Partridge Senpai's 2024 Beaten Games:Previously:
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023* indicates a repeat
1.
Terranigma (SFC)
2.
Eastward (PC)
3.
Pulse (PC)
4.
Lost Ruins (PC)
5.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (PC)
6.
Dropsy (PC)
7.
Call of Juarez Gunslinger (PC)
8.
Pokemon Ruby (GBA) *
9.
Secret of Mana (SFC)
10.
Fire Watch (PC)
11.
Bokura (PC)
12.
Romancing SaGa (SFC)
13.
Trials of Mana (SFC)
14.
Castlevania Legends (GB)
15.
SaGa 2 (GB)
16.
SaGa 3 (GB)
17.
Celeste (PC)
18.
Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit (PC)
19.
Celeste 64 (PC)
20.
CB Chara Wars: Ushinawareta Gya~gu (SFC)
21.
To The Moon (PC)
22.
LOVE (PC)
23.
Pikuniku (PC)
24.
Night in the Woods (PC)
25.
The Beginner's Guide (PC)
26.
Suikoden (PS1)
27. Chocobo Dungeon 2 (PS1)
I played the first Chocobo Dungeon nearly two years ago, and though I liked it, it didn’t really leave me hankering for more Mystery Dungeon stuff despite running out to pick this up in the midst of my playthrough of it x3. Now all this time later, the mood for more Mystery Dungeon has struck me at last, and I have finally seen this game through to the end. It took me a (surprisingly short) 12-ish hours to get through the Japanese version of the game playing on real hardware.
Chocobo Dungeon 2 picks up some time after the first game, and Mog and Chocobo have moved on from that village in search of new treasure. Coming across a strange dungeon, they venture inside only for Chocobo to get launched out while Mog is locked inside! Chocobo is found by a kind young white mage named Shiroma, who sees him go back into the dungeon, only to find Mog just as he’s causing the whole dungeon to blow up and sink into the ocean! This is just the beginning of the epic tale that will find Chocobo, Mog, and Shiroma in a grand quest to save the world! (or at least the local village).
It’s a simple story, sure, but it’s a really nicely done one! Compared to how simple the writing in the first Chocobo Dungeon was, this game’s characters and setting really come to life in a way the series had just never done before, and the game benefits a ton from it. Never did I think a silly Chocobo-themed Mystery Dungeon game would get me to tear up, but here we are X3. It’s a very sweet story about the value in supporting and trusting in others, and its cool to see that it’s the legacy of these games being quite well written goes back this far!
The gameplay is very much what you’d expect from a Mystery Dungeon game for anyone familiar with them. For those unfamiliar, in modern terms, we’d call them rogue-likes in the traditional sense, with you moving around a grid in a procedurally generated dungeon, and the enemies only move when you move. This game is a bit like the original Chocobo Dungeon, Chocobo Dungeon 2 is much less close to a “true” rogue-like than its predecessor was. CD2 is a HUGE step forward for the series away from the old style and towards the new in more than just its story. In earlier games, we had one big dungeon that would reset your level every time you left and came back (i.e. died), and you’d sometimes get to keep some armor and weapons, but just as often, you were back to square one when you died. Chocobo Dungeon 1 has a bit of permanent progression in how you can unlock little benefits via sidequests (which this game also has), but Chocobo Dungeon 2 moves that bar WAY forward in just how much bigger and more player-friendly the systems in this game are.
First of all, we no longer have one big dungeon! Though you do effectively go through several dungeons twice, there are quite a few dungeons you’ll need to go through with each having its own boss to fight in Chocobo Dungeon 2. You also no longer lose your levels upon leaving the dungeon! All levels you get in Chocobo Dungeon 2 are permanent, and I ended up finishing the game around level 43 myself. On top of that, you can find spell tomes in dungeons to cast elemental magic with, and the more you cast a particular type of magic, the higher your reading comprehension level (and therefore magic) level gets as well! That said, stats aren’t everything in this game, and losing your stash of items (from your piles of tomes you’ve been hoarding to your preciously upgraded armor and weapon) can REALLY suck.
However, while you do lose *everything* upon death in this game (where iirc Chocobo Dungeon 1 let you keep at least the armor and weapon you were wearing), you thankfully get to still keep a good chunk of your cash to restock once you get back to town. You can also easily use an easily bought item to teleport out of a dungeon in this game and, if you made it far enough, you can go through a tiny dungeon to get right back around where you left off. This makes supply runs a lot easier, even if these mini-dungeon shortcuts are things you have to do solo.
Needing to do them solo is something special in this game as well, as this is also the first game to give you an NPC buddy following you around in each dungeon! The NPC party member you get can’t use items and will vary depending on the dungeon but having that extra bit of muscle can really be a life saver, and learning to utilize your partner’s power well is as crucial as learning to use your own. As an extra fun bonus, you can even dip into the options menu and have a buddy control that NPC instead of the CPU controlling them! Their AI is pretty darn good and reliable, honestly, but it’s still a super cool 2-player mode that you can use basically whenever you want~.
All the new good stuff is nice and all, but this is still an early Mystery Dungeon game, and it does really show it. This game has some really mean bits and unpolished bits of design compared to later games like the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games many folks reading this are likely a lot more familiar with. It cannot be stressed enough just how awful a death usually is. While nothing you’ve found can truly never be found again, needing to find that stuff again, particularly your weapons & armor, can be a TON of work if they were highly upgraded. Not only can your weapons and armor (not to mention all of your precious piles of spell tomes and throwable magic rocks) disappear upon death, your weapons and armor have durability and can BREAK mid-battle if they take enough punishment. Your NPC ally’s stats scale off of your own level, but those weapons and armor are often the difference between life and death, and the village store selling literally no armor or weapons ever also makes it a real pain to go and find a fresh weapon and armor in your next venture into a dungeon in the early game.
The lack of polish isn’t all bad, though. The reason I keep mentioning those precious spell tomes is because they’re a very valuable and, most importantly, very powerful way of dealing with enemies without putting your squishy birdy self in harm’s way. Going through the first few floors of a particularly tricky dungeon and hoarding all of the tomes you can is an excellent strategy for basically the entire game. While that on its own won’t take down every boss, of course, it’s a nice thing to have to get over particularly hard bits, even if it does feel a bit too overpowered at the end of the day.
The aesthetics of the game are very pretty. Once we finally got bona fide 3D on consoles, we really stopped seeing many games use pre-rendered 3D graphics. Chocobo Dungeon 1 had pre-rendered 3D for its graphics, and its sequel really ups the ante in just how good they look. Monsters both friendly and otherwise look very pretty and cool in their chibi-styled designs and animations, and dungeons have very different flairs to them that make even re-going through a familiar location feel like a brand-new experience. The music is also excellent, and this is another title from this decade that shows off, yet again, why SquareSoft’s music team was and is still so heavily lauded in the industry.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. The systems in this game aren’t perfect, but they’re a HUGE step forward from where they were even just one year earlier with the first game, and even if there are some still overly punishing things here and some weirdly overpowered things there, they all add up to a very fun experience that make even a game as old as this fun and approachable for players old and new alike. The graphics are great, the music is incredible, and if you’re a fan of rogue-likes (or even just if classic Final Fantasy creatures all cute & chibi sound like a good time), then this is absolutely one you don’t wanna pass up on.
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me
