In battles between well-matched teams, this can lead to some tense tactical decision making, but it's easy to find yourself with teams of vivosaurs that can wipe the floor with most of the competition you encounter. You can create multiple teams of vivosaurs and deliberately use weaker vivosaurs in your collection for more of a challenge and to level up those vivosaurs , but your path to victory can be easy as pie. Champions aims to be frustration free, and defeat in battle is never a setback.
There are no consequences for failure, and if you do come across a key battle you just can't win, you can easily battle random fossil fighters until you and your vivosaurs are powerful enough to triumph. The one area in which Champions improves significantly on the original game is in its multiplayer offerings. In addition to local multiplayer combat and fossil rock trading, you can now battle with distant friends or random opponents via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Locally, you can also host cleaning parties, where you and your friends help each other clean fossil rocks, and if you're successful, all of you get to add the cleaned fossil to your collections.
Can't we train robots to dig up the fossils for us, too? The visuals have seen no such enhancements, but they remain pleasant enough. Though they are supposed to be massive creatures, vivosaurs still look as if they could fit in the palm of your hand, which makes their attempts to appear ferocious more endearing than scary like a cute little dog whose bark is much worse than its bite.
The environments you explore in your hunt for fossils don't have much detail, but there's a good variety to them, from the volcanic slopes of Mt. Krakanak to the snowy grounds of Hot Spring Heights. With more than vivosaurs to discover, there's plenty in Champions to keep you busy for a long time, but the gameplay is too familiar to keep the process of digging, cleaning, and battling compelling for long.
The original Fossil Fighters was an enjoyable discovery; this sequel has far too much in common with its predecessor to represent the next stage of the evolutionary chain. Upvote 1 Leave Blank.
The Good Tactical battles can be engaging A cast of humorous characters Multiplayer now supports Wi-Fi The Bad The three core aspects of gameplay have seen very little improvement. About the Author. Carolyn Petit. More GameSpot Reviews. Load Comments 1. Once you've revived and named your new dino buddy, it's time to raise its rank by taking it into battle.
The turn-based battles take place on a four-square grid, where the player places three of their Vivosaurs in various formations, taking into account what kind of range each Vivosaurs' attacks have.
With the inclusion of type advantages to consider and some cool animations on the top screen of your Vivosaurs duking it out, the battle system has some meat to it and rewards players for experimentation. But though I had fun, it still felt something like a poor man's Pokemon or Dragon Quest - albeit, an amusing one. The story itself is cute, with some funny characters here and there, though none that particularly stood out.
Pleasant music sets the Fossil Fighting mood, but the lack of variety means you will likely tire of these tunes well before the adventue concludes. All in all the package is well put-together, with a great pace once you get past the long intro. The environments are fun to explore, but there could have been more to interact with and even more people to talk to and things to do.
The biggest downside of this otherwise delightful title is that none of it feels original - there's nothing here that hasn't been done before, and done better at that. The characters are carbon copies of Pokemon characters. One woman is the Professor Oak, while another is the Gary.
These simple, memorable character types are used effectively, but are so reminiscent of their Pokemon counterparts personality-wise that it feels a little shameless. Graphically the game is a mixed bag. Most of the character models shove too much detail into too small of a space, and come off really messy because of it. What you see on the bottom screen - where the gameplay takes place - is often pixelated, while the top screen is reserved for the nicer graphics as seen in the dino battles.
All in all the game still achieves an attractive look, though nothing too impressive overall. Gameplay is turn-based and relies heavily on menus to organize information.
Controls are intuitive, but players will have to read instructions and dialogue carefully to learn what to do next. There is plenty of dinosaur-on-dinosaur brawling, but nothing graphic is shown aside from snapping jaws, and damage is indicated by a depleting health meter. Young kids might be frightened by some of the imagery; in an early scene, for example, the heroes are chased by a growling allosaurus with a mouthful of sharp teeth.
Parents need to know that Fossil Quest: Champions is the sequel to Fossil Fighters , a Pokemon-inspired role-playing game where players excavate and revive special dinosaurs called "vivosaurs" and then pit them against other vivosaurs in turn-based battles.
Players can use the DS's WiFi connection to compete in matched battles or upload a team to see how it stacks up against other human players. They can also download exclusive vivosaurs and quests. Up to four friends can connect locally to clean fossils together.
There's some crude humor in reference to fossils of dinosaur droppings depicted as coils, and some mild violence in the form of dinosaur battles, but there's no blood. Add your rating See all 2 parent reviews. Add your rating See all 2 kid reviews.
Players are encouraged to meticulously clean each fossil using the DS stylus as a hammer and drill because the more the fossil is cleaned, the more powerful the vivosaur will be. Fossil Fighters: Champions introduces new giant fossil rocks containing complete dinosaurs, and two-sided Odd Fossil Rocks, which add new challenges to the cleaning. Battles are strategic, and success relies on becoming familiar with each dinosaur's strengths and weaknesses.
The dialogue in the game can be quite lengthy. However, unlike the original Fossil Fighters , where cleaning fossils became a repetitive experience because duplicate fossils were thrown away, in Fossil Fighters: Champions duplicate fossils are donated to the lab to earn "Donation Points" that can be traded in for rewards. Families can talk about the ethics of excavating dinosaurs to use them as fighters in competitions.
How does this compare to real-world examples of humans using animals for sanctioned competitions, like horse- and dog-racing? Parents can also talk about paleontology, using the game as a jumping off point to explore the field. Families could arrange a trip to the local museum to see some real dinosaur bones. Families can also talk about how to manage time when playing a video game.
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