I admit, I have been cheating on my Final Fantasy order a bit, playing other games here and there. Playing through a huge list of RPG's can be tiring, especially when you enjoy other genres also. Still, some of my dalliances have been relevant to this pilgrimage. Two such titles were Final Fantasy All the Bravest and Bravely Default.
Final Fantasy All The Bravest has become infamous in modern times for being one of the worst games ever made. While I'm not sure it quite deserves that glorious title, it's certainly a terrible game. Essentially, it's what happens when someone who has zero understanding or respect for Final Fantasy fans makes a Final Fantasy game using the worst of mobile game cliches. The upside, Square Enix dropped the entry price to nothing, at least on Android, so I didn't pay a cent for it.
The "game" basically works on the premise of using a huge amount of Final Fantasy characters (up to 35 if I remember correctly) in battle at the same time, all while using the ATB system at it's fastest. You move through maps representing the Final Fantasy titles, fighting classic Final Fantasy monsters in pixel art form, listening to the awesomely represented music. You get to level up by getting experience, gather Gil by defeating enemies and unlock new characters and weapons. It all sounds great, right? The problem is, all of this is purely window dressing. The game itself consists of nothing more than rubbing the screen of your mobile device. That's it. Battles use absolutely zero strategy and just is a game of attacking as fast as possible. You attack with a character by touching them. So, you could feasibly play the game as a glorified whack-a-mole but there's no reason to do this as rubbing the screen is the fastest and thus, most effective, way of playing the game.
But you get to unlock stuff and get Gil too, right? Well, yes, sort of. Gil doesn't actually do anything so it basically just represents score. You unlock stuff randomly by defeating enemies. The weapons serve as passive upgrades, providing bonuses to attack for various characters. Let me explain why this is ridiculous. Each weapon provides a bonus such as +3 attack for any characters that use that weapon type. The thing is, you can never see the stats for any of your characters. So what does this +3 attack mean? Who knows? It could be great or it could be next to meaningless, there's no way to tell.
But the game lets you get cool Final Fantasy characters in pixel art form, right? Sort of... see, the only characters you can unlock are the classes used in classic Final Fantasy games. If you want to use famous characters like Terra, Cloud or Titus, you have to pay money which gives you a random Final Fantasy character to use in battle. The awesome part is that beyond the artwork, these don't do anything new or different. Since the game provides no strategy, there's no reason to buy them rather than looking up their images online. In fact, you don't get to see any new content unless you pay anyway since the Final Fantasy maps available for 7 onwards (the games that don't use pixel art already) are premium content.
So does this game have any redeeming aspects? Yes, a couple. First is that for each weapon and monster you fight, you get a description in the game's menu. These descriptions are often hilarious and are a lot of fun to read. The other cool thing about this game is the music. It actually provides a soundtrack so you can listen to all the classic tunes on the go. Aside from that, the game is a complete drag. I didn't even mention how every time you die in battle, something that happens from one hit of the enemy regardless of how high level your guys are, you have to wait three minutes per character to keep fighting. You can pay to respawn all your guys right away but... why would you?
On the other hand, we have Bravely Default, a recently released JRPG for the 3DS. So why am I saying this game is relevant to Final Fantasy Pilgrimage? Well, while the game is it's own IP, it's actually the spiritual successor to the DS title, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. In fact, it's Final Fantasy in pretty much every way other than name. The game world is plagued by environmental disasters as the four elemental crystals worshiped for centuries are being engulfed by darkness. Sounds familiar, huh? You have to go around and save the four crystals to restore nature to it's proper balance.
To be blunt, the storyline sucks. Beyond being an obvious homage to Final Fantasy, the characters are all so bland as to be irritating, particularly Ringabel, an amnesiac womanizer who can literally think of nothing beyond banging every chick he sees. This stereotype is so cliche in JRPG's already that this extreme example proves the undoing of the rest of the story all by itself. I literally want to stop watching every time this guy speaks. Still, I have to respect the full voice acting and theatre-style cutscenes. Also, this is one of the only JRPG's outside of the Tales series that I can think of to use skits, mini-cutscenes that you can trigger at certain events throughout the game, expanding on the storyline further. (FUTURE ME UPDATE: I have discovered that Final Fantasy IX also uses a similar system. Didn't know that when I wrote this originally!)
That being said, Bravely Default is a ton of fun and I've been enjoying it immensely. While I believe the story is the most important part of an RPG, Bravely Default's combat and job system are so much fun, they make the game worth playing despite the monotonous story. The job system is directly taken from Final Fantasy V but with some slight tweaks. Each character can pick any of your unlocked jobs. This provides them with that class' special attacks, passive moves and special trait. You can then pick a specified number of additional passive bonuses from other jobs and the special moves unlocked from one other job. As you level up each job, you gain either a new special attack to use or a passive bonus. For example, leveling up a monk will provide you some special martial arts attacks or things like HP + 10%. The special traits of each job can spice things up a bit as these provide an incentive to picking your primary class.
One neat difference between Final Fantasy V and Bravely Default is the way in which you unlock new jobs. In Final Fantasy V, you got jobs from exploding crystals and after picking them up, you got the new job. In Bravely Default, you actually have to find people who represent each job and defeat them in battle to get the new job. So a side quest may have you fighting a Valkyrie which, after defeating her, will unlock the job for you to use. It's a small difference but it's very effective as this will force you to see the strengths and weaknesses of each job for yourself.
Combat is also mostly like Final Fantasy but for a not-so-small tweak: the ability to use Brave or Default. Each character has a BP count which represents the number of moves they can make. At the start of each player turn, every character gains one BP. This means that if you attack once with each character in one turn, you will always stay at 0 BP. If you Default, essentially a block, you will save up your BP. Pretty simple. Using Brave, however, will let you stack up to four attacks for each character which they will use all in one turn. While you can save up BP by using Default, you can also go into the negatives for characters by using several Brave's right at the beginning of a battle. This can provide a quick boost to attacks, killing off minor enemies before they get a chance to attack you. However, any character with negative BP at the start of a turn will have to forfeit their turn until they get back up to 0 BP. This means using Brave can be a risk but one that can pay off with massive damage when used correctly. Enemies also have to play by these rules so you have to watch out for enemies that save up several BP's as they may attack with a huge onslaught all at once. If you can send them into the negatives though, you are rewarded with several free attacks against a defenseless foe.
If you have a 3DS, don't be turned away by the lack of a strong storyline. This game is a blast to play and I recommend it to anyone who's fan enough of Final Fantasy to be reading this blog.
Game on!
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