Overlong title aside, Dissidia: Opera Omnia is probably the fairest and least gated free to play RPG on the mobile market with one of the highest levels of production quality. Square Enix have has a hit and miss love affair with the mobile space and freemium titles in general for some time now, and whilst titles such as ‘Final Fantasy: Record Keepers’ and ‘Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius’ have been out longer, there’s little doubt that this is the most polished offering they’ve produced.
I am Setsuna lives in an interesting space between being a heavy nod to ‘Chrono Trigger’ and an attempt at an art-house take on an old-school JRPG. It’s trying to be stylish and original at the same time as reminding players how much they enjoy the old classics. Somewhere in the middle the game gets a little muddled and it doesn’t always reach the high-notes of either approach.
SquareEnix is fast approaching the point where they will have release more re-release retro content than new games this side of the millennium, but when a company has such a vast and genre-defining back catalog it’s hard to argue against seeing some of their titles getting a lavish remake. Adventures of Mana is in fact the second remake of the originally titled ‘Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden’ (also known as ‘Mystic Quest’ and ‘Final Fantasy Adventure’ outside Japan) after the less than successful ‘Sword of Mana’ version on the Game Boy Advance, and this version easily trumps it’s last-gen equivalent on all fronts by staying closer to the source material.
Kingdom Hearts is no stranger to the mobile scene, having had ‘Kingdom Hearts: Coded’ and ‘Kingdom Hearts: Mobile’ lay the groundwork for what does and doesn’t work on a touchscreen. Kingdom Hearts Unchained is the latest canonical entry into the ever-growing lore of the series that blends Disney and Square properties in a near-seamless manner.
Sequels to titles in the Final Fantasy main-line series used to be non-existent, so when a direct sequel to Final Fantasy X on the Playstation 2 was announced there was no small amount of interest from players at the time. I personally picked up ‘Unlimited Saga’ largely for the bonus disc with the ‘linking’ short animation they included with that game. To say that people were intrigued with what could happen AFTER the world had been saved was putting it mildly.
After the high standards set by Square on the Playstation the expectations were high for a Final Fantasy title on the Playstation 2. Final Fantasy X launched to a wave of hype and manages to push a number of impressive firsts onto the players for the long-running series.
Few games get such a bad rap as Mystic Quest. Developed by Squaresoft as a method of introducing the JRPG into countries where it had failed to be a successful genre, it’s a little on the simple side, but that doesn’t stop it from having a certain charm.
Chrono Trigger is one of those games a website has to wait a while before reviewing. Build up a body of work and show that it’s capable of formulating an honest opinion before tackling it. It would be easy to gush all over this game, but instead MBU is taking a direct on honest fresh look at the title that many believe broke the JRPG mould.
Was there ever an RPG as desired as Final Fantasy III? When all of the other games were receiving ports to the Playstation in the golden era of gaming this title slipped the net and it wouldn’t be until it saw eventual release on the DS that gamers could get hold of it and play it for themselves.
The second title in the Final Fantasy series is often considered something of an ugly-duckling when compared to the other titles in the series. This is largely because of the shift from a conventional levelling system into something altogether more complicated, but with hindsight it makes just as many leaps forward as it does steps back.
My Boxed Universe 