So, I've been playing this game on-and-off since it came out in Japan. Essentially, the game is just the classic ATB system from FF4-9, and you fight tons of bosses from the entire series. It's only been out for half a year, but it's got 5 million downloads, and even has TV commercials. And today, it's finally available in English.
I know, you're probably thinking it's a free-to-play phone "game" with stamina and microtransactions and Square-Enix made it and they're basically the devil! Just look at the other junk they put out! It's obviously just some shovelware garbage meant to play off of people's nostalgia for pixel FF characters, and then nickel-and-dime the suckers for the "privilege" of using them!
But I want to prove to you that it isn't.
I think this game is really neat, and a perfect example of how to pull off this sort of idea. It takes something that was fundamentally good, adapts it into something more relevant in the current age, and polishes it up to a mirror shine. Yes, it's monetized, but there's nothing egregious about the way it's handled.
The crux of the game, as I mentioned, is that you're going through classic FF games and fighting their bosses. These bosses feel like they've been cut-and-pasted from their original games, but in the best way possible. All of their special attack routines and gimmicks are recreated here. Fighting the first boss from FF7? Attack while its tail is up, it's gonna counterattack. One of the FF13 eidolons? You guessed it, Doom. They all retain their original elemental resists and weaknesses, too. Hope you remember how to beat Scarmiglione!
On the right, those are all of my party members. I've got a good 35 or so across the whole series. You'll notice some familiar faces in there, like Cloud, the obvious inclusion in any sort of FF product. But then, some of the others catch your eye.
Oh, it's those FF2 guys that nobody remembers.
Irvine? Vivi?
...Is that Luneth from the FF3 remake?
You might think that they're really trying to pad out their character gacha, except you don't pay for characters. You either unlock them by pushing through the main story dungeons, given out as gifts (rarely), but they're primarily available for a limited time in event dungeons.
The event dungeons themselves are pushover-easy, and take maybe an hour of playtime to finish if you already have a high-level party--maybe six hours, if you include the downtime for stamina to regen. They're usually open for about two weeks, and if you miss one, that character will certainly be back some other time in a new dungeon. So far, every character beyond a certain release date has made at least one repeat appearance, typically in addition to the current event. Plus, the event dungeons also reward plenty of Growth Eggs, which you can feed to a character to give them a buttload of EXP. That way, you can quickly catch your new character up... or dump them into your favorites, because nobody likes Yuna.
Also, note that every character has an icon denoting which game they came from; this is a really neat detail. Each dungeon (event or not) is themed around a specific game, and features enemies and bosses from that game. If you use a character from that game in your party, that character gets a huge stat boost, as well as some bonus EXP. That incentivizes you to collect 'em all, because you never you never know who's going to come in handy.
Let's face it, though, it's still a free-to-play game, so they have to ask for money somewhere. The paid currency in this game is Mythril, and it's used for a couple things. The game gives it out like candy, though, especially as rewards for doing the event dungeons.
Of course, the first thing is restoring your stamina. One point of stamina replenishes every 3 minutes (it was 5 at JP launch, but they changed it in the first patch), and each leg of a dungeon typically requires anywhere from 3-12, depending on how far into the game you are. Your maximum increases as you clear the story dungeons and get what are essentially Zelda heart pieces; filling one also refills your stamina, so you can definitely game the system by waiting until you're low to finish one. When you clear a dungeon, you unlock a harder version of it, and those fights tend to require more stamina. They're pretty challenging, though, and getting the gold score on them can be ROUGH.
You can also use Mythril to continue if you die in battle, a la Puzzle and Dragons. However, this also resets the current encounter; if you continue on a boss, you might have full HP again, but so does it. It does give you one of four stacking buffs if you continue, but that still doesn't guarantee you'll win. You can't just throw money at a boss you have zero chance of beating. I don't recommend continuing unless you come REALLY close to beating a boss (by counting its HP and looking up the total), but just needed to start with full HP or ability usages.
Speaking of which, your HP and abilities don't refresh between battles in the same dungeon. Mythril can be used to fully heal your dudes, but I'd rather wait until I die and continue... but only once a dungeon.
However, the main dump for Mythril is the equipment gacha. You get gear drops from battles, and there's a free gacha available three times a day, but it's the quickest and dirtiest way to get useful stuff. Each character can equip one weapon, armor, and accessory. They're also logically limited to what they can equip; Kain isn't gonna use a staff, but he sure as hell will rock a spear. The main character invented for this game can equip anything, though, so you don't have to worry about getting useless epics.
On the left? That's my collection of my high-end items, and I haven't put a single red cent into this game. Again, a lot of them came from the event dungeons; they love to give out multiple copies of items tailored for the event character, so you can upgrade them all the way. The rest of it was just dumping my excess Mythril into the virtual slot machine and seeing what came up.
(I haven't mentioned it, but you can also craft and upgrade spells and actions, like Jump and elemental attacks, from orbs that drop in battles. They don't directly monetize those, though.)
Wow, this ended up longer than I anticipated. Wasn't really expecting to write a whole blog/review combo, so I'll wrap up with a short list of stuff that's not currently in the EN launch version:
- Dungeons based on the rest of the FF games, and further chapters in the existing games
- A way to increase characters' level caps, above the initial 50
- Passive skills tied to characters, unlocked by breaking their level caps
- Quests that guide you through crafting stuff and unlocking story characters
- A follow/follower system, where you can summon other players' characters
- A button to auto-equip gear before each dungeon (taking the dungeon's themed game into account)
- Sweet, sweet event dungeons
That should cover it for now. Ask away!
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