World of Final Fantasy Review

Reviewed on the PS4.

Yeah, I know I said the last review would be Uncharted 2, but I haven't actually played it yet, which makes the reviewing part a bit difficult. And I won't actually be playing it next, since I picked up Tales of Berseria and have been getting into that. In the meantime though, here's a review of World of FF!

So this is the first PS4 game that I ever played. Yeah, I know I'm way behind, but there hadn't really been any JRPG's that came out for the PS4 that actually made me want to buy the system. It was a combination of this game, Star Ocean 5 and the upcoming (at the time) FF15 that made me go and pick one up at last. And I'm pretty glad I did as it seems like there's some good JRPG's coming out this year: Dragon Quest 11, Persona 5, FF12 Remaster, maybe Kingdom Hearts 3 (I guess that sorta counts), and Ni No Kuni 2, which is the one I'm looking forward to the most. So yeah, it's a pretty good time to be a PS4 owner. Anyways, that's enough on the state of the PS4 currently. Onto the review!

Now, I'd briefly read about this game when it was announced and checked out a trailer or two, not being particularly impressed with what I saw, but somewhat intrigued. I wasn't sure what to think, other than that it looked like some sort of FF/Pokemon hybrid. Well, as it turns out, that's exactly what it is. I love Pokemon, and I love Final Fantasy, so surely a game like this is a match made in heaven for me, right? Let's find out.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW!

Story

I'll be pretty upfront about this one. The story... is not the best. Think of the tropes of a stereotypical JRPG. Got them? Ok, this one pretty much has them all. Amnesiac teens? Check. Somewhat annoying sidekick that also acts as a tutorial machine? Check. Big bad hellbent on destroying world and/or universe? Check. In all honesty, this sort of thing doesn't bother me too much. For people that aren't JRPG fans, I can see them looking at a lot of them and thinking that they all pretty much have the same story, and they would be right. But it's that familiarity and those standard tropes that are part of the reason that I play them. Well, maybe not the annoying sidekick thing. They're ok sometimes... I didn't actually mind Drippy from Ni No Kuni. Tama from this game is a bit more annoying, so if you had issues with Drippy, you're going to have some problems here.

The story goes like this: Lann and Reynn are twin brother and sisters who all of a sudden become aware that they are the only people who exist in their world when Enna Kros (also known as God) visits their coffee shop. Enna Kros sends them on a mission with sidekick Tama to recover mirages in the world of Grymoire with the pretense that this will help them recover their memory. Two types of people exist in the world of Grymoire, Jiants and Lilikin. Jiants are typically known as members of the evil invading Bahamutian Army and have a much larger physical appearance. Lilikin are little chibi-like beings that are the natives to the land. Along the way, they meet characters from various Final Fantasy games who help them fight the Bahamutian Army that is in the process of trying to take over the world. At the head of the Army is Brandelis, a pretty one dimensional villain who has been absorbing the energies of worlds for reasons, and Seewarides and Pellinore, who appear to be his henchmen. In the later stages of the game you meet up with Hauyn, their long forgotten sister who hates their guts, but doesn't say why. Eventually, they recover their memories, which make it apparent Lann and Reynn were complete douchebag teenagers that were responsible for a) imprisoning their sister Hauyn in a cube, b) bringing Brandelis into the world through the Ultima Gate and c) Brandelis using their parents and transforming them into Seewarides and Pellinore. You find all of this out right near the end of the game, which is good because otherwise you'd spend a majority your time hating them.

Upon finding this out, they put their best effort in to redeem themselves. Taking the fight to Brandelis, Lann ends up sacrificing himself to imprison him in the same sort of cube thing that they imprisoned Hauyn in. This appears to be the end of the game, and the most depressing credits in the world roll, with Reynn sadly about the rest of her life while Tama looks on. You get back to the title screen and instead of the usual New Game/Load Game options to choose from, there is only one that says "No!". Upon choosing this, we see that Reynn refuses to accept this ending. Sort of like the endings to Wayne's World 1&2. Tama offers to sacrifice her nine lives to turn back time and get the happy ending this time. I actually really liked this a lot. It was something I'd never come across in a JRPG before, and although it was rather meta (quite a lot of things in this game are, actually), it was uniquely cool.

It's not quite that straight-forward though, with Reynn the only person who's aware of what happened in the other timeline, she has to convince Lann to go along with her plans, as well as try to revive Tama somehow. Upon accomplishing all of this, they come up with a better plan this time: Get all of the past FF characters to help to close the Ultima Gate, find the Cogna Lords (powerful mirages that used to be yours in the past) and with their powers combined, finish off Brandelis/The Bahamutian Army once and for all. Once you pull this off, Reynn and Lann actually sacrifice themselves for the "good ending", but it's implied that they return as mirages somehow. Everyone lives happily ever after!

It actually sounds sort of confusing reading all of that back out, but when playing the game, it's a bit easier to follow. Again, it's nowhere near as convoluted as the FF13 saga's story (for some reason I keep going back to that as the definitive confusing storyline), but it has that unique brand of ambiguity and confusion that seems to come with the territory when playing an FF. Yes, it has a lot of the tropes that can get boring and tiresome, but a lot of those meta aspects help keep it somewhat fresh. There's even a fair bit of fourth-wall breaking that takes place, which I particularly enjoy. What also helps is the games sense of humour. You can tell a lot of the time that even the player characters, as well as the NPCs aren't actually taking the story too seriously. While the dialogue and events are cringe-worthy or corny at times, when the jokes actually hit, a lot of them are laugh out loud funny.

Most of the past FF side characters have their own minor side-stories that take place, and for me, these were more enjoyable than the actual main story of the game. A few of these have fan-favourites like Tidus and Yuna or Celes and Cloud doing things together, as well as references to events of the past FF's themselves, like Cloud referring to hunting a man down that killed someone he loved. It's a real treat to see FF characters interact with each other and refer to their respective games. It's fan-service through and through, of course, but then again, isn't that the point of this entire game?

Score: 70/100

Gameplay

Funnily enough, this is the first JRPG I've played in a while that uses a straight-up old school turn based system with random encounters. A lot of later ones these days seem to be going with hybrids of real-time/turn based systems. Since it's an FF, it also uses the Active Time Battle system, and this is represented on-screen in pretty much the same way as FFX. It's one of my favourite incarnations of the ATB, since it lets you know exactly when the enemy is going to get their move, letting you strategically plan ahead. There's two types of input options for selecting what to use in combat. One is a standard menu that's present in most turn-based RPGs and the other uses button presses as shortcuts. For example, if you wanted to cast Blizzard, you'd press up to bring up the magic menu, and then press triangle to use Blizzard, which is mapped to that button. While it seems like a good way to steamline things, it seemed to me to be missing a lot of my spells/abilities when I would use it, since you can only assign to much to the buttons available. Of course, it's customizable, but is it really worth it? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

As I said earlier, this is pretty much a cross between Pokemon and FF. Out in the world, creatures called Mirages exist, and it's your job to try fight and catch them on your way to the end of the game. Most of the Mirages are well-known monsters from the FF series, though there are some original ones too. Now, I wouldn't say you've gotta catch 'em all or anything in order to progress in the game, but if you enjoy this sort of thing (which you should if you're playing this game in the first place), you'll obviously be catching as many as you can. I personally love this sort of thing. Growing up with the original Pokemon Gameboy games, and having played many of the countless sequels, it's right up my alley. You're able to check whether you have caught all of the possible Mirages in an area, and quite often, I wouldn't leave an area until I'd gotten them all. Of course, you'd run into situations where you couldn't get a certain mirage just yet because you don't have the applicable ability to get into a certain part of the area, but these are usually pretty obvious. Where as Pokemon would use Poke Balls to catch Pokemon, World of FF uses something called a Prismarium, and upon encountering a Mirage for the first time, you get a Prismarium that you can use to catch that Mirage for free. The only way to get a second Prismarium (if for some reason you want more than one of that specific Mirage) is by activating a node on that Mirage's Mirage Board. Catching a Mirage isn't as simple as using a Prismarium on it, though. You'll often need to meet a specific criteria for you to be able to use your Prismarium, such as casting a spell of a certain element type, getting a critical hit or inflicting a status effect. Mirage's also have entries similar to a pokedex that have their stats/a short description. Many of these descriptions are actually very funny and you can tell that the developers had a blast writing them.

Each Mirage has a Sphere Grid like thing called the Mirage Board that you are able to populate with AP to learn new abilities or stat increases as the Mirage levels up. Nodes on the Mirage Board are typically separated into skills you can you outside of battle to reach new areas or find items, stat boosts for certain parameters, a Prismarium that let's you catch another Mirage of the same type, a gem that Reynn and Lann can use and of course, skills that you can you in battle. Typically you'll have mirages that are either more focused on using elemental magic or more focused on using physical non-elemental attacks. This plays well into the fact that you would typically have Reynn as a Magic User, and Lann on Physical Offense. Or vice versa, depending on your preference. The system works well, and is rather impressive considering there is a Mirage Board for every single Mirage in the game. In addition, once you get to a certain point on most Mirage Boards, you'll be able to Transmogrify (World of FF's term for evolve) your Mirage, or access a Mirage Board of the same family of Mirage to get even more skills.

Reynn and Lann do not have Mirage Boards, but instead, are able to equip a gem called a Mirajewel at certain levels that will grant them stat increases or skills. These gems are looted, purchased or acquired through the Mirage Board. The system for Reynn and Lann is lot simpler than the Mirage Board, but I don't particularly have a problem with that, as the Mirage Board is pretty in-depth and the game's battle system really does focus more on the Mirage's themselves. Each Mirage has a specified size, being either Small, Medium or Large, while Reynn and Lann can change between Medium and Large, in either their Lilikin or Jiant forms respectively. This is utilized in battle with a stacking mechanic that lets you stack either on top of Mirages or have them stack on top of you. It often looks rather ridiculous, but is quite unique and adds to the games already quirky sense of humour. Stacks can also be knocked over or you can choose to unstack them yourself in the midst of battle. If a stack gets knocked over, you typically want to reform it as soon as you can, since while you may be rather strong as a stack, individually, mirages and Lann/Reynn are super squishy and weak.

XL Mirages do exist in the game as well and function like Summons, though they can learn skills through their Mirage Board and be controlled in battle. Sadly, I always found them to be rather useless and under-powered, so avoided using them. As you progress through the game, you'll be able to summon certain FF characters (known as Champions) you encountered throughout the game to dish out heavy damage to an enemy. Champions actually function closer to Summons than the XL Mirages, since it's a single move and you can't control them. These are really cool, with many of them using signature moves from their respective games. By far, Sephiroth was my favourite one of these. You can't go wrong with a chibi-Sephy casting Supernova with One Winged Angel:Advent playing in the background. However, if you didn't get the Day One or Limited edition, you don't get the Sephiroth Champion Medal, which is rather disappointing.

A large problem I had with the battle system in general, is that it doesn't really put you in a lot of situations where you're forced to swap out your Mirages for different ones. I went through about 95% of the game using the exact same Mirage line-up. This is made even worse by the fact that all new Mirages you catch start at level 1, so even if you wanted to use new Mirages, you'd have to level them up from scratch. You can have 10 Mirages in your party at a time, so with 4 in battle, you have 6 others on the sideline. These 6 gain experience too, but not at the same rate as the 4 you use in battle. This makes it less of a pain to level Mirages from scratch, but it's still not really ideal, and certainly makes the idea of swapping out less appealing. In reality, the only real reason to carry around different types of Mirages is for the skills that they can use in the overworld, since you may find yourself unable to progress in a dungeon if you don't have a Mirage with a certain ability. It's certainly a rather easy RPG overall, and I think its difficulty actually works against it a lot of the time. It it were a bit harder, maybe you would actually have to use certain Mirages to get around resistances and such, but as it stands, that's unfortunately not the case.

The overworld itself is extremely linear, and though I don't have a huge problem with that in general, it gets a bit excessive closer to the end of the game. At one point, you find yourself actually running in a straight line for a good hour or so. No exaggeration. I almost feel like the developers did this on purpose as some sort of a joke, but I wasn't laughing. As in the vain of most JRPG's these days, it doesn't really have an old school world map that you can fly around in, but instead, it has a mostly menu based system. I say mostly, because technically, there is a point where you sort of fly an airship around the map, but it's really only a glorified way of selecting a location. I feel like this is a missed opportunity, considering this game does have a somewhat old school vibe to it. The world map is a feature I miss a lot when it comes to JRPG's. I was over the moon when found that Ni No Kuni had one in it.

Score: 75/100

Character Development

The game really only revolves around two characters and their sidekick, so in all honesty, there isn't a lot of character development to be had. And really, they are pretty stereotypical characters right from the get-go. Lann is the male goofy idiot who just makes jokes and says/does stupid things. Reynn is the fairly serious female who keeps everything on track and pulls Lann's head in when he isn't taking things seriously enough. Tama is the annoying sidekick who can be as idiotic as Lann, but also as serious as Reynn. Though it's a bit difficult to take her seriously when she tries to be. Aside from Tama, who can be a bit obnoxious at times, they're all fairly likable, up until the point where you realize that Lann and Reynn were the cause of all of the problems in the game. This reveal really hurts the game after you find it out, as you're sort of stuck playing as two characters who are (or were) complete assholes. Of course, they're changed now and want to right all of their wrongs, but that can only go so far. In my opinion, they're almost irredeemable. When their sister Hauyn is introduced and you find out that they were responsible for her imprisonment, I wanted her to kick Reynn and Lann's asses so badly that they'd no longer be playable and I'd have to play her instead.

Much like a lot of the other aspects of this game, the past FF characters come through and save it. While I would've like a lot more time with some of my favourites (Cloud/Ceres/Cid, Tidus/Yuna, Bartz/Gilgamesh), with the amount of characters in the game, there's only so much you can do. Nostalgia plays a key part in enjoying a lot of this game, and this can vary based on your fondness for some of the characters. Most of their mini-storylines are played for comic relief, and that's fine by me, but this may not be the case for everyone. Also, I would've liked to have seen characters other than Vivi from FF9, personally, but I was quite happy with the overall cast. Spending time with them all was definitely a highlight of the game and without them, I don't think it would've held my interest for very long.

There's really not a lot to say about the villains of the game. Brandelis is a one dimensional overlord with one dimensional plans and almost zero personality. He looks cool (especially in his final boss Bizzaro form), but that's about as far as it goes. Seewarides and Pellinore are equally as one dimensional, and the twist that they are Reynn/Lann/Hauyn's parents doesn't really add much to the overall game. It really just provides a semi-interesting "oh, that's sorta cool" moment. Side-thought: I honestly thought that Enna Kros should've been the final boss, since it often feels like you're just a couple of her playthings. But nope, you never actually end up fighting her.

Score: 60/100

Graphics

Final Fantasy's typically score fairly high in the graphics department, and World of Final Fantasy is no exception. Though I'm pretty sure that the game wasn't developed with the PS4 in mind (there's a version for PS Vita, which seems more suited for this style of game), it still looks great and is absolutely charming. As opposed to the hyper-realistic style of graphics that the main series typically goes for, this is more of a cartoonish style. A lot of the times, the games graphics reminded me of the Kingdom Hearts series, especially the character models in their Jiant form. This shouldn't some as a surprise though, considering the Jiant characters were designed by Tetsuya Nomura, director of the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm typically not too fond of chibi sort of stuff, but I think it works pretty well here for the Lilikin characters. Yeah, they're cutesy and ridiculous looking, but that's true about pretty much everything in the game. Even the the mirages themselves are cutesy versions of how they would look in other FF titles.

Environments themselves look great. They're colourful, vibrant, and match the tone of the game well. I really like how the stacking mechanic that's the core of the battle system is actually how a lot world itself is built. The "world map" isn't your standard horizontal flat plane. Instead it's vertical and islands of the world are technically in a stack. This is true for some of the towns in the world too. It's really cool looking and visually unique. It makes me laugh that one of the core focuses for the many of the aspects in the game is stacking something on another. Dungeons look good for the most part too, though some of the later ones such as the Big Bridge or the final dungeon lack the flair of the earlier ones in the game and come off as more than a bit bland.

The visual style of the graphics is really well suited to the sense of humour and the lack of seriousness that the game itself puts across. It wouldn't work quite as well if you had this amazing, serious looking game graphically speaking, with all of the corny/goofy jokes and dialogue that frequently pop-up. With that in mind, I think they did really well here.

Score: 90/100

Sound

Top-notch in the sound department, as to be expected. Along with the graphics, sound is one of the things that the FF series consistently gets right. The new songs that are introduced here are great, but of course, since you'll most likely be playing this for old FF nostalgia value, there better be a fair share of tracks from other FF games. Luckily, World of FF certainly delivers on that front. There are some really cool remixes and newer versions of songs from previous FF's that were a joy to hear. Typically, they coincide the the first appearance of one of the characters in the game and it really adds to that awesome feeling you get when the nostalgia hits you.

Sounds effects are really good, as is the voice acting. Not as stellar as voice acting from FFXV, but that's a bit of a steep expectation. Yeah, there's some side characters who have deliberately comical or over-the-top voices, but that's to be expected considering the tone of the game, and none of them bothered me too much. Well, I guess Tama's did, actually. If she wasn't present for the whole game it wouldn't be such an issue, but as the annoying sidekick, she's there for almost the entire duration. I guess you can't really be an annoying sidekick without the annoying voice to go with it.

Score: 85/100

Conclusion

This game is certainly not perfect and there's definitely a fair few issues with some of the core aspects of the game, in particular, the story and the character development, however, I still found the game a lot of fun to play despite these obvious flaws. They did really succeed at creating a gorgeous looking old school feeling JRPG, loaded with plenty of FF nostalgia for the fans. The thing is though, I don't think the game would be able to succeed on it's own merits without that nostalgia value and fan service present. If you're an FF fan, pick it up immediately. You'll love it. If you're not a fan, it's probably a game you can avoid.

Total Score: 76/100

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