So much beauty in so many aspects...packed into one small cartridge.
The graphics, in terms of the NDS, are great. There's a certain paper cut-out style that fits well with the childish theme and looks great. The character designs are similar to that of Final Fantasy III (for the NDS as well.) It really appears as if the NDS's capabilities were redefined.
The audio is familiar to any Final Fantasy player and has slightly remixed versions of boss battle and town songs. It's almost nostalgic, in a sense.
The gameplay is down right fun, and obviously works. It's a fully touch-screen game, but using the buttons is optional when navigating the menu. Your chocobo is controlled by touching the location where you want him to move, and it doesn't get any simpler. Items are retrieved and actions are done using this same method, by tapping the object or NPC. This is all strictly the navigation gameplay. There's much more variety in the array of mini games associated with each magical book. Some will have you racing turtles to the peak of a mountain, while others will have you battling other chocobos for coins or bouncing up a beanstalk. Lastly, there's a card game, pop-up duels in the games terms. It plays similar to any battle card games you've ever played, yet features a unique strategy/engagement system slightly based upon luck. There are 122 cards to collect, but this is very reasonable considering you may rarely revise your custom deck and the battles are pretty minimal. There's a lot to explain, so I'll sum up everything I said above by saying this: the gameplay is "just plain fun."
The story is interesting, and certainly something I've never seen. Pretty much, an evil book is brought into a serene town by a friend of yours who found it to be a once in a life time offer. Little did he know, it contained an darkmaster named Bebuzzu who sucks every chocobo citizen into his book and threatens to do evil things if he regains all the power he once had within the pages of the book. The black mage who bought the book gets his collection of books scattered all over the place and embedded with magical powers. You then have to save your friends that were sucked into the pages and play a series of minigames within each book. That's the interesting part; many of the games allude to or recreate classic fables such as "The Tortoise and the Hare," "Jack and the Beanstalk," "The Ugly Duckling," and several other familiarities. There are 5 levels of difficulty and a trial mode in each book leaving lots of room to collect several endings (that unlock events in the real world) to each book and pages containing trapped chocobos, as well as battle cards that weren't found through exploration. Aside from these microgames, there are a few others playable in the real world that score you cards, and that's if you can achieve the gold and silver medals, which take plenty of practice in my experience. I've had a small amount of frustration getting the gold, but that's just me.
And finally, multiplayer. You can have pop-up duels with others through Nintendo Wi-Fi, which is self explanatory. You can also send microgames to another DS owner, which is similar to the "download and play" function. You can also download pop-up cards, but I'm yet to try that.
I'm probably missing a few things, but this game is packed with fun and unique gameplay. This definitely serves for a great amount of replay value, as well as exciting multiplayer with friend.
Keep in mind, this review isn't coming from a Final Fantasy fanboy. In fact, the only ones I've ever really played were VII, IX, and XII. The earlier games weren't very enjoyable for me, but I used to watch my brother play them when I was younger. I've always admired Square and Square Enix's products, however.
So, whether you're a fan or not, or looking for something fresh, this is a must have for your collection of NDS titles. It's an instant classic, in my opinion.