One of FFRK’s official artwork, with Tyro as the boy with the blue outfit and Elarra as the girl with the pink outfit.

“Don’t play too many video games, Tim.”

That’s what my parents often say to me when I play video games, usually on my phone. That line was also said, even when I am not currently playing video games, usually when I’m watching videos on Youtube, or browsing Reddit. Now, I do agree that doing something excessively is not good, and this includes video games. However, I think that video games can have many benefits if played in moderation, and I will talk about specifically about this game, which is:

Final Fantasy Record Keeper, which is often abbreviated as ‘FFRK’. Not many friends in my real life have even heard of this game, despite having ‘Final Fantasy’ in the title. It has ‘only’ been downloaded around 1 million times, which is nothing when compared to say, 100 million downloads of Mobile Legends, and it also does not reach the top 500 in the top free games list in Google Playstore, at least in my country. Despite this, and also me having hiatus for a few times, this game has a special place in my heart, for reasons that I will explain below.

For those wondering, FFRK is a Final Fantasy game developed by DeNA, with the original intention of nostalgia of playing with popular Final Fantasy characters such as Cloud, Terra, and so on, in the paintings, which represents parts of the story from the Final Fantasy series. However, as DeNA develops FFRK more and more, the gameplay eventually becomes more complex, in the form of strengthening characters after reaching the maximum level of 99, gaining stat boosts from defeating a monster locked in a dungeon, and so on.

Not only was the gameplay fun (although this is more because I repeatedly take hiatus since I do sometimes get fed up with the loading screens in the game, but that’s another story), but I feel that the game also helped me in various ways in real life. Here are just a few ways that I can think of:

Reminds me to not overthinking things

One of the many life lessons in the game, which is to not overthink things (DeNA 2015).

I think that FFRK has a lot of life lessons, either told explicitly or implicitly. One of the life lessons that have stuck in my mind is how the game reminds us not to overthink things. I am a person who overthinks a lot, whether it’s about bad grades or when my friend texts me back much shorter than I expect. As I overthink, it leads to me shutting down, unable to do anything meaningful as I dwell into the things that didn’t go as expected. However, as I play through this game, suddenly a scene like a picture above appears, which exactly reminds me not to overthink things. Those bad grades which I mention may not affect your final grades that much. Similarly, the friend who replies very short in text messages may be very busy or have a very rough time in their life. Yes, I still overthink things a lot, but thanks to FFRK, I’m doing my best to just focus on my priority whenever something bad happens.

I think the record dungeon, where FFRK’s original characters go inside painting to experience many moments from Final Fantasy series, has a lot of life lessons there, so if you think your life leads to nothing, consider playing Record Dungeons in FFRK!

Distinguish between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’

An example of a gacha banner in FFRK.

FFRK is a ‘freemium’ game. That means, while the game is free, there is some kind of premium currency in the game which can be bought by real money. In this case, the currency is Mythril. Mythril can be spent on gacha, that is, obtaining some kind of equipment by luck, revive the party after it has been defeated in a battle, expanding slots to store our pieces of equipment, and many more, however, it’s most often used for gacha. Many times, there are gacha banners that offer a more powerful Soul Break, which is a powerful special attack, usually exclusive to a character. Sometimes it may feature your favorite characters’ equipment. After all, who doesn’t want your favorite characters to be stronger? Is it part of what makes you play FFRK?

However, as I say, Mythril is a very valuable currency, one that cannot be simply obtained as you fight battles with the enemies. They can only be obtained once each day, with some more can be obtained through events. To have a guaranteed chance of getting a 5* rarity item, which is the minimum rarity that is considered *barely* viable by most players, players need to do 11x gacha draw, which costs 50 Mythril. Such an amount of Mythril is not easy to obtain if the player just recklessly spend their Mythril for their favorite characters and hence, the player then faces a choice: do you want to spend the Mythril for their favorite characters now, at the risk of not being able to clear end-game content? Or, do you choose to only spend the Mythril to get a piece of equipment that can help to clear a boss you’re struggling with?

Now, choosing how to spend my Mythril also affects how to spend my money. I always like to eat outside, especially since I can’t cook well. However, foods outside can be quite expensive, when compared to eating at home. For example, when I eat ramen at Ikkudo-Ichi, it can cost around Rp. 70000, whereas with that same Rp. 70000, we can have a meal 5 times at home. Similar to the Mythril dilemma, do I want to try new, more exotic food, but more expensive? Or, do you just settle for cheaper, good ol’ cooked food by ourselves / by our maid?

Improve my problem-solving skills (and patience)

Many battles in FFRK can be hard, especially if we just blindly go into battles without proper preparations. For example, an ability called “Hastega” makes your characters take turns more quickly. However, the boss can easily mess up your strategy of speeding up your characters’ turns by removing the speed buffs or even slowing them down instead. Sure, you can buy equipment from the aforementioned relic draws, or wait until a better relic suitable for that boss comes down. However, there are many reasons why those two options may not be desirable:

The first option uses up Mythrils, and even if you manage to get something good from the draw, there will be more powerful equipment that will come in the future. Spending too much Mythrils may make you starving for Mythril when stronger equipment comes in the future.

The second option makes a win for that boss less satisfying since new abilities will be released every month, so once you manage to get those new abilities, the boss will become easier. Furthermore, as time goes on, your characters will get stronger when you do relic draws, especially when the game gives a free 11x relic draw ticket every 15 days.

Therefore, players who want to advance far through the game content need to optimize the resource that they have from the relic draw. Specifically, there is a user in Reddit that specializes in beating content with outdated Soul Breaks, amongst other additional restrictions, like only bringing characters from the same Final Fantasy game the boss comes from. The user also takes advantage of abilities that most players won’t think of bringing into a battle. For example, he once used an ability that automatically revives a fallen character immediately after death to deal with the boss’ Instant Death attack (Xarukas, 2020). Such an ability is very seldom used otherwise since buffs would need to be reapplied.

This affects my work too. As a software developer, I often encounter difficulty while doing the task given. However, FFRK taught me that if one approach does not work, then we should try another approach. The same goes for my job. If an algorithm that I use fails to solve a given task, especially after trying for around 30 minutes, then I should try a new algorithm instead.

Expand my imagination

I also feel that playing FFRK expands my imagination. I remembered when I pulled the 11x draw using Mythrils on a banner in Transjakarta Bus (for those wondering, it’s one of the public transport in Jakarta, Indonesia), and got rewarded with one of the most powerful equipment in the game. Since then, I always try to pull in the bus, and lately, this has inspired me to create some mini-stories regarding how Tyro and Elarra like pulling inside public transport.

As a side effect of this, I become excited every time I was about to do some relic draws, as that means this is an opportunity to write some story regarding how the FFRK characters feel regarding the draw, especially when the pull is performed while I am taking public transport. This has an effect of me wanting to pull inside public transport so that I can make a story regarding the outcome of the draw. As I write more and more, it not only expands my imagination but also improves my writing skills. An example of the little story can be seen here, where Tyro and Elarra ‘pulled’ in the commuter line train, only for the train to give one 5* relic, and Tyro and Elarra become upset with that pull.

To sum up, although I do agree not all aspects of video games are positive, I feel that playing video games as a hobby has a negative stigma in the community. People often say that playing video games often just wastes time, when a game like FFRK exists. I think that despite FFRK’s aim to provide fun for mobile gamers, as well as making Final Fantasy fans nostalgic about older Final Fantasy titles, people should not overlook how many life lessons this game gives to us, as well as the other benefits that I have covered in this article.

References:

DeNA (2015). Final Fantasy Record Keeper. [Online] Android. Google Playstore: DeNA

Xarukas 2020, [Dreams] [III] Infernal Xande’s Clone | No BSBs+, No LMRs, No 5* Magicites, Full CM, Mastery, Reddit, accessed 17 February 2020, <https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRecordKeeper/comments/ensa5i/dreams_iii_infernal_xandes_clone_no_bsbs_no_lmrs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x>