Finally, Every The-Fantasy Is Achieved In World of Fantasy

(That video is quite the fun one)

I think most people at this point have played at least one Final Fantasy game in their life, and if not, why? They’re wonderful games! Let me give you a suggestion, play Final Fantasy IX, it is fun but at the same time has a delightfully dark story that tackles concepts of life and death and what it means to be alive and also die, so go do that now, I’ll wait.

You done? Wasn’t it great? Good.

If you’re like me and you greatly enjoy Final Fantasy games, which you will by now, whether it be their deep and engrossing stories, their interesting battle systems and the leveling structures that run alongside that or just the goofy characters that can fill the games and make them enjoyable experiences that we know and love to this day and retain so many fond memories of. World of Final Fantasy plays off this nostalgia in spades but takes it with a heavy spoonful of comedy to add to that golden glow of childhood memories.

Remember that time when Celes did that opera scene and how it was so beautiful? There’s a quest or skit that involves Celes and Cloud preparing for an opera. Remember that time Tidus did a laugh? One of the main characters does just that when in the Final Fantasy X town. Or what about that annoying jail in Final Fantasy VIII where you can’t use any magic and just have to run up an annoying spiral staircase of sorts? Well, that’s sadly also in this game, with similar limiting mechanics, it’s not all good nostalgia. World of Final Fantasy can run a mile a minute with its energy and lust for references to the franchise and it’s a real treat. I think even if you’re not familiar with the characters there’s still a lot of enjoyment to be had.

Final Fantasy characters turn up from all sorts of games, except XII and II as it’s almost like those two games weren’t very good, and their pretty fun. They’re mostly simplified and boiled down versions of their game counterparts, but this just means that if there’s a character who you may not be familiar with you can find yourself with a good grasp of who they are as a small adorable person. Within moments of Edgar turning up you realize he’s a womanizing, self-styled ladies’ man with all the regality of a king, but with the cunning and scheming that was essential to his character in Final Fantasy VI and it works surprisingly well. With all the references and characters that turn up in the game I found myself with a constant childlike grin stretched out across my face, like the giant man child that I am.

This game isn’t just a never ending reference montage of everyone’s favorite moments from their favorite Final Fantasy, instead the new characters introduced for the game itself are wonderfully colourful and full of vigor that there’s always a wry smile that’ll pop out of you, from somewhere at least, ew. It may be a little odd that the two main characters and their adorable fox companion, Tama, seem to be in the middle of a plot that could result in the destruction or subjugation of the world, or just something really bad happening, and yet they still find time to run around without a care in the world, Lann and Tama will always find the time to get involved in some terrible word play joke with Reyn to act as their straight man for them to constantly bounce jokes off of, even in boss battles they’ll still be spouting “kupo” to finish their sentences, because why not? It’s funny, to them at least.

I can’t emphasise enough how enjoyable the writing is in this game, whether you like the story or not, I felt that just the weird and quirky scenes that await you were more than enough reason to push on through the game. Although, the story is still pretty decent and had it’s heart breaking moments as well, it still is primarily comedy focused.

I also don’t know what it is with Final Fantasy and their creatures with speech impediments, whether it be moogles and their adorable “kupo” or the new fox, Tama, and her rather interesting placement and inclusions of “the” in sentences and words, although she is another one of the major strong points of the game. She’s adorable. The cute style of just about everything in this game is a visual delight. You’ll find iconic monsters notably smaller and looking significantly cuter than their other universe beastly counterparts, but I constantly found my heart melting throughout the game at these adorable creatures, all of which are trying to desperately end your life, while you’re just scooping them up and enslaving them for your Pokemon adventure!

I’m getting lost in the enjoyment of how the game presents itself again.

Sadly, there are some issues I have with the game, the combat being the main one, which is a bit upsetting as it’s something that you’ll find yourself doing a lot of. It’s too slow. Even with the speed up function that they include from the start, which raises the question as to why it’s not that speed already, the combat ticks over at a snails pace. It’s turn based, but in a way that involves watching a bar slowly fill, and I mean slowly, slower than most games with this style, and you could easily just skip this and have it so that the little speed and turn timer sum is just automatically worked out, remember how great that was in Final Fantasy X? This is genuinely one of the biggest annoyances in the game, the combat can rapidly become a chore. Random encounters are numerous and with the combat being slow, but still simple enough that you can beat most encounters before they even act it can really slow the game down at times.

That said, outside of a few extra bosses that are intentionally harder than the rest of the zone, I rarely found myself struggling at all throughout the game, up until the final boss as well as the extra dungeons, which decide to just be unreasonably difficult with no sensical progression outside of several hours of grinding. The dungeons can sometimes feel a little long and laborious as well, the Big Bridge being a notable one as it’s literally a long straight line, at least you can ride atop your shark mirage and go a little bit quicker.

Running around and capturing mirages can actually be rather engrossing at times in a way that throws back to catching Pokemon as a child, although here you’ve got mirage boards to get lost in as you unlock various skills for each mirage and even higher or alternate transformations for them.

Overall though, I did spend a pretty decent chunk of World of Final Fantasy with a smile blasted across my face with genuine guffaws of laughter at some of the proceedings that take place in this game. There’s a bunch of extra content that give the characters you come across more time in the spotlight and more entertaining bits of writing to witness, and the game is just that, funny and entertaining. Also adorable.