A friend of mine recently played through the second Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon game on PS1 (the one that actually came out in English), and him talking about it got me the bug to play some more Mystery Dungeon myself. I thought why not start with the Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon game that never came out in English, and thankfully both games are really common and cheap to pick up here in Japan~. It took me about 8 hours to play through the main game on real hardware, with another hour or two spent dabbling in the post-game stuff (which in grand Mystery Dungeon fashion is very expansive and also MUCH harder, so I didn't complete it all XP).
CMD's story is pretty simple and straightforward. A Chocobo (you!) and his moogle friend come to a small village hunting treasure, but one of the farmers (who is also a Chocobo) suddenly comes across a strange stone in his field. Upon touching it, he's suddenly taken over by the spirit inside, and mysteriously vanishes. The Chocobo & Moogle team try to check in at the inn (oddly run by this farmer) but are tricked into actually entering a mystery dungeon! They decide to stick around and try and not only hunt for treasure, but try to rescue the missing farmer too (he has a cute Chocobo daughter, after all! x3). It's very much a simple story just here to set up the action, but the small amount of dialogue that is there is a nice blend of informative (which is very appreciated for this style of game) and quirky fun that fits the bill just right for what it needs to accomplish~.
Given that this is only the 3rd Mystery Dungeon game to come out on consoles, I figured it'd be pretty hard but also quite conventional without many bells and whistles, and I was actually wrong on both counts! Balance-wise, the main game is actually a really reasonable experience that never feels very unfair. It's a quite typical Mystery Dungeon game in a lot of ways (you have equipment to find and upgrade and combine into new stuff if you want, you can find money to spend in town, you have a persistent level, the effects of equipment/potions/scrolls are unknown until you try them in that run of the dungeon), but it is also very different in a lot of ways.
For starters, quite different to a lot of later Mystery Dungeon games, you only have one 30 floor dungeon to complete. That's the main game. They even make it a lot easier by giving you a special scroll that lets you not only evacuate the dungeon but also go right back to the floor you were at when you wanna re-enter! This game does have a hunger mechanic, but it goes down SO slowly that I really never found it a problem with how you have the teleportation to go back and forth to town at will whenever you want. That all combined with the persistent level and the way that your magic tomes level up a persistent magic stat as you use that particular tome more and more made this a much more fair and balanced experience than I was expecting.
Sure, there are still some issues with some steep difficulty spikes here, and there, but even that is mitigated by the game's most defining, strange, and perhaps a bit not entirely thought out feature: the active time battle system. That's right, just like a normal Final Fantasy game of the era (and notably, unlike its own sequel), this game has ATB for its battles. How that basically works is that once an enemy either notices you or you attack it, a gauge starts filling up above the attacker's head with the move they wanna do. Your speed stat makes this amount go down, and stronger attacks generally take longer while weaker ones are faster. It's a very interesting way to make one of these games, but it's also very easy to just break. The ATB messes with how enemies movement systems work, so a really valid strategy, especially if you have a reliable amount of ranged attacks, is to get in, bop them, then RUN before their gauge fills up next to you so they can bop you back because their gauge will reset when they de-aggro from you. This doesn't work very well with post-game enemies (who usually either maintain their ATB between aggros or have such long range spells it doesn't matter), and it ultimately feels like a really half-baked execution of an interesting idea, but it definitely gives htis game its own unique flavor compared to just about every Mystery Dungeon game out there.
The presentation of the game is quite pretty. There's not much 3D used save for how the environments of the dungeons are constructed (and even then, they blend very well with the 2D sprites). Most everything is made of very pretty 2D sprites, and while they don't have a ton of animation, they're very well detailed and give the game a ton of personality. The music isn't super memorable, but this is a SquareSoft game, so it's at the very least pleasant to listen to while you play~.
Verdict: Recommended. This is a game with a fair few warts to its design, but it holds up remarkably well. If there's a fan translation out there or if you have the Japanese ability to read it yourself, this is a game you can enjoy quite easily despite its age. There are certainly more polished and better Mystery Dungeon games that have come out since this, but this one is unique and bite-sized enough that I still say it's worth playing all these years later.
CMD's story is pretty simple and straightforward. A Chocobo (you!) and his moogle friend come to a small village hunting treasure, but one of the farmers (who is also a Chocobo) suddenly comes across a strange stone in his field. Upon touching it, he's suddenly taken over by the spirit inside, and mysteriously vanishes. The Chocobo & Moogle team try to check in at the inn (oddly run by this farmer) but are tricked into actually entering a mystery dungeon! They decide to stick around and try and not only hunt for treasure, but try to rescue the missing farmer too (he has a cute Chocobo daughter, after all! x3). It's very much a simple story just here to set up the action, but the small amount of dialogue that is there is a nice blend of informative (which is very appreciated for this style of game) and quirky fun that fits the bill just right for what it needs to accomplish~.
Given that this is only the 3rd Mystery Dungeon game to come out on consoles, I figured it'd be pretty hard but also quite conventional without many bells and whistles, and I was actually wrong on both counts! Balance-wise, the main game is actually a really reasonable experience that never feels very unfair. It's a quite typical Mystery Dungeon game in a lot of ways (you have equipment to find and upgrade and combine into new stuff if you want, you can find money to spend in town, you have a persistent level, the effects of equipment/potions/scrolls are unknown until you try them in that run of the dungeon), but it is also very different in a lot of ways.
For starters, quite different to a lot of later Mystery Dungeon games, you only have one 30 floor dungeon to complete. That's the main game. They even make it a lot easier by giving you a special scroll that lets you not only evacuate the dungeon but also go right back to the floor you were at when you wanna re-enter! This game does have a hunger mechanic, but it goes down SO slowly that I really never found it a problem with how you have the teleportation to go back and forth to town at will whenever you want. That all combined with the persistent level and the way that your magic tomes level up a persistent magic stat as you use that particular tome more and more made this a much more fair and balanced experience than I was expecting.
Sure, there are still some issues with some steep difficulty spikes here, and there, but even that is mitigated by the game's most defining, strange, and perhaps a bit not entirely thought out feature: the active time battle system. That's right, just like a normal Final Fantasy game of the era (and notably, unlike its own sequel), this game has ATB for its battles. How that basically works is that once an enemy either notices you or you attack it, a gauge starts filling up above the attacker's head with the move they wanna do. Your speed stat makes this amount go down, and stronger attacks generally take longer while weaker ones are faster. It's a very interesting way to make one of these games, but it's also very easy to just break. The ATB messes with how enemies movement systems work, so a really valid strategy, especially if you have a reliable amount of ranged attacks, is to get in, bop them, then RUN before their gauge fills up next to you so they can bop you back because their gauge will reset when they de-aggro from you. This doesn't work very well with post-game enemies (who usually either maintain their ATB between aggros or have such long range spells it doesn't matter), and it ultimately feels like a really half-baked execution of an interesting idea, but it definitely gives htis game its own unique flavor compared to just about every Mystery Dungeon game out there.
The presentation of the game is quite pretty. There's not much 3D used save for how the environments of the dungeons are constructed (and even then, they blend very well with the 2D sprites). Most everything is made of very pretty 2D sprites, and while they don't have a ton of animation, they're very well detailed and give the game a ton of personality. The music isn't super memorable, but this is a SquareSoft game, so it's at the very least pleasant to listen to while you play~.
Verdict: Recommended. This is a game with a fair few warts to its design, but it holds up remarkably well. If there's a fan translation out there or if you have the Japanese ability to read it yourself, this is a game you can enjoy quite easily despite its age. There are certainly more polished and better Mystery Dungeon games that have come out since this, but this one is unique and bite-sized enough that I still say it's worth playing all these years later.