Main More Than the Sum of Its Parts
Various review outlets have described Fossil Fighters as "Pokemon but with dinosaurs," though I don't think that description really does this game justice. I blame this on the difficulty the world of game journalism has in dealing with the Mons genre. The game is more like a tactics RPG lite, with the various viviosaurs being more like distinct characters than interchangable, random monsters, especially in that you can only get one of each. While the game does have the standard shonen To Be A Master plot and Team Rocket band in common with Pokemon, even those fall apart after the midway point, becoming more like, of all things, Earthbound.
The simple tactical system and emphasis on the viviosaurs as distinct creatures, putting the focus on leveling them up as specific "units" instead of throwaway characters like in Pokemon ("Nope. This one doesn't have the right personality. Into the trash can you go!") gives the battles a very distinct and unique feel, and makes the individual viviosaurs feel all the more important. The different abilities given to each help them to stand out too. Because you're not spammed with random encounters and can choose to battle in most cases, it helps the fights stay fresh. Fossil cleaning too—by making it so you can pawn most of your work off on your Robot Buddy, there's a lot of tedium avoided.
The generally solid gameplay is also aided by absolutely top-notch, and often downright hilarious, writing. The self-aware writing style isn't all that dissimilar to Paper Mario, which isn't too surprising considering that this was a home-grown Nintendo job. For a Mons game, the story is even—yes, really—compelling! Don't worry about all that Team Rocket-esque nonsense in the beginning. Things really get interesting near the end, where more and more pieces of a cosmic mystery start falling into place, and finding out what's going to happen next is half the fun! There's even the tiniest of twists near the end, showing that maybe the Red String Of Fate isn't tied so tightly after all.
Main An extremely solid and addictive game, perfect for the budding palaeontologist in you life!
My whole life, I've just wanted to be a paleontologist. I recently found out the unfortunate fact that you have to, you know, understand geology to be one, and that having an encyclopedic knowledge of ancient life does NOT qualify you for the job. However, while I struggle with this and try to learn the necessary skillset, Fossil Fighters is an extremely nice distraction. First of all, I LOVE the battle system, which actually does something different. IT actually requires a fair amount of strategy other than "level grind, throw out monster of the appropriate element when needed" unlike certain OTHER series I could mention *cough*Pokemon*cough*. The dinosaurs you send into battle actually do matter, and it's fun to think about how you're going to fight opponents. Shockingly, NP Cs can even kick your ass if you aren't careful! The other thing that I really love about this game is the fossil cleaning. It's fun, and it doesn't feel routine at all, though I will admit that by the end I was just digging for new fossils, only barely managing to clean them, and any fossil I already had I would just dump on my robot. That robot by the way, might be the single greatest thing ever put in a game, and I would personally fellate whatever blessed, blessed person decided to put it into the game. Now personally, I would have liked it a lot better if they had actually had you fly out to where the dinosaurs can be found in real life to dig them up, but, I'm happy with what this turned out to be, namely a bright, happy, stupid distraction for the dinosaur buff. While it certainly won't help you learn about the ancient world, or paleontology for that matter, it's the perfect thing for pretending to be what you've always wanted to be, which is really all that most video games are, aren't they?