How Do I Back Out of a Fight in Final Fantasy All the Bravest

So I downloaded every free FF mobile game I could find on the Android store. Talking about the actual mobile games, not PS1 games that were ported or whatever. The Dimensions games will have to wait for another time. And I'm really sad Mobius has been removed. Oh well. Last two! All the Bravest and Opera Omnia, let's go.

For my thoughts on FFXV: A New Empire and FF: Record Keeper, have a look here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/i15qxq/mobile_games_some_thoughts_on_ffxv_a_new_empire/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

For my thoughts on FF: Brave Exvius and War of the Visions: FF Brave Exvius, have a look here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/i7or3z/mobile_games_some_thoughts_on_ff_brave_exvius_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

FF All the Bravest

Final Fantasy: All the Bravest. Released in 2013 and developed by Kyoto based software and game developer BitGroove. Some of these folks worked on Kingdom Hearts Chains of Memories, and later on the KH Union χ mobile game. And apparently worked on UI design for Kingdom Hearts III!

It's cute. This is more of a toy really. Something to fiddle with for a bit. I don't mind it.

There's no story, aside from some vague intro text about world merging, darkness, and heroes coming to fight it. Anyway, you travel from section to section of a world map, each themed after one main line Final Fantasy game. You fight four battles from that game, and then move on. One battle against random enemies, a boss fight against the likes of Gilgamesh or the Four Fiends, then another battle of random enemies, then the bossfight agains the main antagonist of that game. Kefka, Golbez, etc. And then you move on.

The sounds design is a horrible cacophony of attack sounds with classic FF music in the background and the graphics are very basic old school sprite stuff. I was hoping the game would go into the 3D games as well and do cute sprite art for them like Record Keeper did. But nope, it's just FFI-VI for the first six areas. And then they reuse three of those old games for the last three areas. They do have FFVII, X and XIII areas, but you gotta buy them. There's also 35 jobs/characters from later FF games you can pay to unlock.

What makes this game unique is that they basically took the turn based battle system; four characters with timers before they get to attack. And used the extra vertical screen space of the phone to just add way more characters below that. It's a silly idea, it looks silly, it's cute and funny. The game's title screen is that iconic shot from Final Fantasy I, of the four warriors of light on the hill overlooking the castle. Except it's a dozen warriors now. I giggled.

So yeah. The battle system is super simple, it's barely a battle system. You tap a unit, it attacks. No other controls besides that. So to order your entire mass of units to attack, you tap them all, or just swipe accross them. And then you swipe some more. And swipe. Keep swiping. Yeah, rub that screen squeaky clean! Each time one of your units is hit, they die. And get replaced after three minutes of real time waiting. In between battles all your units are healed up. But on a big boss fight, you might find yourself wiping halfway. Just wait an hour and you can continue fighting with a fresh batch of cannon fodder. Rub some more. Clean that screen. And win.

Your army slowly grows, your units get better weapons, and you unlock more jobs. But it's all random and there's no control or management or anything like that. Just keep swiping the screen, watch the little dudes and ladies attack, watch your party grow and move on to the next fight.

It reminds me of the era of mobile phone games where they were more like toys, and any interaction with the phone screen at all was exciting. It's a simpler game than any of the other gacha gambling hall mobile games I've looked at so far.

There's microtransactions, to buy some of the more popular characters or unlock some locations. And you can buy an hourglass that revives your full party instantly. The game also gives you ten of those hourglasses for free. So you get to see quite a chunk of the game before it all slows down and you're either paying, or waiting. But again, I was done playing with it by that point and didn't mind just waiting a bit before I could play more.

That's it really, I already spend more words on this one then I expected. It's fine and inoffensive and cute. My phone screen was so shiny after I was done playing.

Dissidia FF Opera Omnia

Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, released in 2017, developed by Square Enix and Team Ninja/Koei Tecmo (Woah! These are game studios I actually know!).

A spin off of the Dissidia fighting games. You don't really need to know any of the story of Dissidia though. Two gods, Materia and Spiritus, are pitting familiar heroes and villains from across the Final Fantasy games against each other. All that fighting is tiring. So Materia created a peaceful world for the heroes to chill in. That's where the game takes place. But oh no! Dark portals are opening and evil monsters are coming through to ruin the vacation world! Materia sends her moogle helper out to gather up heroes, fight back and figure out what why etc.

So you travel around hex based areas, similar to Dissidia's dungeons. You gather up allies. Watch cutscenes of cute interactions between the heroes, and evil shenanigans by the baddies. And you fight turn based battles, using a system that's similar to the one used in the actual Dissidia games.

All the character are aware of what happened in their own games, and they get plucked from various points in their respective stories. Cecil is still the grim dark knight he is early in his game, but Zidane and Vivi seem to be fully aware of who Kuja is and what he did. So as a fan of the series you get to play the guessing game of "where in the story did this character come from?"

And man, the writers in this game really know their Final Fantasy. There's so many subtle character traits, more overt behaviours and catch phrases that show that they really really understand the characters they're writing. It's lovely and really cute. Yuna having to explain what a summoner is to the Type 0 characters, because summoners aren't a thing in that world. Zidane is flirty with every girl, but in just the right way that fits his character perfectly. The moment Bartz joins up, he immediately looks at everyone's outfits to figure out their jobs. It's also nice that they include characters from the sequels and spin off games like Crystal Chronicles or XIII-2.

The writing and party interactions are the big selling point of this game for me. The bigger story seems to be fairly shallow, straightforward. Skipping ahead to act 2 for a bit, it does look like the plot has some twists. But nothing too shocking. And don't expect drama and tragedy from the characters either, it's all lighthearted and cute. Like Zidane, Vaan and Yuffie discussing their motivations for thieving.

The battle system is great fun too. Based around the same push-and-pull bravery system the fighting games have. But turn based this time. So each character has HP and Bravery. You build up your Bravery, while lowering the enemy's Bravery, with special attacks. The number of Bravery points you have determines the damage you will do when you unleach an HP attack. At max Bravery you can slice away half the enemy's HP easily. At zero Bravery your character will be staggered. This goes for the enemy as well. It's similar to the stagger mechanic in FFXIII and FFVIIR as well. So yeah, it's all about finding the right balance between the two types of attack, and switching at just the right moment. There's also status effects, buffs, summons, friends you can call in. It's a well fleshed out system, and fun to play with. Or just turn it to auto battle if you want to grind away at the story or level up some new character you just got.

It's cleverly balanced so that even a low level character can hold their own pretty well. This helps a lot, because you'll keep getting new characters throughout the story and they all start at level 1. But the game is never too easy. I wasn't instakilling every battle.

I like that the game actually gives you new characters and money and all that just for playing the story. I know! Imagine that! You don't need to engage with the gambling aspects at all if you don't want to! And it will feel like any other single player game. Whereas in both Brave Exvius games for example, you could ignore the gambling just fine, but you would barely get any new characters for doing so. Of course Opera Omnia will still bombard you with log in bonuses and ads before you can even get to any of the main menus. Menus which are, as usual, labyrinthine and intentionally confusing. And there's ads everywhere. The world map has a permanent ad in the top left trying to lure you to temporary events and 'sales'. It has all the gacha trapping where you can get items, gear, xp boosts and characters by throwing money at Square and poking your daily roulette wheels.

This game is friendly about it though. They are less pushy than other games. Each time you boot up the game you get this message. Warning you about the gacha stuff and telling minors to ask their parents for permission to engage with it:

"Please kindly note that while this game is free, certain items are not. We ask that minors receive permission from their parents or guardian before making any purchases" Nice, mobile game developers with a conscience.

That's a nice thing. I also appreciate how the game warns you to back up your data regularly. It's nice to see a developer for a mobile game like this taking some social responsibility. Treating the players like human beings and not just a wallet with arms and legs. Even if it's just little things like this. It reminds me of the disclaimer FFXI always had, that tells you to go outside and see your family and friends occasionally, and not get too absorbed by the game. It's a small thing, but I respect the devs for adding it.

The art style is atrocious and the characters look horrible.

Music is great though! The original battle themes rock my socks off. And they are regularly switched up by classic FF tunes, or remixes thereof. It doesn't feel as expensive as War of the Visions did, no fancy Japanese and English voice acting on every bit of dialogue and no fancy CG opening cutscene. There are a lot of short Japanese only voice acted sentences though and battle cries for each character. It's fun to hear all their Japanese voices. This game does feel like something that would be at home on a console or handheld. A lot of effort by a lot of talented folks went into making and maintaining it. New characters with entire story chapters get added pretty regularly and there's a huuuuge backlog of old events and bonus chapters you can dive into.

Anyhoo. Yeah. That's basically it. It's a good game. I'll keep playing this and War of the Visions just because both have great battle systems, a neat story and a lot of love and effort put into their production.

If you're looking for a fun turn based battle system and hanging out with your favourite FF characters. Go play Opera Omnia! That's what surprised me the most, that the FF fanservice was not just empty husks that look like the characters, but they actually talk and feel like they dropped right out of their respective games.

The end

So yea, what did I learn after playing all these mobile games? The intrusive ads and gambling shit is bad. But you can ignore it in pretty much all these games (except A New Empire), and just play them as if it was a regular single player game. Which is good, because I don't enjoy throwing hundreds of euros at a casino and I wanted to see if these games held up compared to the console entries. And looking at them as regular single player games, War of the Visions and Opera Omnia clearly stand out as the best of these games. On par with the other spin offs like a Dissidia or Type 0 in my opinion.

I'd recommend Opera Omnia to any fan of the series. And War of the Visions to any fan of the Tactics games. For the price of free, both of these are definitely worth checking out for a few hours.

And if you enjoy those. Record Keeper and Brave Exvius are enjoyable too.

No need to check All the Bravest. And very much avoid A New Empire completely.

As it is, the money you can spend in Opera Omnia or War of the Visions is never worth what it gets you. Spending €80,- in Opera Omnia only gets you a third of the gil I already earned just by playing a few hours. And only enough space bucks to unlock maybe ten characters. If you're lucky at the roulette wheel. But the single player campaigns in these two games would definitely be worth some money in my eyes. If these games ever showed up on Steam/Switch/PS4 for like €30,- without the gambling mechanics, I would buy them. So setting that as your budget in the in-game currency store seems reasonable.

How Do I Back Out of a Fight in Final Fantasy All the Bravest

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/idw5vt/mobile_games_some_thoughts_on_ff_all_the_bravest/

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