Mobius Final Fantasy

Mobius Final Fantasy is an episodic role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix for iOS and Android devices. It was released in Japan in June 2015, and released internationally in August 2016.





Gameplay

Creativity

Value

The story in Mobius is bog-standard JRPG: you play as an amnesiac hero named Wol who's enrolled to fight off a world-destroying chaotic threat, making friends and weaving through a twisting narrative on the way to its conclusion. Ancient prophecy, princess in distress, Moogles, badass side characters - you've heard this song before. The battle system is almost exclusively focused on Wol, and its "turn-based tactical" setup is designed to be easily manipulated with a single hand in the vertical-only layout. While Mobius doesn't explicitly cater to Final Fantasy nostalgia quite as much as other mobile FF games, a lot of the attacks and jobs are clear callbacks to some of the series' more popular protagonists. Yes, at some point Wol WILL dress up as Cloud Strife to dramatically finish off an overdesigned boss. Additionally, each equippable card has a ton of elements and usage caveats attached. All cards use an element--such as water, fire, or earth--and are powered up in battle by collecting orbs of matching elemental energy from enemies. Some foes don't drop certain elements--for example, a fire dragon won't necessarily drop wind orbs--so if you have a wind spell in your deck, you're out of luck and have wasted that card slot. Additionally, health point-replenishing orbs are only dropped by enemies and are incredibly rare. If you don't have any phoenix down (also rare) when you go into combat, you're facing the very real possibility of a game over.Mobius Final Fantasy is undeniably impressive from a technical level. Square-Enix used the Unity engine to allow for fast cross-platform development while keeping detailed 3D graphics, and the ridiculous fantasy aesthetic from the last few console games is present and accounted for. Graphics settings can be adjusted by the player for smoother performance, especially on older hardware. Early players have described the gameplay as somewhat simple compared to Final Fantasy console games.Aside from the pile-up of leveling and power systems tied to cards, combat is straightforward: the enemy appears, you tap on them to attack when it's your turn, and you repeat until they're dead. Combat is essentially turn-based, and while some higher-level enemies present a bit of a challenge, the lack of enemy or layout variation makes it all very rote very quickly. Additionally, the story moves at a breakneck pace, with little explanation provided for anything that's happening - and what is explained is unfortunately delivered through bland dialogue and even blander voice acting. The graphics are impressively detailed and fluid for a mobile title, but the rest of the presentation is lacking.Free-To-Play with a Pay-To-Win mechanic. It’s a leaderboard competitive platform, with a heavy emphasis on parties. Since you’re not directly fighting each other, I can’t fully label it Pay-To-Win. The game does give you “Magicite” which is the Mobius form of post-game currency aside from Gil, and it is quite expensive. Since Mobius Final Fantasy uses the card draw mechanic for your abilities and characters, you’ll see a ton of variety and a rewarding grind. Square Enix released this game a year ago in Japan, so they had a good while to get the bugs out. With the global launch, I haven’t found any bugs or issues during my experience.Download Now! If you’re a Final Fantasy fan like I am, you’re going to have a great time. Perfectly optimized for mobile devices of any age, you also have the ability to play the game with one hand. You’ll see some haters out there that don’t appreciate what Square Enix has done with this game, but I vouch for this game at every level. Bravo!