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I'm curious how many people have played any of the mobile games. Are they all gacha trash? micro-transactions galore and all that? Do they trade ONLY in your nostalgia? or do any of them have genuinely surprising and/or exciting mechanics that keep you playing?

I tried a couple of them along the way just to say I did, but the only one I've put any real time into is the newest one, Ever Crisis. I've only put time into it because they got smart and made it not-mobile-only and playable on Windows via Steam, though, and the "time" I put into it is mostly just watching it do things out of the corner of my eye while I'm at my workstation doing job-type things.

EC is absolutely gacha trash, but at the same time I've been playing it since launch and have not given a penny to it. That's mostly down to the fact that I can play it as I just described and be persistent about it without actually investing any real attention or time to it; otherwise, I would say it's just as pay-to-win as any other gacha.

In any event, I'm mostly playing it to unlock the new story that folds into the Remake series, which they're dripping out very slowly. For me the rest is just filler, but the cosmetics that they put in the game are still pretty fun to collect.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Funny this topic would come up now, as I have two items to post that may be of interest to folks here...

First, linked elsenet: The Before Crisis crisis: How hackers are rebuilding the lost Final Fantasy VII mobile game piece by tiny piece.

I read this article with curiosity and eagerness, as well, I'm firmly in the camp of saving lost media. It sounds like the folks working on this project have had some success, but still have a long way to go.

Second, I've been working on a project heavily this past week, but it's really been in the works for several years, and it all came about because I used to play Final Fantasy Brave Exvius heavily. I loved that game! Yes, it was a gacha, but it was entirely possible to be completely Free-to-Play and still progress well in the game. I never spent a dime on it myself, and managed to beat a lot of the harder content from time to time.

Anyway. FFBE had a really solid story, and after playing for a year or so, it occurred to me that some day it would shut down and I'd never be able to play the story again, EVER, and that made me really sad. So one day I wandered down to the kitchen, made a cup of hot cocoa, and sat there with my Fire tablet, a ream of loose-leaf paper, and a pencil, and began replaying the story and writing it down. It took over four years to document Season 1, but I finished it.

I'm in the process of posting it to my neocities site:

https://altheavalara.neocities.org

I also have recaps of Final Fantasy XIV there. Well, I say recaps and at first that's what they were, but the longer I work on it, the more it's becoming a detailed fan script itself. I'm also going to be posting a Final Fantasy XI fan script there, as I replay that game.

It does make me very sad that I couldn't document at least Season 2 of FFBE before end of service occurred, because Season 2 was really Lasswell's story and he was my favorite character. I should be able to get Season 1 completely posted by the end of this week. I do have some of the short stories and Story Events documented, but they're not typed up yet, so I'll add them slowly over time.

I've been rereading the FFBE Season 1 script (well, skimming it at least) as I post it, and it really is good enough to be worthy of the Final Fantasy name. I'm really glad I started this project and have some of the game "captured", at least.

I also dabbled in other Final Fantasy mobile games:

• Mobius Final Fantasy - played this for a bit, LOVED Wol (no seriously, that was his name! short for Warrior of Light but everyone called him Wol). If you've played Bravely Default, then you're familiar with Wol's voice actor--he voiced the main character of that game whose name escapes me because I've only played a bit of Bravely Default myself. I liked the gameplay of Mobius, but crossover events felt too long/too much to do, so I'm not surprised this shut down when it did. Would be interested in finding out Mobius' main story, though, because Wol was fun and snarky and I loved him.
• Record Keeper - cute and fun. More gacha than story, really. I played for a while but lost interest eventually.
• Dissidia Opera Omnia (or whatever it was called) - I loved the idea of this game. Final Fantasy characters from different games interacting with each other? {Yes, please.} But I found gameplay a bit difficult and it never "stuck", which does make me sad because I really would have liked to see more Alisaie...
• FFBE: War of the Visions - Mobius' VA also voices Mont in this game! I really did like Mont, and played this for a bit but found it a bit more complicated than FFBE itself, and so didn't stick with it. I'm unsure if the game is still around, but if it is, maybe I will go back to it just for its story. Mont is fun, and I wanted to know if he was ever gonna bang Machérie.

I also gave the Octopath Traveler game a try, but {insert Ken Jeong squinting GIF here}. Couldn't frakking SEE the game, so had to quit.

But I did play Star Ocean: Anamnesis from day after launch to announcement of end of service, and enjoyed that. It was heavy on gacha but again, I never spent a dime, which might have held me back some. Still, I did okay, and was pleased when I carried some of the fights (it was a multi-player game).

This post has been edited by AltheaValara on 21st January 2025 17:23

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Watch me play games on Twitch!
Schedule:
Mondays: Forspoken
Fridays: Final Fantasy XI
Saturdays: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail Side Quests & Shenanigans

I’ve tried a few, and Ever Crisis is fun for the story, but it’s heavy on the gacha. Brave Exvius was the best, great story, not too pay-to-win. Too bad so many of these games shut down fast.

I've tried several, they usually amount to gacha slop. The most fun I had with any of them was actually the Square Enix "Portal App" because it had Triple Triad. Played that a lot in college between classes!