Final Fantasy: Record Keeper review

My goodness I have used a lot of parenthesis (brackets) in this review!

The Final Fantasy series is one from my youth. Beginning properly with Final Fantasy IX (after a failed attempt at VI), I have worked my way through the majority of these brilliant JRPGs. True, in recent years, the FuhFuh name has taken a bit of a sting, what with some iffy releases and angry fanboys, but with the hype surrounded Final Fantasy XV, Type-0 and Kingdom Hearts’ recent releases, the series seems to be slowly but surely climbing its way back up into the hearts of fans. Sure, FF definitely isn’t for everyone – but most of the tribulations come with the wacky JPRG genre…crazy hair, cliched yet somehow convoluted stories, anime physics and so on. But that’s what makes it so great!

Thanks, Dr. Mog. You’re so helpful and special!

Now, Squeenix have released several mobile games before, including re-releases of games and the somewhat underwhelming All The Bravest, which pretty much consisted of you furiously swiping your phone in a blind rage to kill enemies. But Final Fantasy: Record Keeper is different. The premise: in a quaint little world exists a museum that holds depictions of various key events across various Final Fantasy games (excluding the MMOs). Outta nowhere, a strange darkness (obviously) begins to corrupt the pictures. It is up to protagonist Tyro (who is basically your starter Pokémon that you instantly deposit and never play with) to save the day by entering the pictures and DESTROY THE EVIL! The game itself is split up into a series of game-related rooms (world) which can be completed in a semi-linear order. When you enter a room, you then enter a painting (dungeon). Once you have entered the dungeon, you choose a level. So, game -> dungeon -> level. Once you’ve entered a level, you fight against various FF enemies inspired by that particular game in a turn based Active Time Battle (ATB)  style combat system, much like Final Fantasy games of old. Essentially, that’s all the game is…and the fighting can become a tad stale, buuut, as with most mobile games, it’s a fun pastime to dip in and out of. Each level requires you to pay stamina. You have a finite amount, but it recharges every three minutes or so, so unless you’re quickly blitzing through the game, this shouldn’t really be an issue. There are RPG elements too – you can combine/assign abilities and upgrade various weapons in true JRPG-over-complicated fashion, but I’ve made it a fair way through the game without really bothering with any of this, apart from equipping different weapons and armour. You build up a team of five characters – characters taken from various Final Fantasy games. They all pretty much do the same thing, though some can only have can only have specific weapons, armour and abilities equipped. That, and they have their own unique ‘soul break’ (this game’s variation of limit/trance/overdrive etc.). But it’s fun to build up a team of characters that you know and love so well from different worlds, working happily together to vanquish evil. Which leads me on to my next point – weapons and armour are taken from the FuhFuh games that inhabit Record Keeper, which is cool. However, some are crazily unbalanced and overpowered. Cloud was hitting for about 300 damage with one weapon, whilst Tidus was going for 150. Now, yes, we all love Cloud #FFVIIFanBoyLeetGamer and so on (jokes, IX is the best), but srsly. Levelling up is also a bit of an issue, because when new characters join your party they start at level 1 it seems. You can use irl money to level them up quicker, but who has that kind of cash? Fortunately, though, Record Keepers is not a particularly pay-to-win game, which we see so much now with moby games. It does, however, require a constant internet connection for whatever reason, so play via WiFi when available…

I don’t know what I don’t have enough of. But it’s something.

Each Record Keeper world comes with its own enemies and music directly from its origin game. For example, the Final Fantasy X world begins with you fighting your way through the streets of Zanarkand, in the same was as X begins. Whilst each world only has about five or so different monsters, you do fight unique bosses from that area of the game – so at the end of this Zanarkand section, you fight the Sinspawn boss that serves as a tutorial in X. It’s pretty rad. It’s also lovely to hear the brilliant scores from the various FF games as you’re playing. It can become a little grindy, what with you seemingly either being mega over- or under- (but never appropriately) levelled for dungeons, but that’s just a weeny factor.

From VI’s world.

As it stands, this game has only been released outside of Japan for a couple o’ weeks, so here’s hoping we get some more updates soon; currently, you can only play as about ten or so different characters, whereas Japan’s version has close to 50 from Final Fantasy I to XIII (not including XI). Combat can be a bit tedious, and the permanent internet connection does mean that this isn’t a great play-on-the-go kind of game, but all in all it’s a wonderful nostalgia experience for any fan of the series – as I said, the true joy comes from fighting bosses that you know with a smorgasbord of characters you love. For a free game, this is pretty darn good. Yes, there are microtransactions available for you millionaires out there, if you want to get the better equipment, and there is even an auto-battle feature if you enjoy playing games by not playing them! All in all, Record Keepers is a fun, harmless little addition to the series. Well done, Square Enix. Oh, it’s also been developed by a company called DeNA, who have recently teamed up with Nintendo to create mobile games for them, so there’s that!