What seemed like a very childish excuse for a Final Fantasy game turned out to be a very enjoyable adventure.
Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales takes place in a Chocobo farm, where a mysterious book is found and opened, only to bring chaos to the peaceful land. An evil creature named Bebuzzu is unleashed, takes away all the inhabitants, and plans to devour all the magic crystals. The fate of the farm and the missing Chocobos rests on the shoulders of one little heroic Chocobo. With the help of two of his friends, Chroma the Black Mage and Shirma the White Mage, the Chocobo starts a stange adventure that transports him into a series of books and traps him inside their tales.
Each of the books has a mini-game and a series of challenges to complete. In each volume there is a Trial stage and a Battle mode with up to 5 levels. Completing the stages rewards you with something: a Chocobo card that saves a villager and places him/her somewhere in the farm, a Pop-Up Duel Card to go in your deck, another level of the mini-game, an epilogue or an event on the world map.
There are several types of mini-games in the fable books, granted to appeal a wide range of players. You will find yourself swimming away from Leviathan, dodging boulders and racing down rapids with an Adamantoise, stealing fruit while staying clear of Shiva and Ifrit's fire and ice balls, stepping on instruments to play a rhythm game, racing up or down a beanstalk or finding a Chocobo in flames in a "Where's Waldo" type of game.
The micro-games aren't locked in the books, and you can find them all over the place. Some of the Chocobos you save will have something for you to play, others are randomly placed in the world map. These reward you with Silver and Gold medals, each of them giving you a card.
Although it is possible to advance through the game without completing all the stages on every book, it's recommended you try to complete as much as possible to get better and more powerful Duel Cards.
The key to winning duels is to know your opponent's cards, so if you lose a duel, change strategy and try again, there aren't any consequences for losing. For me, it has worked so far to build up a deck with high defense on the particular element being used (for example, green defense cards in the Forest, blue in the Underwater Temple).
As far as the controls go, Chocobo Tales can be controlled entirely with the stylus, including moving across the map areas. All menus, mini-games, micro-games and card duels are made for being tapped and dragged, so everything is very user-friendly.
The sound effects and music will be very familiar to Final Fantasy veterans, while the art style comes in a mix of 3D environments around the farm's grounds, and 2D crayon-colored paper cut-outs in the books and card duels.
In the end, what seemed like a very childish excuse for a Final Fantasy game turned out to be a very enjoyable adventure, trading card game and mini-games collection in one. There is plenty to do, lots of replay value, over 120 cards to collect, more than 40 games to play and several Chocobos to save. The added multiplayer feature allows players from all over the world to come face to face in Pop-Up Card Duels.
Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales is a fantastic adventure that draws the player right in starting with the first storybook. I sure hope to see more Fables based on other characters in the future!
Review text part of Grrlgamer.com. Full text , screenshots and a mini-game at http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=chocobotales