Well, surprise! Guess I did play something Final Fantasy-related after all. Always gotta look out for those weird spinoffs as they might be hidden gems, and that's the case here. Now, when you think of Mystery Dungeon, you'll probably first think of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games perhaps, or if you're a real retro nut, actual roguelikes. Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon is the Final Fantasy variant of such a thing, and well, it's got Final Fantasy elements incorporated into a rather fun roguelike game.
It does the interesting thing by combining the already popular Active-Time Battle System with the real-time movement of roguelike battles. It's sort of reminiscent of certain action RPGs I've played, such as the Ys games, but with a little more interesting strategy with waiting for your bar to fill, in other words you don't have to to do an attack, but it's probably better if you could for best damage. Gameplay-wise, I hate how exploring seems to do the maximum drain to my stamina, yet the randomized dungeon really does emphasize this kinda playing style, cause you wanna see everything before moving into the next floor. You wanna get all the items you can, and get as much experience from monsters as you can. And those traps sure make things even harder.
It's a shame that with a randomized dungeon, there's not much you can really push for in plot, but Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon at least tries well enough. You do go through floors, get the help of a mysterious hooded figure, and fight a couple of bosses, but the whole thing is just a chocobo and a moogle adventuring together without much else in substance. What really sells this better than other games has to be the FMV cutscenes. Hey, it's Square doing this. Their FMVs for mainline Final Fantasy games are great enough!
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