Fossil Fighters (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

This is the end of an era, folks. Mark this date in the history of Planned All Along, as we are turning towards the future. I know it’s a solemn way to approach this, but it means a lot to me. When I began working on this blog, I had a structure: A GBA game – 2 DS games – a Wii game – A Virtual Console or WiiWare game – a Top 12 list. Eventually, I ran out of GBA games and replaced them with movie reviews in 2014. Then I switched up the formula some more when I added TV shows to VGFlicks, removed one DS game, and then I finally added Steam game reviews.

Today, I review my final Nintendo DS game. It’s been a long run. I still have plenty of Wii games, but I can finally say I’ve played through everything I had on the DS side of things. Starting with the next cycle of reviews, DS games will be replaced by… 3DS games. Yeah, yeah, not much of a difference in the long run, but a switch to the next-gen console isn’t just a small event.

However! Before I get there, we have this final game. Since closing the book on a console is a major and rare event for Planned All Along (it last happened in 2014), I wish to end on a strong note, with a longer review. Ending with a bang, you could say. The game? Fossil Fighters.

There’s something that is commonly referred to as the “’Mon” genre. It refers to games mostly comprised of RPGs, in which your task is to collect characters and creatures and use them in battles. It was codified by the Pokémon franchise, which still runs strong and is still the greatest example of the genre. Speaking of, this type of RPG is defined by various elements:

Yep, Rick and Morty parodied the whole genre, using
various Mortys as the "Pokémon" to collect, train and fight.
It looks pretty fun.

-A large and varied selection of creatures to pick from, all of which can level up and grow stronger through training and dedication. Usually the creatures have tio be found or caught, and can also evolve;

-Tons and tons of special moves and abilities, making each creature feel unique in how they act in battle;

-The end goal of “catching them all”, which players are free to do – or not, as these games also put a lot of emphasis on battle for those who aren’t interested in merely getting a full collection;

-A story that features either a competition or a tournament, a struggle against an evil organization, a mystery surrounding the paranormal origin of the creatures being collected… or a mix of either of these;

-And a large world to explore, in which the creatures are scattered and you often need to actively look around to find what you’re looking for.

Today’s game checks all of the items on this list, and throws in a lot of plot points reminiscent of Pokémon for good measure. Fossil Fighters is also part of a sub-genre in which you must find the creatures you want and then go through a process to “unlock” them, instead of simply catching them in a ball.

Dig for your monsters! Why not?

How about we start?

Sorry about the logo at the bottom right, it's from the
Let's Play I use to grab screenshots.
Here it is, by the way, courtesy of The Tripmon on YouTube

This game takes place on Vivosaur Island. It’s kind of like Jurassic Park, but all the dinosaurs are either stills fossils or controlled by humans, and there’s no jackass to turn off the electric fences in the rain. Also, it’s conveniently shaped like a dinosaur skull; what are the odds? An informative video explains that the island, owned by the Richmond Foundation, is home to Fossil Stadium, where the famed Fossil Battles take place. On this island, fossil seekers thrive to discover new species, then bring the fossils back to a machine, carve them out of the stone, and revive the dinosaurs! Which gives them new superpowers, somehow. Anyone can train to become a Fossil Fighter. Can you become a master?

We cut to a boat on its way to Vivosaur Island, and on the trip we create a name for our character. Then, we can choose whether we prefer carnivores or herbivores, and whether we prefer the big ones or the small ones. I want to be challenged today: Let’s go for a small herbivore! Even there, you have two options! That’s, like… 8 possible Vivosaurs! (Also of note, the dinosaur you pick will change the color of the clothes you wear!)

So what if I want a certain color combination, but I
don't want the dinosaur associated with it?
What if I want to play a female character?
Tiough, wait for the sequel.

Our character, let’s call him… Nicolas. Not terribly creative, I know. He arrives at the Island and meets the greeting staff and the head researcher, Doctor Diggins. He was Prof Kukui before there was a Prof Kukui. Yep, Pokémon weren’t the first ones with a cool Professor who doesn't bother being in proper scientific gear - Digging proudly wears the Hawaiian shirt and shorts under his lab coat! Before we can properly get a fighter’s license, we have to get a room at the hotel.

This guy looks ready for experimentation on the beach. An
experiment that merely involves laying there and dozing off.

Smash cautiously.
That's an oxymoron, no?

Once that's done, we go back to Doctor Diggins to learn about fossil revival. First you need fossils. Then, you bring these fossils to the lab, where you’ll proceed in cleaning them out of the rock using a hammer (to break large parts of rock at once) and a drill (to pick with precision at tiny bits). There’s also a nice X-Ray tool to see the fossil within the rock so that you can focus only on what you need to break. Of course, you start off with the weaker tools, but later on you’ll be allowed to upgrade them. You can use this machine to clean up any fossil (and later on, a robot can take care of cleaning fossils you've picked up that you've have already cleaned).

However, you can only create a Vivosaur (the name they gave to revived dinosaurs) if you’ve got its head. Thankfully, you can also find and clean fossilized bodies, arms and legs, which will be grafted on to the existing vivosaur (if it’s already been revived) or instantly add themselves to the fossil during revival (if you find the head after finding some body parts). The more parts you find on a vivosaur, the stronger it gets.

Drill cautiously.
Hm, that already works a little better.

Of course, it’s possible to fail, if you break a fossil too much while cleaning it up. Although all vivosaur fossils found on the field give you a lot of leeway (50%), some later story fossils amp up the difficulty by allowing much less margin for error. In the end, every vivosaur turns out pretty unique, as its stats are calculated by the number of body parts discovered and how successful you were at cleaning said fossils. Following this training, Nicolas obtains from Dr. Diggins his first dino skull, which is revived into a cool-looking vivosaur. You got a Spinax, which is surprisingly strong for a starter vivosaur - in fact, if well-trained, it can stay in your team until the end of the game.

It's like being given a Dragonite as your Starter!

Time to become a Fossil Fighter! We enter the stadium, in which we pass a first cleaning test, after which we battle a starter opponent (the captain of the boat that brought us here!). Upon victory, we’re awarded a Fighter’s Licence! Oh, and the Captain gives us a body part for the dino we said we liked back on the boat… but it’s not the head. Gee, thanks…

Blue: Support Zone, red: Attack Zone, green: Escape Zone.
This changes in a later sequel.

This is where the battle mechanics are explained to us. Vivosaurs give the player a number of Fighting Points at the start. There’s one Attack Zone, two Support Zones and an Escape Zone. The Attacking vivosaur can hit dinosaurs in both the enemy’s Attack and Support zones. Support vivosaurs give bonuses to the vivosaurs in the Attack zones. They can actually attack, but can only target the opponent’s creature in the Attack zone. Also, they have much higher defense but lower attack, so they'll usually do little more than scratch damage to the opponent's creature in the Attack Zone. The green zone behind, known as the Escape Zone, is where your Attack creature goes when you switch it for a vivosaur that was previously in your Support Zone. It stays there for two turns, preventing you from switching creatures around on every turn. Outside of battle, all vivosaurs have their own badges that you can use to summon them when it’s time to duel, kind of like Pokéballs.

That's not even 1/8th of them all.
Of course T-Red had to be #1.

Quick aside: There are 114 vivosaurs in this game, 90+ of which must be revived this way. That’s over 360 different fossils subjected to the rules of the Random Number God when they spawn on the various dig sites. And of course, vivosaurs have different rarities in each field. You can’t find a vivosaur’s head? Tough. Leave, come back, as often as you need in order to get what you need. Some vivosaurs are very hard to get because of that. By the end of the game, you’ll have amassed over a hundred fossils that are stored in the lab, because you still need the friggin’ heads in order to revive them. Okay, I got the body, the legs and the arms. What if I have to go back to the same dig site twenty times to get the head? Having revived all 100 vivosaurs, I can tell you: It has happened to me. It’s annoying, but hey, that’s the game.

Heh. "Bea Ginner." For the beginner class.

Following this, we’re sent off to find our first fossils in a trial dig area. Once we’ve proven to know the ropes of digging for fossils, we can access the actual first area: Greenhorns Plains. As the first area, it’s very basic and doesn’t contain a lot of dinosaur fossils. There is an area up north where rarer fossils await. However, the guy guarding that area says that fossil fighting is prohibited past that point because “it could damage the fossils”. He asks us to hand over our vivosaur badges. So we enter that area, but all we can find is rubbish rocks. The guard? He ran off. We’ve been scammed, people.

No, you think? Good thing we had just started.

By an incredibly lucky coincidence, our young protagonist had just started collecting vivosaurs, so the scammer didn’t see any worth in keeping his badges. We find them on the ground and decide to fight to retrieve everyone else’s badges! Checking at the Lab indicates that there wasn’t supposed to be someone there that day, and we meet Rosie, a girl about as old as the main character, who has also had her badges stolen. She decides to go with our main character to the local police station, in the Guild Area of Vivosaur Town, in order to report the thievery. We meet Bartholomew Bullwort, the local police chief, who suggests that a thief who just stole vivosaurs might feel like trying them in battle, meaning that our best chance is to check the Fossil Stadium. Sure, why not. Makes sense.

A perfectly level-headed man, worthy of the role as police chief
that he has been given on this island full of rich people.

And yes, we enter a battle in the Stadium and fight the thief… who’s not a thief at all, but a customer who bought them off the real thief. At least we’re told where to find the guy, and Rosie gets her medals back. The thief is found in Greenhorn Plains again, and we fight him, and get everyone else's medals. With this quest completed, we’re told that Level-Up Fighter Battles will be going on soon at the Stadium, so we’re told to go back to Vivosaur Town.

Seems good enough. Remember that the whole covered area
in the circle will als detect fossils,  but you won't know
where in the area they are until you upgrade the radar.

Another side-note, you start off with very basic equipment. A pick, a bag with room for only 8 fossils, and a tiny radar. As your Fighter Rank increases through Level-Up Battles, you get to upgrade your equipment, but it takes a while. It makes finding your first fossils a pain in the ass, as the limited inventory space means you’ll be coming back very quickly to the town (unless you ditch any fossils you already have). Oh, and the worst part? Until your radar is upgraded, it’ll pick up wrong signals, making you dig up boring, plain rocks. Needless to say, the early-game is a bit annoying. It improves quickly, though.

Also of note, the game is basically divided in arcs separated by your Fighter Level. Between each Level-Up Battle, there’s a bit of plot that you must complete to move forward. Digging for fossils is enticing, but you unlock a new area with each new Fighter Level, so for the first half of the game you have few areas to visit, and to see more you really need to follow the plot.

Just Level 2 and I meet the owner of this place? Who will I
meet once I'm officially a master? God?

Level-Up Battles begin with a cleaning test and are followed by a battle, sometimes with unusual rules – gotta shake things up a bit, right? The opponent is a different NPC each time. To get to Level 2, it’s Wendy the Receptionist. Easy enough. Once we’ve reached Level 2, we meet Rosie again, who has yet to complete her tests. We also meet her grandfather, Mr. Richmond, owner of this island and blatant homage to John Hammond. It’s still early to meet this island’s owner, no? I suppose it just means this guy is plot-relevant.

Thanks to this, we unlock a new dig site, Knotwood Forest. More plot past this point, folks – but that’ll wait till next Monday!