Last week Square Enix announced that their popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) Final Fantasy XI will be coming to mobile in 2016. Mobile Final Fantasy fans need not wait for next year for a new Final Fantasy game, luckily! Final Fantasy: Record Keeper from DeNA and Square Enix has just launched on Android and iOS.
Final Fantasy: Record Keeper is the first mobile Final Fantasy game to bring classic moments from the entire series to life. Think of it as a greatest hits release, with players able to recruit famous Final Fantasy heroes like Cloud and Lightning and participate in battles from beloved games in the series. Record Keeper is free to play and quite a lot of fun for RPG fans. Read on for our quick impressions!
Saving the Final Fantasy universe
In Final Fantasy: Record Keeper, a special kingdom exists in which stories are celebrated as artwork. The entire history of the Final Fantasy series is preserved as paintings and kept within a castle. Walk along its halls and you'll see paintings dedicated to the 16-bit Final Fantasies, fan favorite Final Fantasy VII, and even newer games like Final Fantasy XIII. One day the content of the paintings starts to vanish, threatening the very existence of the kingdom.
To save the kingdom, players will have to jump into each painting and relive the events it celebrates. The first painting is Final Fantasy VII. You'll start out battling Shinra soldiers and robots. Only instead of 3D battles like in the original PlayStation game, the battle now takes place entirely in two dimensions! It's a real treat seeing characters from various Final Fantasy games all rendered in the same 16-bit art style.
Familiar battle system
Record Keeper's battles work the same way as in traditional Final Fantasy games. An Active Time Battle meter constantly fills at the bottom of the screen. Once it fills up, players can attack, defend, use abilities like spells, or perform a Soul Break.
The Soul Break is a devastating special move capable of hurting every enemy the party faces. Naturally it uses its own meter that fills as you land hits against opponents. Finally, you'll also be able to summon giant monsters like Bahamut to fight for your side.
Build your army of heroes
After completing the first Final Fantasy VII dungeon, a black mage and a white one will join your party. They look just like their 8-bit sprites from the original Fantasy. But Record Keeper has much more exciting rewards to work towards. Complete dungeons and earn high ratings to unlock classic heroes like Tidus from Final Fantasy X, Cloud from VII, Lightning from XIII, and many more. You can even auto equip party members if you're not concerned with manually setting your dream team's lineup.
Being a free to play game, Final Fantasy: Record Keeper has a stamina system. Each dungeon you play will deplete some of your stamina, which refills over time. Should you lose in the middle of a dungeon, it costs premium currency to continue as well. We've seen in many games of this type, and everything seems pretty reasonable and fair so far.
If you're a fan of the Final Fantasy series, Record Keeper is a must-play. Try it, build your own team of heroes, and save the Final Fantasy universe one classic battle at a time!
