The Final Fantasy series shows no signs of stopping, between its core series, its concepts appearing in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and of course, the tons of spinoffs. One such spinoff is Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon: Every Buddy, a modern console remaster of a Wii title in the series of games starring everyone’s favorite golden bird. We recently got a chance to try the game out before release, so let’s see what there is to see.
Full disclosure, I haven’t played the original game when it was released on the Wii as Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon. As such, I cannot comment to the quality of Square Enix’s new Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon: Every Buddy as a remaster. Although, the graphics are gorgeous with a modern polish while still maintaining a classic design style.
After deciding which version to demo (I chose PS4 but the game is coming to the Switch as well with seemingly no difference in both appearance or gameplay), I started off in the tutorial dungeon. The game has a definite “pick up and play” feeling, with anything not explained by a tutorial being simple enough to decipher after going through the menus. The game offers randomly generated dungeons, which offers a lot to explore, as well as interesting moments. For example, I entered a new floor and the exit was right next to my start point. You never know how things will spawn and that’s one plus side to the game itself. While exploring, every move you make also allows the enemies to move as well. They’ll never move more than you do, so you can take your time, plan attacks or simply wait to see what the enemy will do.
As the journey continues, players will naturally unlock one of the many iconic Jobs from the Final Fantasy franchise to change the Chocobo into, changing skills and strategies to match. Players will also have to consume Gestahlt Greens to refill stamina.
The main addition to this remaster is the new buddy system, where players can have other characters from the story, as well as enemies that were previously beaten, to appear alongside the hero Chocobo on their adventures. They follow closely but do attack enemies on their own if they’re in range. Each of them do have special abilities, giving an extra angle to pursue during battles. More importantly, the buddy system allows a second player to join. I didn’t have time to witness this in action, but it is definitely one of the big draws for the game, especially as co-op play is becoming a big thing especially for the Switch.
The game itself promises to be a large adventure. While playing for the hour I was allowed, I only managed to play through a few dungeons. It would’ve been nice to sink in more time to the game, but you can be sure many of us here at Marooners’ Rock will be excited to play when the time comes. Be sure to check Marooner’s Rock later on for when we finally review Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon: Every Buddy. What are your thoughts on this game being remastered?
Disclaimer: We were invited for hands-on time with Chocobo Mystery Dungeon: Every Buddy by the developer.
