A Green Mushroom

Mobius Final Fantasy did a few things right away that let me know what I was in for.  The first hour or so is back to back tutorials.  After that it quickly becomes apparent that this is set up in the same fashion as most modern F2P games that are trying to get the most money out of you. There are energy timers, multiple types of currency, various tickets, cards to combine together, and ever elusive rare drops.  Trust me, you've seen all this before. But Square Enix was really pushing that this game was different and it had high production values so I stuck with it for about four or five hours.  The graphics do look nice on the phone and there's actually somewhat of a unique story in here, but besides that I found everything else lackluster.  The battle system is much more about what you have equipped than it is about any particular intelligence in battle.  They actually have an auto-battle option that will always do the optimal thing for you, basic...

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is another Final Fantasy mobile title that I really wanted to like.  I love the series and I keep waiting for them to release a good mobile game in the spirit of Final Fantasy. Instead, they keep releasing these BS F2P games that are designed to prey on our nostalgia and get us to pay money for random heroes or items or whatever it is this time. I hate it.  I hate that they keep doing this. I want to pay them for a Final Fantasy mobile game and play that game on my phone.  I don't ever want it to ask me or prod me into paying again.  I want it to be a complete game that I can buy once with interesting mechanics not designed to extract as much money as possible from me. *sigh* This game was super disappointing.

FFX-2 is one of the Final Fantasy spin-off games that I've been the most excited to get back to.  I remember the basics of the story but the main thing that stood out in my mind from the game is the battle system. Firing up the remastered HD version on my Vita I quickly found that I still love the battle system.  It's the fastest and most active version of the Active Time Battle (ATB) system that is found in the majority of Final Fantasy games.  I love how dynamic is it too, it allows characters to swap out their class via dress spheres in the middle of the battle. The progression system ties directly into it.  Each character can use any dress spheres, but each dress sphere levels up it's abilities separately for each character.  You'll naturally start relying on certain characters with certain dress spheres but the system is flexible enough that you could change out all three character's classes at any time, even in the middle of battle. After playing...

Over the past couple days I've gotten to start digging into Final Fantasy Explorers.  It's a Final Fantasy spin-off game for the 3DS. It's basically Monster Hunter by way of Final Fantasy. After somewhere in the 6 to 8 hour range with the game I'm feeling very "meh" towards it.  I love the premise, getting to use Final Fantasy classes against monsters in the world.  But the game itself feels slow and directionless. It has really bad messaging to player.  It's hard to know what to focus on or what to do to improve your character.  There's also almost no story, which is typically something that keeps me invested in Final Fantasy games. I've finding Explorers less fun than I hoped it would be.  But it's not a straight up bad game.  There can be moments of fun against enemies or fighting giant eidolons out of the Final Fantasy lexicon like Ifrit and Shiva. I think I'm going to put this one on the backburner.  It might be better su...

After trying out Final Fantasy IV: The After Years over the past couple days and bouncing off the game I thought I'd try the other iOS Final Fantasy that I've been putting off, Final Fantasy Dimensions. This one is a little different.  All the other Final Fantasy games I've played on iOS were remade, remastered, and ported over to the system.  They were mostly the mainline Final Fantasy games and they were really good. Final Fantasy Dimensions is the first Final Fantasy game they made specifically for mobile... and it's not very good.  The controls aren't nearly as responsive or intuitive as all the other mobile Final Fantasy games I've already played.  You can tell this was one of their first attempts at the platform.  It just feels rough. Not to mention a story that starts off overly heavy on exposition and with some pretty bad player guidance.  It makes for a lot of frustration right off the bat. This is my second time really trying to get ...

After having Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on my iOS devices for awhile I figured it was time to actually try it out.  The structure of the game is broken into "tales".  Different characters are highlighted in each tale but ( according to howlongtobeat.com ) altogether they add up to about the length of a typical JRPG. This game is the same world and lots of the same characters as Final Fantasy IV.  It's a direct continuation of the story, only years later.  One of the main character's is the son of Final Fantasy IV's main characters. It really feels like I'm retreading old ground when I'm playing The After Years which is probably what some people want, I'm just finding it boring instead.  I don't think I can force myself to push through and find the fun in this game. Although I want to try all the spin-offs from the Final Fantasy series, I feel no desire to force myself to play through a spin-off if it isn't engaging.  Where I re...

Lightning Returns opens with some beautiful cutscenes.  Square still knows how to make some gorgeous pre-rendered stuff. After that the game almost immediately becomes incomprehensible.  Throwing around a bunch of terms that don't have any relevance to a new player.  Final Fantasy XIII had this problem too, but in different ways.  Lightning Returns uses words that we know but in ways that are obvious different in the game.  God, Chaos, Ark, Savior.  They're used in a specific way in-game that doesn't actually map to the real-world terms. I actually hate that they're using these characters from FFXIII but they aren't actually the same characters at all.  They've changed so much that they might as well have been wiped clean and replaced with all new characters.  Snow is a king or something.  Lightning calls herself a savior un-ironically.  Hope is here too but he's some kind of coordinator for Lightning's adventures and he's young ...

I love Final Fantasy.  As part of my Final Fantasy Project I've been eyeing some of the spin-offs I want to visit or revisit from the series. I've already covered some of them, even if I just went in for a taste, but there are a few that are top of mind now that I'm near the end of my gaming backlog: Lightning Returns - I liked FFXIII, although it wasn't my favorite game in the series.  It had some issues, but it was still good.  After finishing it I tried to get into the sequel, FFXIII-2 but it fell flat for me.  I've heard great things about Lightning Returns, which is the third game in the series.  I even own the game already.  Since it's on my PS3 which has been moved to another room I've just never booted it up.  I need to get around to it. FFX-2 - I think FFX is one of the best games in the series.  It's the one I always recommend to new players who are interested in Final Fantasy.  FFX-2 is the direct sequel and I remember e...

After my disappointing stint with Final Fantasy Tactics I thought I would go back to some of my early Final Fantasy roots and dig out my copy of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.  This is my all time favorite Game Boy Advance game and it's one of the Final Fantasy games that I've put the most time into. When I booted up the game for the first time I already had two separate save games on the cartridge, each with over 50 hours played in them. I started up a new game and after the intro missions it all came flooding back to me.  I have such strong memories of playing this game.  It's really good!  The general battle structure is similar to Final Fantasy Tactics but it gets rid of the deal-breaking annoying features of that game. I love Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and I've beaten it multiple times.  And you know what?  After a couple hours with it I realized that I don't feel the need to beat it again right now.  It's a great game but I've alread...

I don't like the difficulty curve in this game.  That's my initial impression.  I loved the first few missions of Final Fantasy Tactics, but then I ran into a brick wall as far as difficulty was concerned. I should mention, I'm playing the remastered PSP version of this game on my PS Vita called Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions.  Just another reason to love my PS Vita.  It plays so many classic Playstation games. Despite the difficulty curve that I ran into, Final Fantasy Tactics is a good game.  All the underlying systems are solid.  I can see how it's been a huge influence on all the tactical RPGs that have followed it.  And the story is great.  It's a conflict on a grand scale, but the main character is right in the thick of it.  It seems like Tactics delivers on the grand scale conflict in a way that Final Fantasy XII failed to do. In some ways the game is starting to show it's age.  It has unskippable story sequences...

My first thoughts on started Final Fantasy XIII-2 were: I have no idea what's going on. Lightning is in Valhalla fighting a new enemy.   There's an epic battle that feels like it belongs at the end of a game, not the beginning.  It is given no context.  Then a random new character is transported there through time and/or space and told to go on a mission to bring Serah to Lightning. Then we cut to Serah who has memories of the events of at the end of Final Fantasy XIII.  Unfortunately for her, most people don't remember it the same way.  They all say that Lightning was never there at the end of Final Fantasy XIII. After playing for the first few hours of the game it becomes apparent that timelines are mixed up and there are paradoxes everywhere.  The game is structured around unlocking new timelines, traveling through time, and solving paradoxes. It's not a bad premise, even though it's explained very poorly, but the gameplay doesn't do enough t...

Final Fantasy Record Keeper launched last week on iOS and Android.  I dug into it for a few days to see what it had to offer.  I was trying to see if there was much long term appeal in the game or if it was something I could let go of relatively quickly. Like I said, it only lasted for a few days.  Then I had experienced enough to delete the game and move on with my life. It's a free-to-play Final Fantasy nostalgia game.  The hook is that you get to relive many of the famous Final Fantasy scenes from across the whole Final Fantasy series.  You get to collect your favorite characters and make your dream party to fight battles with.  Find characters, collect gear, acquire new abilities, and level up.  It sounds great on paper. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy Record Keeper is there to prey on your nostalgia... not to celebrate it.  It's much more forgiving than most free-to-play games.  I never felt like I had  to buy anything. ...

I finished up Final Fantasy Type-0 last night!  As always with Final Fantasy spin-off titles it was really interesting to see what they did with the game and where they differed from normal. I think the best thing they did with Type-0 is making it a mature game in a way that no other Final Fantasy game has been before.  Within the first few minutes you see an actual tragedy of war.  Death and being mortal are huge themes throughout the whole game.  And death often happens brutally, with blood.  Blood may not seem like a big deal in a game with war, but there is rarely any blood in a Final Fantasy game.  I'm surprised by how much weight it gives to the injuries and death in this game. The themes and the story in Final Fantasy Type-0 are the strongest parts.  I loved watching the members of Class 0 develop together as the story progressed.  By the end of the game I felt a connection with each member, even though there are 14 playable charact...

Wow, that post title looks weird with multiple colons in it. Anyway.... HELLO! This is my first Final Fantasy Sidequest post.  I've been playing Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call a little bit here and there ever since it released on 3DS last September.  I thought it was finally time to write about it. It's really good! I rarely play it for more than 15 minutes in one sitting, but it keeps drawing me back for more.  It's been out for over four months and I'm still playing it.  That should say a lot about it. It does have a huge pedigree of amazing music to pull from.  That's easily the best part of the game.  The music selection from the Final Fantasy series is just fantastic.  They have it sorted by game and music type which makes it simple to find the track you're hunting for. The main thing that makes this so much better than the original Theatrhythm Final Fantasy game are the control options.  I tried the original ga...

I COMPLETED MY GOAL! But... I don't feel like I'm done.  It took a long time, but I did it, I finished Final Fantasy I through XIII!  I'm super proud of myself, but now that I've done it I feel like I have at least one more thing to do. I need to try out FFXIV. I wrote a post for FFXI with my impressions from long ago even though I had originally intended to skip the MMOs altogether.  I should at least devote a post to FFXIV, but that means I need to play it. I wanted to weigh in on every mainline game in the series and I would feel bad if I left out the fourteenth entry in the main series.  I'm not promising I'll reach endgame or anything.  It's still a MMO and will never actually end.  But, at this point, I really need to give it a shot.  I don't want my Final Fantasy Project to be missing a crucial game. The other thing I'm going to continue to do is my Final Fantasy Project Sidequests  series.  These are offshoots of the ma...

All through my mainline playthrough of the Final Fantasy series I've been thinking about what I'll do when I reach the end.  I decided I would like to start playing Final Fantasy games that aren't part of the main series.  A lot of Final Fantasy spin-off games sound like they would be a great fit for me. I've played a handful of the spin-offs in the past.  I finished FFX-2, FFTA, and probably a couple other minor games.  I've dabbled in FFTA2, Theatrhythm, All The Bravest, Crystal Defenders, Crystal Chronicles, and many more without completing them. If you can't tell by now, I love Final Fantasy.  It's one of the only series that I've had a consistent passion for over the years. I plan on starting to get into these spinoff titles soon.  So if you see a post with " The Final Fantasy Project Sidequests " in the title you'll know what to expect.  I want to play around with as many spin-offs as I can.  Since I know they're very hit-o...