World of Final Fantasy
World of Final Fantasy may be another spin off of the Final Fantasy games, but this one is quite enjoyable. I remember when this game was first announced at E3, I thought it was the silliest thing. As time went by, the style of the chibi characters did start to grow on me. As more info and footage of this game came out, I grew more interested in it, and now I have the Limited Edition version with bonus preorder DLC items.
While the game plays like a normal Final Fantasy game, it has the ability to capture monsters. Yes, its a pokemon Final Fantasy. They're not called monsters in the game, but as Mirages. These Mirages are like cards in card games where they each have their own abilities. They also has a skill tree and evolutions which they call Transfiguration. They're very important part of the game as there are puzzles in the game that require the use of Mirages.
The story is about these twins who wake up with their memories gone. In order to gain them back, they have to travel in a world called Grymoire where Mirages and the chibi people live. You meet a number of Final Fantasy characters in your journey. The game is like Pokemon, Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, and Final Fantasy combined to me. The writing is full of puns and silliness which makes the game quite charming. As a fan of Final Fantasy, I did enjoy meeting them all. Meeting them together in the same world is kind of Kingdom Hearts like.
As for gameplay, it does play like a JRPG game. You visit towns, go through dungeons, and the battle is turned based. What I like about the battle system is that I can put it to Auto mode and fast forward it. I can multitask and do other things as I grind in the game. There are mimics in the game, and my first encounter was not a fun experience. One of its attacks nearly one hits me which was scary. The dungeons are not too big or too difficult, but they can be annoying. Most of the dungeons have two types of strong Mirages that you can fight, but you will have to go back to them later since they're over the level of the dungeon. Defeating them will make the ???? spots on the skill trees to be filled out thus you can unlock that Tranfiguration. Since these Mirages are usually near the end or second half of the dungeon, you will have to go through the whole dungeon again to reach them which is quite annoying. The camera in this game is also fixed. You can pan around, but there's isn't a lot of freedom with the camera. Since the game has quite a bit of talking going on, I am glad that the preorder includes Japanese voices DLC. Its a lot more tolerable, and the translations is a tad different since the puns and comedy don't exactly translate well into English.
Capturing the monsters can be a real pain. It took me while to get the hang of it. At first, even when I have them at low health, I can't capture a high level Mirage. It seems I have a better chance of just getting a baby Mirage into a big mirage than capturing a big Mirage. But I have slowly learned how it works. Each Mirage has their own prism cube so its not like Pokeballs that can work for everyone. When you first encounter a new Mirage will get one prism for that Mirage for free. You will need to cast Libra to find out what will get a shining ring around the Mirage to appear like physical attacks or giving it a status ailment. This shining ring indicates that you can capture the Mirage. If you trigger the action that made the ring appear again (or 3 or more times) the ring will glow bigger, and this gives you a better chance at capturing the Mirage successfully. Since Mirages can require a number of different actions to trigger the ring, I highly recommend buying at least 4 of each item that inflicts something and that causes elemental damage. Capturing does get a bit harder as you progress through the story. When you unlock stuff from the Mirage Boards, you will come across being able to unlock boards of different mirages. They won't show up when you unlock, but to access them you go to Tranfiguration which is in the Prism Case. There will be a list of Mirages you can Tranfigure to, and you can change to anyone of the ones you've unlocked.
The music is great in this game. There are some great fun tracks, emotional tracks, and upbeat tracks. They all are very beautiful, and I do plan on getting the soundtrack after I finish the game. The game is visually appealing to me. There are quite a few nice looking scenery especially as you approach towns. Overall, I've been enjoying the game quite a bit. I have yet to finish it so I will update this post to put in my total game time and any additional thoughts I have.
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So now that I have finished the game, it took me about 60 hours. I've only gotten one game over and it was at the final boss. I have to say the story was very Final Fantasy esque which surprised me, but its not at all a bad thing. The game was easy to know what you need to do and such, but there was a point in the story that I was really confused at what to do. Personally, I wished more FF characters where in this game. This game has little missions called Interventions that you can do and they all follow the FF characters in the game. The cutscenes for them are fun to watch as a FF fan myself.
I don't think I would have had as much fun with this game if it didn't come with Japanese voices. While the English subtitles follow the English voices, the translations from the Japanese is not 100% exact. Its mostly cultural differences, but there are some things I found lame in the English like "what the honk" and having Lann saying "Dude." I do think the translators did its best to try to stay true to the feel of the game though. As a seiyuu fan, I do enjoy hearing the seiyuus I know in this game.
The game is fun, and I do recommend it if you like cute things and some silliness.
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