One of the best J-RPGs for the Wii Library. (Though there isn't much to begin with)
The story talks of a Chocobo and his friend Cid who are treasure hunters. By same strange twist of fate our heroes are sucked into another dimension into a city known as Lostime in a place called Memoria. The bell rings in that town causing everyone to forget, and with the help of a weird baby that falls from the sky, you must enter people's memories and help them remember their past.
The story isn't particularly great, but there is a bit of a theme to it and can be thought-provoking.
The memories in the game are the dungeons. You must go through randomly generated dungeons in a turn-based format. When you take a turn, your enemies on the same floor will take a turn. Each step you take, attack you do, skill/spell you cast or item you use will constitute a turn. You'll encounter traps, find equipment and items, fight bosses and eventually save the day.
Though the game has been stuck with the label of "roguelike" it has been developed with the western gamers in mind. In most roguelikes if you die you lose everything, and I mean everything. Money, levels and all your items will vanish. But such is not the case in Chocobo's Dungeon. When you die, you will lose all your money and items, but your levels and equipped items will remain. There is also a bank to store money and items in case you fear death. This makes the game easier in some aspects. But the game itself is not that easy. It'll start off easy, but will ramp up in difficulty. You won't be able to just plow right through unless you build yourself up to near indestructable levels. But even then there are special dungeons that will set restraints to ignore all your level grinding and focus more on strategy. For example, in one dungeon, you and the monsters will all have 1hp. With a dungeon like this you'll want to use range attacks to avoid unwanted and immediate deaths.
An FFlike Job system is implemented in this game. When you enter a dungeon you can choose from 10 different classes such as Knight, Dragoon, Black Mage and Ninja. You need to level these up in order to get new skills. This adds variety to the gameplay.
The presentation of the game is mixed. There is english voice acting, however you may find it quite annoying and lifeless. There is no option for japanese voices, though I wish there were. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing and if you are a big fan of past Final Fantasies, you'll find quite a few memorable tunes remixed from different games. The graphics in the dungeons are pretty decent, while the graphics in town are much more bare. Nothing amazing, but it serves its purpose. Despite trailers you may have seen, there is actually very little in the way of FMV in this game.
There are several minigames, but they are simple and forgetful. The most impressive of the minigames is a cardbattling game. You collect cards throughout your adventure, build up your special deck of 15 cards and go head to head in typical monster card duel game. There is online play for this, but it is hard to find random matches because very few people have the game to begin with. It also uses friendcodes so it could be a nice diversion if your friend has this game as well or if you hook up into a community and do tournaments.
In the end, whether or not you get this game will depend on how much you want to play a good RPG for the Wii. If you have never played a roguelike, this is a good way to get a taste. While it has a cute presentation, it can be a quite challenging game for adults. The bulk of the game is running through perilous dungeons, leveling yourself up, maxing out job levels, forging the best equipment and fighting against classic Final Fantasy beasts. If that sounds about right for you, then you should buy this game. It has a starting price of $40 new and may help to satisfy your J-RPG needs until next year.