Dragons, knights, damsels in distress, a kingdom in ruin, an exciting adventure awaits. If you’re a Final Fantasy fan, then Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius is the game for you.
A mobile game by Square Enix, Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius, not only replicates the old school turn-based RPG style so beloved to the Final Fantasy series, but also brings it to the mobile devices.
It reminds me of the days when you could only play a game like this on a home console. The story revolves around the adventures of Rain and Laswell as they attempt to save the kingdom of Grandshelt. A cool added feature is that you don’t have to have them in your party to progress your story. This allows you to use stronger, more effective line-ups. Along their quest they meet a beautiful young woman named Fina who accompanies them and introduces them to a powerful fighting force known as Visions (which are pretty much this world’s version of Summons).
You will notice some very familiar faces when it comes to visions, one of my favourites being Ifrit the fire demon. While visions essentially work the same way as summons in the Final Fantasy franchise, there is one important difference: they don’t cost MP (or magic points) to cast. Instead, as you fight, a small bar fills every time you complete an action and when it’s full you can call upon a vision to release a devastating attack on all enemies, or have a positive effect on your team. It’s a different take on the summons but I like it. It makes you have to really strategise when’s the best time to use it as battles can last 4 waves or more with a big boss at the end. Alternatively, you could also strengthen your party by buying characters with Lupis, the in-game special currency.
Strategy is also key when putting together your line-up. You need to make sure your characters gel so that they can increase the likely hood of a combo. Even as your characters attack, their attack order is important. The more cohesive their attacks are, the higher the attack combo, and the higher the damage. Every character has a different characteristic as well as different abilities. Some are knights or warriors, while others are mages and spellcasters. You need to balance your party out or you may get stuck in a sticky situation. This actually makes for less mundane gameplay.
What’s even more awesome is that you can also get characters from across the Final Fantasy franchise and even use their limit breaks like in the original games. It’s awesome to see your favourite characters battling again.
There are two other really cool features added to this game: the Colosseum and the Vortex. The Colosseum is a single wave mission that allows you to win riches and glory. The higher up the ladder you go, the better the riches, but also the more dangerous. The Vortex is actually a gamer’s dream. It basically allows you to farm much more efficiently and easily. You decide what you want to farm, experience, Gil (money), or different kinds of materials. This is a hardcore player’s dream as it takes some of the tediousness out of grinding.
My favourite parts about this game are the vision graphics and the storyline. The graphics and animation for the visions is just excellent. It’s like watching a HD mini movie for a few seconds. If you’re looking for a mindless finger tapping game, this isn’t it. There’s a lot of dialogue and story build through out the game. That’s how a Final Fantasy RPG should be. You really get a feel for seeing the story progress.
The only negative parts of the game were that while the story is very good it can be quite long and there’s no way to skip. For the non-RPG diehards it would be a nice option to just get to the action.
The second is that my favourite characters, Cloud, Aerith and co., aren’t available as playable characters. That was a huge bummer since I’m such a big fan and I’m sure all the hardcore Final Fantasy VII fans will be really disappointed.
Nevertheless, this is a fantastic game that you need to try. The servers on this one are going to start exploding so start slaying dragons and chasing Chocobos now!