I just beat this game today.
Many of you guys are curious on how this game play like? Well, Final Fantasy Fable Chocobo Tales actually plays like Rub Rub Rabbit or Mario Party, it is loaded with bunch of mini games that involves using stylus such as racing across the moutain, wack-a-mole, air hockey,puzzles and much more. Most of these mini games can last from a range of 20 seconds to a minute. These mini games consits two modes: a battle mode or trial mode. In trail mode, you will try to obtain highest score within alloted time frame and in battle mode, simliar to Mario party, you will go head to head combat against the computer in 4 player mayham. Some of these minigames can be downright frustrated. Contols can sometimes be clunky and unresponsive and won't respond properly. For example, one of the game you have to gather some coins located in the top ds screen. In order to collect these coins, you need to flick your stylus in upward fashion towards your touch screen, this will causing the chocobo to fly up to top screen and gather those coins. A few occassion, the game isn't resposive, cause chochobo to leep much lower. This can be quite annoying if your going for high score. For most part these occurance are very rare, and the majority of these mini games are very enjoyable.
After complete these mini games in story mode you unlock new stages that were unaccessable and reward you with better cards. The higher, the difficulty such as high scores, the better the reward. Many people will think this game is meant for children due to it's cute exterior, but in fact this game can be downright difficult. I found many of gold medal requirements very challenging to mind numbing hard. Of course, these objectives are optional.
How does card game play like? It's vaguely fimiliar to Final Fantasy card mini game that are found in Final Fantasy 8 or 9. Rules are fairly simple, to reduce your opponent life points to zero with your monster cards. Each monster have either one or two symbol: an attack or defensive symbol. When you go on combat you will notice 4 zones: top,bottom,left and right. Once you attack, you opponent will defend with same zone . For example, if attack icon is on the top zone then your opponet will defend on top zone. If your opponet doesn't have a defense symbol symbol, your attack will suceed. If your opponent does have a defense symbol on proper zone, your attack will fail. If both of same zone have the attack icon - damage is cut in half.
The first person who play their card the quickest gets to attack first, after attack mode you go on defensive mode and the opossing player will attack you. Or vice versa if you play the card the slowest. You also get use many special abilites in ths game, but in order to use these abilities you need to fulfill the requirements. For each elemental card you use will give you the same cyrstal. For example, if you use a blue card you will get a blue crystal. Fulfill the requirement decriibe in the card description these special abilities will activate with each sucessful attack or defense.
Throughout the game, card game seldomly comes up. Maybe atleast 6-8 in story mode. For most part, you will be playing more mini game then these battle About 90% of the main story is minigames and 10% battles. It takes about 12-15 beat and maybe 25+ hours to complete, depending on how well you do in those mini games.
Overall, this is a great game for those who enjoy mini games. Not to mention, you can play these mini games or card battles by wi-fi which adds lots of value to this game
