Once done, all that is left is Shirma, Croma, and the little bird. It is now the chocobos job to stop the evil book and rescue his friends. he does this by finding magical storybooks that will alter his world. It's not the greatest, but it's entertaining and has some amusing dialogue. 3/5

Audio: This was my favorite part of the entire game, mostly because all of the music is old final fantasy tracks. Not just recent games, but older ones too. It sounds decent on the DS too. 5/5

Graphics: the graphics aren't the best, but they're not bad. Edges might be at times jagged. The storybook art is given a hand drawn look that is appealing. 4/5

Gameplay: The game is stylus heavy, but it isn't clunky or anything. You use the stylus to move and point and click on objects you want to interact with. The game revolves around three aspect: mini games (the storybooks), microgames (puzzles found in the world that will yield you cards), and popup card duels (necessary to progress the game). Mini games and microgames can my fun or obnoxious depending on what challenge you must overcome. most of the minigames involve both time trials and battle modes, where you have to earn more points than enemy chocobos. Succeeding in the areas of a mini game will provide you with a story ending (which will alter the world around you), yield you a card, or free a chocobo pal. The card games involve finding cards around the world and building your deck around it. There are two types of cards, defenders and attacks. Along the edges of the card will be symbols denoting if they attack or defend or have nothing to do with one of the four elements. your challange is to build your deck that will allow you to anticipate how your opponent will play. The gameplay is fairly simple to handle. 4/5

Replay: There isn't much need to replay. 2/5

Overall: The game is terribly cute, and rather fun. Towards the end, the challanges become much more difficult. It's definitely a good rental, and if you love final fantasy or chocobos, probably nota bad buy. 4/5