The story begins with an unfortunate incident where a magical book, which in fact turns out to be the Dark Master Bebuzzu, unleashes an evil power into the world, which sucks up most of the fellow bird inhabitants into the enchanted pages. Using this advantage, Bebuzzu and his henchmen go about taking over the realm, and it is up to our Chocobo main character to rescue those trapped in the pages and save the day from the wicked plans afoot.

In the beautifully presented 3D world, the player guides the Chocobo about the world map with the stylus on the touch-screen, in a similar way to Animal Crossing. In fact, there’s zero need to use the d-pad or buttons at all, other than to turn the game off. It’s a big world with much to explore, and there are some very neat touches along the way. Whenever Chocobo can interact with the lush environment, an exclamation mark appears above the object, which the player can then tap and it’s all wonderfully animated. Some will start dialog with a character or a micro-game; others are totally inconsequential, such as playing on the see-saw in the park or simply sitting on a tree trunk to admire the view and listen to the familiar scene-setting music.

To further the journey, Chocobo must travel into the magic books. Within each book is a mini-game and a story that will seem very recognisable but isn’t quite as remembered from childhood. The first of these encountered is “The Adamantoise and the Cactuar” (or “The Tortoise and the Hare” from another point of view). There’s a brief re-telling of the fable before the trial begins, which is quite some reading and not particularly interesting. Fortunately it can be quickly skipped, as can most of the text in the game if so desired.

Each mini-game has two modes; a trial and a battle with several levels of difficulty. As the mini-game is played and certain conditions are reached, such as beating level three of the battle mode, or getting twenty points in the trial, an epilogue to the story is uncovered leading to paths into other areas of the map, both secret and story led. Here things become a little unstuck as it means the same mini-game has to be played a few times to unlock everything.

The structure of the game is such that there can be a degree of frustration attached to progression. Some of the puzzles are underdeveloped and out of kilter with how things would normally be expected to work. The "Simon Says" music game is such an example; a tune will play with three instruments tapping out a rhythm which must be repeated. The player duly does so, only to fail with each attempt. It's only with closer reading that it's noticed Chocobo must be standing on the instrument before the beat hits, totally at odds with most if not all rhythm games.

That said, for the most part they are easy to play, up to the latter stages, even if it takes a couple of seconds to click. They are very cleverly woven into the fabric of the story and there are a lot of them to unlock (sixteen mini-games and twenty three micro-games), with quite some variety. Whilst the narrative isn’t massive compared to the usual Square-Enix epics, it’s well written, quick witted and long enough that it’ll take more than an afternoon’s work to complete. Thankfully the save system is swift, and can be activated at any time in the game rather than having to look for a save point.

Another important aspect of Chocobo Tales is the card battle system. As Chocobo traverses the map and plays the mini-games, cards are collected that have different rarities and abilities. The cards, featuring the creatures of the Final Fantasy universe, make up decks which are used at certain points of the story in a "pop-up duel". Each has a base colour and four zones of red, green, blue, and yellow; these can contain an attack, a defence or nothing at all.

The player must choose a card from the three on screen, randomly picked from a deck of fifteen with which to attack the opponent. A neat flick of the wrist, across the touch-screen makes the card zoom to the top and an animated sequence is played out, much like traditional RPG fare. In the clash, if an attack hits an open square, it's successful; if it hits a shield it fails; if it hits another attack icon, damage is halved. When a card is used, another random selection from the pack joins the three usable and the process starts over, continuing until one character reaches zero health.

This all sounds quite limited and won by chance, but there is a little more to it than first glances would show. With each round, a colour crystal is given, matching the base colour of the card. Some of these have additional abilities that relate to the crystals or skills of the depicted creature. For example, the Phoenix card will deal out three hit points of damage if successful, but it will also heal two hit points for each red crystal the player has in their gauge. The Titan card will deal damage of one hit point for each green and yellow crystal in the opponent's gauge.

Other cards will cause status effects such as poison or haste, and there are over one hundred of them to collect through the game. It would appear that the cards chosen by the enemy have a set sequence, so there are tactics to be played in selection that aids progress through battles. The key to winning is to have a good variation of cards in the pack which cover different base colours, attack and defence zones, and learning the sequence so that the required card is played at the right time. Thankfully failing any of these duels doesn't lead to a game over screen, just the need to replay them until they're won in order to move the story on.

On top of the story mode, it’s possible to play the card duels and mini-game battles across wi-fi, both locally and across the Internet. There’s a ranking system for online duels, but it’s somewhat flawed. There’s very little in the way of lag but sadly there are no penalties for disconnecting mid-battle, and opponents who are losing have a tendency to drop because of this.

On the face of it Chocobo Tales appears to be aimed at a younger audience; however the game has a delightful charm that will appeal to anyone who’s a fan of the Final Fantasy series. It’s brilliantly presented, as Square-Enix games always are, and is different enough to make it a worthy addition to the game universe.