World of Final Fantasy (PS4)

With its cute art style, bright vibrant colours and accessible story, you'd be forgiven for thinking World Of Final Fantasy is a game for kids. Despite its joke-filled script and cliched plot about saving the world, the game play and battle system are surprisingly deep and robust. The welcome return of a turn based battle system requires some tactical planning to maximise its efficiency and although it becomes a lot easier to plow your way through the game with the same monsters toward the end of the game, this is vintage Final Fantasy and an ode to fans of the series.The story follows two teens, Reynn and Lann, as they're whisked away from their home into the land of Grymoire to save the world. As the fabled jiants of the land, a prophecy foretells that the two characters will end the darkness of the Bahamutian Army that's sweeping across the land. While the enemy forces grow in power, you take control of the two teens simultaneously, switching on the fly, while you scour the land for creatures called mirages to add to your roster and help destroy the darkness. It feels like a generic final fantasy story but the added layer of collecting mirages is great fun and coupled with the deep battle system, keeps the game fresh.The game feels like fan service on every level, mashing up some of the best elements from different Final Fantasy games into one. Everything from the level design, to the shattering of the screen for the battle starting is deliberately placed to hit those nostalgic buttons. With cameo appearances from most of the series' iconic characters and the ability to use those as summons, you can't help but smile as familiar faces like Yuna or Cloud help the heroes out. With 21 chapters, the game can be completed with the help of these heroes in around 25 hours or so but to see everything, including the side quests, collecting all the mirages and the mini games, you're easily looking at around 50 hours + playtime.The real meat of the game is with the battle system and its here that World Of Final Fantasy makes a solid case for a deeper, tactical turn based system returning to the series. The level of detail with it is meticulous, right down to the individual mirages and their unique skills. The way battles work seems complicated to begin with but after a little bit of playing, its a simple system to grasp. Much like Pokemon, there's a team of 6 monsters that can sit on the fringes of your team whilst the main party are "stacked". In the game, creatures come in 3 formats, S, M and L to correspond to their size. You choose a monster from each size to stack on top of one another to form the team to fight in battles. Reynn and Lann are compulsory additions though and can be changed to either their smaller "M" size or kept as their "L" size but real thought needs to be given in how to stack the monsters to maximise the two character's full potential. Whereas in games like Pokemon you train them up to evolve, the mirages can do the same but can significantly affect the stats of the party and more importantly, their size. My behemoth could have evolved into a behemonster with signifcantly inflated stats but I held off due to it being the strongest monster for my party.During my time with the game I changed my stack a number of times before falling on a perfect party to suit my play style. This constant tweaking and swapping monsters in and out is made all the better by multiple layers on top of that with the ability to level up each mirage with experience points in battle and in turn upgrade their stats and abilities to further bulk the party out.World Of Final Fantasy is a lighthearted entry in the series and its humour, whilst fused with some eye rolling jokes and cringey physical humour, definitely grows on you as the story progresses. Of course if hearing the chibi style humour poke fun at the Final Fantasy universe and the characters themselves doesn't sound like much fun, you're probably better off missing this one. Whilst this game isn't necessarily for kids per se, its dark tone is undermined by the levels of humour evident throughout the game. Wisely, the developers have included a fast forward button that skips all the voice acting to allow you to read through the subtitles rather than watch the action unfold in cut scenes and this welcome addition to the game spills over to the battle system that also has a fast forward and an "auto-action" button that, when pressed, just repeats the last action you did in that battle or defaults to attacking if you've only just started the fight. Whilst I rarely used the latter, I can see how it would be useful when grinding out the levels late on.On top of the story and deep battle system, the game boasts "intervention" questions which work as sort of side-story driven missions  that almost always end in a fight of some description. There's also a coliseum where you can test out your stack against loads of different teams of monsters and very late on, the ability to play minigames too. There's a lot to do here and aside some of the connecting dungeons in the game feeling unnecessarily dragged out at times, it never feels like its padding the game out and brings a much needed distraction from the main plotline.Overall, World Of Final Fantasy is the answer to turn-based battle fans that aren't enthused with the new real-time battle system the series has opted for. The battle system is deep and with the ability to collect mirages and train them up with a pokemon-inspired system, there's plenty of reasons to like this game. It won't be for everyone of course and its cutesy art style might turn some people away but on the whole, World Of Final Fantasy is a solid entry and one that deserves to be checked out if you're a fan of RPGs.

Better than FFXV, no doubt about that. Gameplay is great fun, very addictive, like a mix of pokemon and final fantasy, well worth your money. Storyline can be a bit (extremely) cringey at times, if you like kingdom hearts you will love this, if you like final fantasy you will love everything but the ott childish story.I've played FF 1 - 15 (excluding 11, 13 series, 14) and CC, Tactics. So a long time fan here.

I personally loved this game very fun with so much nostalgia. The character art work is beautiful and the stacking system should be cheesy but I just loved it. Nice easy going story.

It's fairly common knowledge that the protagonists of this game are anime amnesiacs, and while it would be unfair to spoil details, I feel it's important to note that this is one of the most excessive uses of anime amnesia I've ever seen. You remain amnesiac right until the final boss, where one of the characters utters the line "we still don't know who we're up against." And it's true. It's not the usual "not sure I quite followed it" convoluted plot, you simply never progress beyond amnesia. There are bits of a plot about the world you're in, the usual "evil empire" fare, just enough to keep you going, but it relies constantly on insisting you carry out a Prophecy to the bitter end, and really really hopes that you're emotionally invested enough so that when the end comes and spends 30 minutes explaining all of the stuff you would know if you didn't have amnesia, you feel anything at all.(what little there is of actual plot is quite dark, but because it's glossed over in that final cutscene and didn't emotionally connect to anyone, everyone seems to have come away with the idea it's "very light-hearted". Possibly because it has snarky fairies and goofy characters that say "what the honk" filling 98% of the game until they can finally tell you what really happened. It's a cartoon, none of it really matters, right?)The turnbased combat is fun, but bafflingly slow. There's a fast-forward button(!) but no option to toggle it, so expect to always hold that down. You'll have a lot of time to ponder exactly why it's so slow, long looming seconds as icons move up a bar at the side of the screen while enemies politely wait for your input. The "stack" idea is neat in theory, it means you can have two character stacks with a lot of HP and attack power, or 6 unstacked but individually weaker characters. That said, I played everything fully stacked, and unstacked only to cheese certain bosses with the increased number of combat items you can use in a round, and the game itself clearly views "unstacked" as a serious penalty, what with certain attacks having the ability to topple a stack. As a remedy it throws "wobblestoppers" at you in massive amounts, and a handful of abilities with varying powers to reduce and counter toppling, none of which you ever need to use as simply pressing defend will revert you back to stability.As to the good amount of beautifully designed and delightful enemies you can catch and enslave, and the nerdy fun you can have maxing their stats and changing their forms, it has a bit of an inbuilt downside - when the game can't predict what level the player is going to be (or indeed what abilities they might have) - it has to default to being easy. At one point it even takes away all your minions and simply hands you a rather powerful and versatile minion, and forces you to use that minion for an entire dungeon, as if to really hammer home the fact they didn't trust players to collect anything useful by this point. The endgame and postgame dungeons are more challenging, though things like the Colosseum never become anything more than a shopping list of enemies to overlevel past or enslave at your convenience. Obviously, being easy or geared to younger players is not a bad thing, I just think this is a side-effect of a game mechanic rather than an intentional thing, and the result is you have a huge toolbox that you'll never need to use - and arguably this means that essential post-game skills are harder for players to find, resulting in a surprising difficulty wall. (Same thing happened with Final Fantasy X2 really - most versatile job system, didn't really do much with it.)Towns tend to consist of a single screen with a small number of static cute characters with a line of dialogue. Dungeons are visually clean and pretty, consisting of a series of small empty areas connected by lots of loading screens. The effect and sense of scale is largely "toybox" which is actually quite effective, but also a blessing really as walking is not a joy (the obligatory unnecessary jump button and the tiny hop it produces is at least quite funny). It seems almost ruthlessly faithful to PS1 era Final Fantasy games, where a dungeon would be three or four screens long, but walking along those screens took so long, and was so interrupted by random encounters, they felt like an excursion. So your mileage may vary. Any cutscene that involves more movement than "standing in a room and talking" will be a 2D animated cutscene, which grated a little at first but then I realised this was an extremely sensible budget decision, possibly the first from Square Enix in a long time.Much like the way it takes all of Final Fantasy and jumbles them up (there are few to no spoilers to any other FF game because they're all taken entirely out of context) it is an absolute hodgepodge of a game. The only real draw is the turnbased combat/monster-collecting mechanic, dressed up attractively with All Your Favourite Final Fantasy Characters, and even that has some seriously questionable aspects.

One of the best games in years! The characters are lovable, you enjoy everything they say from start to finish. Great combat system, if a little bit like Pokemon. What an absolutely joy to play!

I got this in prime and has the words in French on the back of the caseThis is not on when I order stuff in English I respectly getting it in English not in any other language

I was really surprised with how much fun I had with this game. If you're looking for a feel-good classic JRPG, I can't recommend it enough.

Received a broken package, though the disc was intact. Returning it has proven to be a hassle too. Not impressed. On the other hand, it arrived on time.

I got it from my brother‘s birthday. He loved.He hasn’t put it down yet.

El juego se hace repetitivo y no me termina de convencer este sistema por turnos de torres. Además el juego me parece algo infantil. Me lo compre de importación y todo perfecto.

ne vous fiez pas à son aspect enfantin et son style "pokémon ", car effectivement World of final fantasy est bien un jeu à la "pokémon" mais en version luxe. Graphiquement et musicalement très réussi, ce jeu "attrapez les tous" est plus complexe, riche et difficile qu'il en a l'air Très bon jeu avec une très belle durée de vie et textes entièrement traduit dans la langue de Molière ( ce qui deviens rare ) seul bémol en ce qui me concerne, les voix japonaises ne sont pas encore disponible et il faut avouer que la gestuelle des personnages ne collent pas avec les voix en anglais.En résumé, fan de la saga des Final, foncez ! Vous ne serez pas déçu.

Very cute and playable. I happened to pick this up used and it was worth the price. Arrived safely and securely, and offered my husband and I hours of fun. It's not like your usual Final Fantasy game, but it's so cute. Definitely turn off the voice acting, though.

Le jeu vaut le détour et n'est pas une niaiserie pour enfants comme cela avait été vendu à l'annonce du jeu.Le système de capture est vraiment...captivant. Les combats sont très bons. Le scénario est potable.Néanmoins, ce n'est pas un très bon Final Fantasy ni un très bon J-RPG. Il manque un ingrédient, de la folie, les environnements sont peu fournis ( surtout les villes ).